[WikiEN-l] Ban notices, Wikipedia, and search engines.

[Armed Blowfish]

On 26/09/2007, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I oppose no-indexing them. The point
> of our "we're no webhost" policy
> is that we don't want to get distracted
> from our mission of writing an
> encyclopedia by people posting random stuff.

The right to use Wikipaedia as a webhost
without getting distracted really doesn't
compare to the right to privacy and to not
have your name dragged through the dirt.

> However, we have many editors in good standing
> who do not have the skills to put up a
> personal webpage and are effectively
> using their User: page as a "This
> is who I am, this is what I do" place
> on the net.

And no-indexing their user pages may
make them feel safer in revealing personal
info, which is what all the accountability
people want.

Don't have the skills?  Erm, if you can
write a wiki, you can set up a personal
webpage.  Just search for free webhosting
with Cpanel, which will probably come with Fantastico, which will
probably include an
automatic wiki installation script, though
not necessarily MediaWiki.  Alternatively,
you can look for a free Wiki hoster.

Seriously, if you need help with this,
email me.

> Purging all those pages from Google to
> avoid unsavory stuff showing up is overkill.

There's a lot of unsavory things.  Statistics
coming... whenever I finish.  However, given
that most banned users have banned user
notices, and pretty much everything in RfAr,
RfC, and the ANs get ugly, it shouldn't be
hard to guess.

> How about adding a __NOINDEX__ MagicWord
> that puts
>
> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
>
> in the HTML header?

1. Good idea, but harder to code.  Good
   idea for a long term solution, but
   something should be done sooner.
2. Given how impossible it is to get
   the MediaWiki developers to commit
   anything, I'm not particularly
   motivated to code it, unless I am
   lead to believe it actually would
   be committed.
3. Given how hard it is to get a courtesy
   blanking, it would probably also be
   hard for a banned user to get someone
   to noindex their userpage, and a lot
   have probably given up.  (Although I
   guess it could be set from the
   preferences, so each user would have
   control over his/her user and talk
   page, and it would not require editing
   permission.)  But anyway, it should
   probably be opt-in to Google, not opt-out.

> --
> Toward Peace, Love & Progress:
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not
> represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its
> Board of Trustees.