[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - "nofollow" decision

[David Gerard]

On 22/03/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

> Okay, that makes some sense.
> Now, why the hell aren't they nofollowed along with everything else?


Presumably because they're very unlikely to be spam links that search
engine spammers would insert to try to get Google rank.

(And now let's see if search engine spammers start looking for ways to
abuse that ...)

Personally I think it's in fact good to give Google rank to external
links if doing so doesn't constitute an attractive nuisance to
spammers. That links on Wikipedia are editor-selected is a reason the
en:wp community objected to default nofollow when it was first added
to Mediawiki. What we need is some way to make it less binary. That
means coding. Which I can't do either. Pfeh!


- d.