[WikiEN-l] Why aren't *all* wikia.com links restricted under nofollow?

[Joe Szilagyi]

On 4/30/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> 1) Pagerank apparently does matter if it means getting extra Google hits
> for projects associated with Wikipedia.  I'm sure I don't need to point
> out the fact that the Wikia links, with ads, make money for certain
> high-ranking Foundation officials, right?  I'm not saying there's
> necessarily a correllation, but even if there is one, it gives the
> appearance of underhandedness.


Wikia, as a financial donor to Wikipedia, and staffed by high ranking people
from Wikimedia Foundation, is in a terrible ethical position here.

Perhaps an appropriate solution would be to completely restrict the
Interwiki map to only include addresses and sites that are owned by the
Foundation. I can't see any legitimate reason to do anything that can
benefit a for-profit corporation in such a way. As soon as one of these
companies provide any financial assistance to the Foundation (as Wikia did)
it cross the ethical boundry.


2) Pagerank does matter if it means getting extra Google hits for projects
> that make money for the Wikimedia Foundation.  The lower our sources rank,
> the higher the Answer.com mirrors rank, and the Foundation gets a cut of
> the Answers.com ad revenues.


An easy ethical solution to this would be for the WMF to go on the record of
stating what their relationship, financial or otherwise, was with any and
all websites listed in the Interwiki map.

-- 

Regards,
Joe
http://www.joeszilagyi.com