NYB on The Volokh Conspiracy, Some First Thoughts on Wikipedia Options

[tarantino]

http://www.volokh.com/posts/1242098183.shtml

Ira requests:

I make only one request: that regular Wikipedians who are looking over my shoulder, as well as Wikipedia critics from Wikipedia Review and elsewhere, bear in mind that this is a general-interest audience. Please don't hijack the comment threads with our own internal disputes and debates. No one here wants to read who is a sockpuppet of whom or whether so-and-so's block was fair or not. We have ANI and Wikipedia Review to hash those things out later.

[Daniel Brandt]

NYB, when are you going to put your name on your user page? Cool_Hand_Luke should do it too.

[Newyorkbrad]

NYB, when are you going to put your name on your user page? Cool_Hand_Luke should do it too.

I actually had planned to do it this week, as I mentioned in this thread last week. I might well have done it when I returned to editing last summer, but I didn't particularly appreciate the feeling of being coerced into it.

[Daniel Brandt]

I actually had planned to do it this week, as I mentioned in this thread last week. I might well have done it when I returned to editing last summer, but I didn't particularly appreciate the feeling of being coerced into it.

Maybe the move would be easier if the User pages has a "noindex" just like the User_talk pages do. I think there is more work to be done on the "noindex" front. It's true that your user page would most likely be in the top ten results in a search for your real name, because your real name is unusual and Google is infatuated with everything from Wikipedia.

That's all the more reason to level the field by adopting a "noindex" policy for all User pages. It might even take the wind out of some of those pesky teenage editors if they were unable to get a hormone kick from their Google juice.

[Lar]

I actually had planned to do it this week, as I mentioned in this thread last week. I might well have done it when I returned to editing last summer, but I didn't particularly appreciate the feeling of being coerced into it.

Maybe the move would be easier if the User pages has a "noindex" just like the User_talk pages do. I think there is more work to be done on the "noindex" front. It's true that your user page would most likely be in the top ten results in a search for your real name, because your real name is unusual and Google is infatuated with everything from Wikipedia.

That's all the more reason to level the field by adopting a "noindex" policy for all User pages. It might even take the wind out of some of those pesky teenage editors if they were unable to get a hormone kick from their Google juice.

Strikes me that the default for all namespaces ought to be noindex, and then evaluate namespace by namespace whether to be non default, (so article would be indexed) and then evaluate page by page (where necessary) whether to be non default from the non default (so that the article called "Daniel Brandt is a big weenie" is noindex even though articles generally are...)

I could swear there was a proposal to actually do that at some point.

But specifically, I think user ought to be noindex just like user talk.

[One]

Same for I believe in equal treatment for all of Jimbo's arbcom lackeys.

except when you don't.

Since the day Hivemind opened, Brandt has been consistently uneven in the treatment of listing. He has habitually offered to remove people for kissing his ring in various ways. I can't imagine why he thinks it helps his cause. I would have voted to delete his articles without coercion (as indeed I did). I think his critique would be stronger without it; either list everyone or define fixed criteria for removal.

I won't cooperate with anything else.

I could swear there was a proposal to actually do that at some point.
But specifically, I think user ought to be noindex just like user talk.

MBisanz is the guru in this subject. He's made several proposals to improve things. He posted links back in February.

This post has been edited by One:

[MBisanz]

MBisanz is the guru in this subject. He's made several proposals to improve things. He posted links back in February.

Which is also why I created Wikipedia:NOINDEX as a page to disambiguate the various efforts, but sadly that page has gone unloved.

[Milton Roe]

MBisanz is the guru in this subject. He's made several proposals to improve things. He posted links back in February.

Which is also why I created Wikipedia:NOINDEX as a page to disambiguate the various efforts, but sadly that page has gone unloved.

Not surprisingly. Inasmuch as Google is the motor that drives much of the evil that WP does in the world, just a simple judicious use of NOINDEX, as a sort of clutch which would decouple WP from Google at key places, could go a long way towards carving out the evil and leaving the rest of the heap as its own unique mix of (more or less) harmless garage-sale trash, trivia, junk, and excellence.

Example: you could NOINDEX all BLPs, even dead-tree famous BLPs and non-controversial BLPs. Then, when the subject died, you'd simply remove the tag. How easy is that? Not a total solution, but (like many other things) a step in the right direction.

Bur we can't have that, now, can we? Anything that simple would be fought tooth and nail as something which would make the game too transparent.

Another use: suppose you get tired of Wikipedia acting like WikiNews and getting the wrong perspective on history by breathlessly modifying articles on events as they happen. Okay, you can unplug some of this by simply NOINDEXing articles on in-the-news events (some Middle East uproar) for a couple of months.

The same for articles on political elections. NOINDEX them until the day after the election is over, and you remove all the political spin-doctor motivation and return them to encyclopedia-land, where they belong. Nothing in Wikipedia about Sarah Palin shows up until Nov. 5, 2008. Think of the work saved, due to the motivation being unplugged.

So you could still write about anything that goes on in the Bush or Obama administration, but Google doesn't pick it up till the administration is done, and the NOINDEX tags are removed. If you see an edit war starting to brew over some nationistic bit of nonsense which is ongoing, NOINDEX it until it dies down. Do that ON TOP of all the other usual measures.

Yeah, I know-- you'd have to change that paragraph in the WP front page, crowing about itself as a news source. And you might have to take Wikinews seriously. But do you want a semi-encyclopedia, or not?