On 2/18/06, Neil Harris <neil(a)tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
I understand the reason for not
having rel=nofollow in the article space;
You do? I'm glad someone does, because all I know about thus far
involves a misconception about *users* not being able to follow
nofollow links.
The fact of the matter is that english Wikpedia has been specifically
targeted by spammers due to our lack of nofollow and high popularity.
They continue this because it is high payoff even though most of the
links get removed. Worse yet, they have begun using more sneaky
tactics, such as mirroring free content (like the Linux documentation
project content) then adding these URLs to pages. Our users get
screwed because they follow the links only to find stale data on an
advertising (and sometimes malware) laden page. Such sites are a fact
of life, but if we can decrease the payoff from spamming Wikipedia we
should.
Even when there isn't spamming, the lack of nofollow makes it all the
harder of our editors to assume good faith from people who just show
up to add externals... every bit of possible inappropriate motivation
which we can exclude from consideration should be excluded.
So rather than asking the developers to spend time on yet another
feature, why don't we take another pass at enabling nofollow site wide
again? The code is already there for that, and enabled on most
Wikimedia sites other than english Wikipedia.