Nofollow and sister projects

[Charles Matthews]

I was trying to follow the nofollow discussion
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nofollow#Current_use_on_Wikimedia_projects).
I see it hinges on "external links", and my question about it would be
concerning when an interwiki link to a sister project is deemed
"external". For context, I use many links to Wikisource pages I have
created as references, and was wondering whether the [[:s: ***]]
construction is read as an "external" link.

Charles


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[Andrew Gray-3]

2009/6/24 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...>:
> I was trying to follow the nofollow discussion
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nofollow#Current_use_on_Wikimedia_projects).
> I see it hinges on "external links", and my question about it would be
> concerning when an interwiki link to a sister project is deemed
> "external". For context, I use many links to Wikisource pages I have
> created as references, and was wondering whether the [[:s: ***]]
> construction is read as an "external" link.

My understanding is that anything which goes to a URL - a "one-bracket
link" - gets treated as an external link and is nofollowed, regardless
of where it goes; anything created as a wikimarkup link, *including*
interwiki links, is treated as internal and escapes.

(This has caused much elaborate conspiracy theory in the past
revolving around nofollow and "favoured" Wikia links, etc)

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray@...

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[David Gerard-2]

2009/6/24 Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@...>:

> My understanding is that anything which goes to a URL - a "one-bracket
> link" - gets treated as an external link and is nofollowed, regardless
> of where it goes; anything created as a wikimarkup link, *including*
> interwiki links, is treated as internal and escapes.


This is correct.


> (This has caused much elaborate conspiracy theory in the past
> revolving around nofollow and "favoured" Wikia links, etc)


As is this.


- d.

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[WJhonson]

Are links created by templates nofollowed or followed?
That is, someone creates a template like {{Brittanica|Edward VI}}
or whatever.
What's the follow treatment ?

Will



-----Original Message-----
From: David Gerard <dgerard@...>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l@...>
Sent: Wed, Jun 24, 2009 9:03 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Nofollow and sister projects










2009/6/24 Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@...>:

> My understanding is that anything which goes to a URL - a "one-bracket
> link" - gets treated as an external link and is nofollowed, regardless
> of where it goes; anything created as a wikimarkup link, *including*
> interwiki links, is treated as internal and escapes.


This is correct.


> (This has caused much elaborate conspiracy theory in the past
> revolving around nofollow and "favoured" Wikia links, etc)


As is this.


- d.

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[Mark Wagner-2]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 14:59, <wjhonson@...> wrote:
> Are links created by templates nofollowed or followed?
> That is, someone creates a template like {{Brittanica|Edward VI}}
> or whatever.
> What's the follow treatment ?

The same as anything else: if the template creates a one-bracket link,
it gets "nofollow"; if it creates a two-bracket link, it doesn't.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]

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[Luna-4]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Mark Wagner <carnildo@...> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 14:59, <wjhonson@...> wrote:
> > Are links created by templates nofollowed or followed?
> > That is, someone creates a template like {{Brittanica|Edward VI}}
> > or whatever.
> > What's the follow treatment ?
>
> The same as anything else: if the template creates a one-bracket link,
> it gets "nofollow"; if it creates a two-bracket link, it doesn't.
>

Yep. When trying to wrap my head around some of the more obscure template
formatting issues, I've often found it helps to remember that, come parsing
time, all templates are simply expanded into plain old wikitext on the page
to be displayed.

-Luna
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[Seth Finkelstein]

> Andrew Gray
> (This has caused much elaborate conspiracy theory in the past
> revolving around nofollow and "favoured" Wikia links, etc)

        Well, in defense of critics, I think it's important to
acknowledge that there are many aspects of the situation which
certainly *look* suspicious. And the tendency of *some* (not all, but
*some*) Wikipedia people to react by making name-calling personal
attacks, along with longstanding antagonism against SEO's, doesn't
help. It pretty much makes a mockery of the idea of "civility".

        I've investigated the "nofollow" issue, and come to the
conclusion that there's less there than meets the eye. But I certainly
do understand where the harsh criticism of Wikipedia comes from. For
example, speaking as a journalist, I've never been able to get a
straight answer as to who was ultimately responsible for changing the
"nofollow" policy. There are conflicting public accounts from the
people involved. Moreover, the most obvious interpretation of that
discrepancy is very negative. Now, I'm not saying I believe that very
negative interpretation; for several reasons I think it's incorrect.
HOWEVER, I wouldn't say someone who did take a cynical view was being
irrational.

