[WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:

>On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>If the goal is to get stuff out of google, why don't we just nospider
>>the talk pages? Is there any reason to have them spidered?
>>    
>>
>Having talk pages in google has advantages and disadvantages.  The
>main advantage is that it makes it easier to search for things on talk
>pages, as Wikipedia's search facilities still kind of suck.
>
This sounds llike a damn good reason for fixing the search facilities.

>I'd be in favor of taking talk pages out of google, but I think it'd
>meet from resistance by others.  It could also be argued that putting
>parts of Wikipedia under robots.txt constitutes "technical measures to
>obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you
>make or distribute" and violates the GFDL.
>
I don't believe that the talk pages should be on Google at all.  Most of 
what is there is thoroughly unverifiable rants. raves and speculation, 
or it's a parking place to question that sort of thing.  Even if we can 
purge it of outright defamation, there would still remain stuff that we 
could not possibly recommend to an outsider as a reference.  It's about 
as worthless as what would find on blogs and usenet.  I don't think that 
talk pages should ever be viewed as anything more than our own internal 
technique for sorting things out.

Ec