[WikiEN-l] no-index certain BLPs??

[Michael Snow]

doc wrote:

> 1) *no index bios on subject's request*. We keep the info, but the 
> subject doesn't have an article on them , with all the vandalism or 
> POV pushing risks, as top on google. They don't need to check their 
> article everyday.
>
> OR
>
> 2) *no index all low-notability living-person bios* which have 
> experienced any problems. Any admin, or OTRS op seeing repeat problems 
> can flag it as such, reducing the collateral damage if their are 
> future issues.
>
> OR
>
> 3) *no index ALL BLPs* - being in [[category:Living persons]] could 
> automatically flag the article. This would be easiest to maintain, and 
> apply consistently. The argument against it will be that it will take 
> [[George W. Bush]] etc off google, but if it were combined with stable 
> versions, so that all BLPs were removed from Google UNLESS they were 
> stable, we might have a workable solution. The popular ones are likely 
> to have stable versions very quickly. Incidentally, this would also 
> reduce the attraction of vanity bios.

While I sympathize with the reasons for concern, I object to treating 
parts of the encyclopedia differently in this manner. Backroom stuff 
like articles for deletion, I would agree. But not the encyclopedia 
proper. If we have articles that we don't want search engines to index, 
we should *delete* those articles.

The real answer is the increasingly urgent need to implement stable or 
reviewed versions of articles. In that context, it would certainly be 
possible to consider having a "noindex" attribute for articles that do 
not have any revision marked as having been reviewed.

--Michael Snow