        Pre-emptive rebuttal: At this point, someone usually rushes to
explain to me that the nofollow exemption applies to all wikis on the
interwiki map. I know that. But then they argue that aspect refutes any
implication of favoritism from Wikipedia to Wikia, Inc. I don't agree
with that. There's a kind of favoritism which come not from outright
discrimination in the application of rules, but needing to know the
right people and make the right requests in order to get a benefit.
When you have the co-founder of a venture capital funded commercial
start-up being highly involved with policy changes on a top-ten
website that affect all such start-ups, it's really quite reasonable
to examine the situation very carefully.

        Pre-emptive rebuttal: It's legal. I know. That's not the point.

--
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer
Web site - http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/

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[Charles Matthews]

Seth Finkelstein wrote:

>> Andrew Gray
>> (This has caused much elaborate conspiracy theory in the past
>> revolving around nofollow and "favoured" Wikia links, etc)
>>    
>
> Well, in defense of critics, I think it's important to
> acknowledge that there are many aspects of the situation which
> certainly *look* suspicious. And the tendency of *some* (not all, but
> *some*) Wikipedia people to react by making name-calling personal
> attacks, along with longstanding antagonism against SEO's, doesn't
> help. It pretty much makes a mockery of the idea of "civility".
>  

OK. we still believe pretty much in "assuming good faith", which results
in a deprecation of systematic suspicion of the motives of people who
are trying to develop the site.
> I've investigated the "nofollow" issue, and come to the
> conclusion that there's less there than meets the eye.
Fine.

> But I certainly
> do understand where the harsh criticism of Wikipedia comes from. For
> example, speaking as a journalist, I've never been able to get a
> straight answer as to who was ultimately responsible for changing the
> "nofollow" policy. There are conflicting public accounts from the
> people involved. Moreover, the most obvious interpretation of that
> discrepancy is very negative. Now, I'm not saying I believe that very
> negative interpretation; for several reasons I think it's incorrect.
> HOWEVER, I wouldn't say someone who did take a cynical view was being
> irrational.
>  

Fine. So "assume good faith" is not the de facto standard on the
Internet.  "Assume convoluted conspiracy" is closer to being the de
facto standard on some forums, to put it bluntly. The reason AGF is a
good idea for WP is that we have work to do; we can usefully leave it to
others, less concerned with free content, to type endlessly about things
about which they are at best half-informed. The "nofollow policy" was
standard on wikipedias other than the English for a long time without
anyone kicking up a fuss. Eventually enWP was getting so much spam that
the spam patrol started lobbying for enWP to get in line with the rest.
Jimmy Wales certainly promoted the change, but in the end we have to let
the devs handle the issue when it is this technical (and they are not
accountable to me, or you). (My recollection, this is.) This is also a
good idea because we have work to do.

Charles



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[David Gerard-2]

2009/6/26 Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews@...>:

> Fine. So "assume good faith" is not the de facto standard on the
> Internet.  "Assume convoluted conspiracy" is closer to being the de
> facto standard on some forums, to put it bluntly. The reason AGF is a
> good idea for WP is that we have work to do; we can usefully leave it to
> others, less concerned with free content, to type endlessly about things
> about which they are at best half-informed. The "nofollow policy" was
> standard on wikipedias other than the English for a long time without
> anyone kicking up a fuss. Eventually enWP was getting so much spam that
> the spam patrol started lobbying for enWP to get in line with the rest.
> Jimmy Wales certainly promoted the change, but in the end we have to let
> the devs handle the issue when it is this technical (and they are not
> accountable to me, or you). (My recollection, this is.) This is also a
> good idea because we have work to do.

Indeed. Those concerned with the "nofollow issue" are nothing to do
with Wikipedia or our readers; they are largely a third party (SEOs)
wanting to get in good with a fourth party (Google), or they're
conspiracy-theorising nutters (Wikipedia Review). In either case,
paying attention does very little to write an encyclopedia.


- d.

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[geni]

2009/6/26 David Gerard <dgerard@...>:
> Indeed. Those concerned with the "nofollow issue" are nothing to do
> with Wikipedia or our readers; they are largely a third party (SEOs)
> wanting to get in good with a fourth party (Google), or they're
> conspiracy-theorising nutters (Wikipedia Review). In either case,
> paying attention does very little to write an encyclopedia.
>

Questionable. Nofollow issues probably do have an impact on our
readers. At the very least the fact or internal links are not nofollow
(and no one is suggesting they should be) is probably a factor in such
a wide range of articles doing well in search result pages.

In addition since there are various browser plugins that react to
nofollow tags readers who use them will get a different experience
depending on our actions.

finally not nofollowing a class of external links says we trust some
sites more than others. That the selection of sites is really silly (I
mean do we really trust J random wiki more than the BBC and noaa.gov?)
is a legitimate cause for concern.



--
geni

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