[WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

[Jim]

On 10/1/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/2/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Some way of adding attribution on the history page (which isn't
> > indexed by Google and therefore useless to spammers) may be a better
> > solution than adding these to the article. It probably also makes more
> > sense in terms of the GFDL if the history is all on the history page
> > and not partly there, partly on the talk page, and partly on the
> > article itself.
>
> Perhaps, if it is only and very specifically used for contributions
> from external sources. A sort of "External History:" namespace whose
> contents are shown and linked to on top of the history might be
> workable.  Right now I'm not sure the problem is prevalent enough to
> justify prioritizing such a change.
>
> I see another potential use for this - and that is finding reference that
have been deleted. Unfortunately, new editors will remove <ref> tags. I hate
going to an article, and not finding a reference that was there before - if
I added it then it is not too difficult to find it in the history, but on
some articles it is difficult to find the prior reference. If this feature
could do two things: allow one to include a reference for GFDL material, and
provide a list of links that have been used in the article (along with the
linked text) - then that would be very helpful in identifying prior
reference material.

I always thought this would not work because it would be something else to
attract link-spammers - but if the link history page is not indexed, then
that seems to mitigate potential negative effects.

Jim