[WikiEN-l] Reasons never to remove nofollow

[John Lee]

On 4/28/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/27/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 4/27/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > http://www.osworld.biz/816/wikipedia-a-source-of-traffic/
> > >
> >
> > Except the link isn't that bad:
> >
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=LeechFTP&diff=119465233&oldid=116391361
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
>
> You know, while I despise spammers as much as the next person, it's worth
> remembering that the "power of Wikipedia links" can be used for good, as
> well. For instance, there was recently a project by librarians at the
> [[University of Washington]] libraries to add relevant links to their
> online
> special collections -- like collections of WWII photographs -- to the
> appropriate Wikipedia articles. Surprise, surprise, their traffic
> skyrocketed -- always a good thing for libraries looking for funding, and
> a
> bonus for us as we get good, curated, non-profit links to collections
> people
> might not find otherwise. Of course *we* know this but people at
> institutions might not; libraries and museums and the like should always
> be
> encouraged to add relevant links to their collections if they can.


Yup. I don't see how this is more than tangentially related to the issue of
nofollow, however; we don't discourage people from adding valuable links to
their sites. We just don't want to encourage people adding links because
they want the pagerank of their pages to increase.

Johnleemk