[WikiEN-l] Nofollow and sister projects

[geni]

2009/6/26 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> Indeed. Those concerned with the "nofollow issue" are nothing to do
> with Wikipedia or our readers; they are largely a third party (SEOs)
> wanting to get in good with a fourth party (Google), or they're
> conspiracy-theorising nutters (Wikipedia Review). In either case,
> paying attention does very little to write an encyclopedia.
>

Questionable. Nofollow issues probably do have an impact on our
readers. At the very least the fact or internal links are not nofollow
(and no one is suggesting they should be) is probably a factor in such
a wide range of articles doing well in search result pages.

In addition since there are various browser plugins that react to
nofollow tags readers who use them will get a different experience
depending on our actions.

finally not nofollowing a class of external links says we trust some
sites more than others. That the selection of sites is really silly (I
mean do we really trust J random wiki more than the BBC and noaa.gov?)
is a legitimate cause for concern.



-- 
geni