[WikiEN-l] Searchability of non-mainspace pages

[Andrew Gray]

2008/4/28 Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com>:

> User:, User_talk: and Wikipedia: are useless search results for those
> outside of our project.  So, in my opinion, is Talk:.
>
> Google indexing seems to return these internal pages with the same
> rating as mainspace pages, where they clearly aren't.  Us allowing
> this to continue is a bug.

This also gives the odd effect where if someone creates an article on
themselves, and we helpfully userfy it... they end up with what they
originally wanted, a Wikipedia article on themselves that turns up in
Google. The average reader does not pay much attention to pagename
prefixes, and we get not infrequent emails along the lines of "...why
on earth is "User:JoeSmith" remaining as an article? It's clearly
[fiction / nonsense / insignificant]..."

I would quite like some way for non-article pages - which, after all,
look like articlespace to any casual reader - to be obviously Not An
Article, or at least Not The Same As Mainspace. Any suggestions? Big
red border?

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk