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

[Rich Holton]

Michael Snow wrote:
> 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
> 

Asking because I really don't know:

If we were to nofollow significant portions of Wikipedia -- for 
instance, all Biographies of Living People -- is it possible that Google 
(or others) will simply ignore the nofollow in that case?

I understand that Google says that it doesn't "special case" things. But 
  might this become a significant test of that policy?

-Rich