Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion - Latest Comments in Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Ruehl — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:47:03 -0000

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Danilo Stern-Sapad — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:33:26 -0000

I always use nofollow's when linking to Wikipedia from my websites. Their content is not authoritative, a lot of it isn't cited properly, a lot of it isn't accurate, a lot of it is poorly written, a lot of it is copyright infringement. My major issue is many of the articles base or completely rip off their content from sites listed under References (though normally they aren't listed) and sometimes under Related sites or External links. This means sources that are probably more accurate and well-written will most likely appear lower in search engines and will receive no value from Wikipedia, which is using them as a source and essentially stealing their content.

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Danilo Stern-Sapad — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:33:26 -0000

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

AndyBeard — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:26:28 -0000

I know Graywolf finally added a subscribe to comments plugin, but I am honestly scared to use one. It only takes one spam complaint from an AOL user who somehow gets a porn spam that gets through, and my domain could be shut down.

Also bare in mind that currently the plugin has no email flow control, so emails are being sent off in bursts. Long term it isn't safe to have on a busy blog, unless you are running EzineArticles and the email fires off from a separate white-listed server (Chris has it nicely worked out)

I am actually seeing some strange results in the SERPs monitoring a few terms., with Wikipedia actually dropping. Maybe linking out with followable links really does help relevance of your own content much more than anyone realises (or speaks about)

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

AndyBeard — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:26:28 -0000

Re: Wikipedia NoFollow Plugin? WikiDigg?

Carsten Cumbrowski — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:17:46 -0000

Andy,

Sorry for the delayed response. Mmhh.. Email notification for comments would be nice. Just a little bit user feedback :)

"If you have a system that ultimately creates some numerical data for each link, based on how long it has been there, then you can selectively have the link followable or not."

Yes, the search engines have to determine that. If it is an on site attribute, then it will be gamed. Hello Meta Tags 1990

"I have a Wikipedia account, but have only done a few edits.
Some might argue that because I am not dedicated editor, I have no right to an opinion."

I believe you did not grasp the concept yet. What you CAN gain by your activities is trust, which is not unimportant in a community, isn't it?

"Relevance
By not passing on link equity to other sites, Wikipedia themselves becomeâ€¦ irrelevant"

I don't understand that statement. Does it fall into the category like this one? : "The code is full of bugs, which is no surprise, because it was written in basic and not c++"

"Why link to Wikipedia with a followable link? They donâ€™t share the link equity back out"

Answer: your headline for the paragraph

I completely agree that if the search engines will obey the nofollow attribute, an imbalance due to unrealistic PageRank distribution caused by the "black hole" effect wikipedia creates by absorbing all the votes without distributing it back to the outside world, will be the result of this.

I am also sure that the search engines had somebody crunching some numbers and simulating it. I hope that the result would be disastrous, because that will trigger something else that is much overdue. You guess what that might be. I mentioned it already several time.

What is unfortunate is the fact that all the good reasons why I support the nofollow at wikipedia (until it will hopefully not matter anymore if there is a nofollow or not), is not the reason why it was enabled (again).

I hope that a lot of people followed the arguments and adopted the good reasons now too. The SEO contest thingy is no reason IMO. If it would be just that I would say "remove the nofollow NOW".

Cheers!
Carsten