On 4/29/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/04/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
On 27/04/07, Joe Szilagyi szilagyi@gmail.com wrote:
Why aren't links to all *.Wikia.com links covered by nofollow? A quick
Presumably for a lack of coding. Go write some MediaWiki code rather than whining. Thanks!
Wow, that's a helpful comment.
Given taht it seems to be a deliberate issue with how the code was set up, it's a legitimate question. One we likely know the answer to, but one that should be addressed nonetheless.
I'm sure this has been explained at length before on the list...
The code has, historically, recognised three kinds of links.
- Wikilinks
- Interwiki links
- External links
It takes the link syntax and produces appropriate links in the HTML from these.
Class 2 is interesting, because "interwiki" covers both internal and external projects - a link to a Wikia site is wikia:foobar:link, whilst a link to the French wikipedia is fr:wp:link or to Commons is commons:link. External is not just Wikia - there are other external wikis linked to via interwiki as well - but a large proportion of our "external interwikis" are to them.
What we have here is a disconnect, or inconsistency, in class 2. And without passing any judgment or advocating either view, here is the problem:
EXHIBIT A. Brion and developers say if something is on Interwiki, it is trusted. Brion and Rob Church rejected the feature request of being able to customize follow/nofollow for Interwiki sites. Reason given: (from http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8753)
#2 from Brion Vibber 2007-01-24 16:48 UTC [reply] Untrusted sites should not be in the interwiki table, probably, hmm?
EXHIBIT B. However, the meta page for Interwiki says nothing about sites being trusted. Only "useful": (from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Interwiki_map#Proposed_additions)
"This section is for proposing a new interwiki link prefix; add new entries at the bottom of the section. When requesting a new prefix, please explain why it would be useful. Interwiki prefixes should be reserved for websites that would be useful on a significant number of pages."
So there is the discrepancy. It would make sense to come to a common understanding of what role the Interwiki list should play, and align technology/software/developer decisions with it.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)