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Non-English Wikipedia's Using Nofollow?  (View post)

Veky [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, January 18, 2006
18 years ago

Rationale is very simple. English wp gets *much* more attention, and it's several orders of magniture less likely that anyone could get such commercial links into important articles on en.wikipedia without being caught well before some search engine bot submitted that link as appropriate for evaluation.

For example, I, although I love my country and language, cannot stand "my" localized wp. There are just too many errors and outright stupidities just in my area of expertise, just to correct the most serious ones would cost me a year's time.
I'd like to know, is the same with you, Philipp, and German wp, or is situation better there? Unfortunately I can't speak German well, so I can't check myself... and I don't believe Google Translation System _that_ much... yet. :-)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

> There are just too many errors and outright
> stupidities just in my area of expertise, just to correct
> the most serious ones would cost me a year's time.

Then this seems to be more than just a problem of spam, which nofollow links might help fight. I wonder if they need more drastic solutions.

> I'd like to know, is the same with you, Philipp,
> and German wp, or is situation better there?

The German Wikipedia is the second largest one following the English one (speaking in terms of entries quantity), so I suppose it gets a little more attention. However I never really check it. I only go to the English one.

Mathias Schindler [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

There was a short debate on the nofollow thing a couple of months ago. You might be able to find something in the Wikipedia Signpost...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-01-24/Nofollow_tag

Igor [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

In Russian version they also use nofollow. Right now I check ru.wikinews.org, there use nofollow too.

Michel [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Spanish wikipedia version also use nofollow.

Brian M. [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

This happened more than a year ago. Here's what I said at the time:

Implementing this on en is anti-web. We have a strong enough user base to not worry about it. If it can be turned on/off per wiki then I suggest it be turned off EN immediately. Think about this: Google JUST implemented this feature, and chances are the implementation on their server has problems with it – Google keeps crap in "beta" forever, tending to have all of us be their beta testers rather than internal testing. Who knows what we are doing to the web by implementing on this. I'd be interested in a MySQL query to see how many external links we have....this problem is amplified with Yahoo and MSN search. --Alterego 03:51, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)]
   We have ~387,000 external links...PLEASE PLEASE turn this off immediately guys... --Alterego 03:52, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That was just external links on en; there are millions in total.

Veky [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

>> There are just too many errors and outright
>> stupidities just in my area of expertise, just to correct
>> the most serious ones would cost me a year's time.

> Then this seems to be more than just a problem of spam, which nofollow
> links might help fight. I wonder if they need more drastic solutions.

Well, it is, but at least the spam problem (or "symptom") is easily "solved" via nofollow.
Second, obviously these problems are connected... if there is more nonsense on xy.wikipedia, xy-speakers who know English will almost always go to en.wikipedia, even for xy=de. By contraposition, those who stay and write on xy.wikipedia are mostly those who don't know English, and there is a strong correlation between that and awareness of current IT problems, of which spam is surely one of biggest. Implications are obvious: without nofollow, it would be just too easy to post link spam that would go unnoticed, and give too much of PageRank to the spammer.

Caleb E [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

It wasn't just a locked away admin decision, there was a vote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Nofollow

Bratsche [PersonRank 2]

18 years ago #

Wikipedia, already combats spam with blocking of spambots and using the the link blocklist, meaning if you try to save a page with a link that is on the blocklist, you get an error message, and the edit is not completed. Spam articles are usually taken to Articles for Deletion, and nuked.

And it seems to be that consensus just wasn't reached in the en debate. Since I don't edit on the other projects, I can't say what happened there. But I assume that their individual communities came to decision that the nofollow was a Good Thing. Or Cosa Buena, if you will.

Finally, Wikipedia decisions are never made with the admins alone. There Is No Cabal is a popular phrase, and the radical transparency of all Wikipedia decisions (talk pages, mailing lists, etc.) reflects that. Admins are little more that normal editors with a few more janitorial-type "powers".

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