[WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

Wed Sep 7 09:06:30 UTC 2005

On 9/6/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> We blew it by creating webcomics inclusion guidelines that were just
> plain stupid, based on Alexa rankings and not on any sort of artistic
> or critical notability.

Alexa rankings are good for sorting external links and getting rid of
the dodgy ones. Articles like [[Harry Potter]] attract a lot of people
whose sites don't seem to get any hits apart from those they get from
Wikipedia. Alexa allows us to get rid of such sites (sure, it's
arbitrary, but we don't have time to assess each site on its merits).
However, I don't think Alexa rankings are useful for much more than
that. They are not accurate (how many people do you know use the Alexa
toolbar?) and they do not reflect the fact that high traffic does not
mean high quality or high relevance.

~Mark Ryan