[Foundation-l] Free advertising on Wikipedia

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Erik's concept a time delay isn't a new idea... it's one that has
> > already been disregarded, at least for this application: even if we
> > ignore the technical fun of using external links table at realtime,
> > we're still left with the fact that it's pointless.  For links that
> > are removed in a short span of time the SEO gains no advantage
> > (mirrors haven't had a chance to mirror, google hasn't had a chance to
> > spider), our concern stems from links which remain due to a lack of
> > editorial oversight.
>
> That depends entirely, of course, on how long the time delay is. It
> could be as long as 30 days. A link which survives that long,
> continuously, may very well be a good link that deserves to be there.

You've fallen for the myth of editorial review...

What you say might be true if significant numbers of people people
were checking links other than at the moment of addition (i.e. when
they were the top most diff), but they don't.

If a link survives it's initial addition due to inattentiveness of the
editors it will stay a long time.  Must I beat this one into your head
with wikiwide statistics on link lifetimes as well? :)

In the past I've computed the density of lifetimes of links which were
inserted then later removed. It's quite computationally expensive to
do so, which is why I haven't updated it any time recently.  ... but I
can, if I must do so to convince people that links are either removed
right away or mostly not at all.