Wikipedia "nofollow" not applied fairly Options

[Daniel Brandt]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/28/wikip...nd-other-wikis/

[Somey]

I wonder if this is yet another of those issues that I thought was likely to be ignored by the mainstream media, that in fact turns out to be a big scandal? Obviously we've been onto this for weeks, months even, but I just figured it was too technical for anything beyond specialty blogs and one or two of the tech magazines, not to mention too easily deniable.

Certainly Seth Finkelstein knows about it - he's one of the commenters, but he doesn't seem to think it will amount to much of anything either.

[thekohser]

I wonder if this is yet another of those issues that I thought was likely to be ignored by the mainstream media, that in fact turns out to be a big scandal?

I doubt it will get to the "scandal" phase, because before that would ever happen, someone would have to (as you and I both have, Somey) "do the math". In which case, they will see that Wikia has very little chance of making more than $4,000 from Wikipedia in a given year, and then the "scandal" quickly turns into a "laughing stock" sort of situation.

Really, the sweet irony of this, at this point now, is that the bad public relations that this whole flap has caused is probably worth far more in "negative" dollars for Wikia than the trifling "net positive" dollars they will EVER accrue from Wikipedia "follow" juice. When I notified Jimbo and Angela about this back in the autumn of 2006, their response was to ignore/dismiss/deny. Had they jumped on it, right away, and paid a programmer $250 to fix the interwiki loophole, they probably would have gotten that additional $1 million investment from the Fortune 500 tech company that is now walking away with that money, having read on TechCrunch how angry it makes some people.

I wonder how Rootology is feeling his question has been answered, especially by the dismissive David Gerard? Don't like something unethical on Wikipedia? Just fix the code, please. Oh, wait, somebody already tried that and it was rejected by the senior developers? Hmm. David just keeps repeating the drivel, though.

That's the WikiWay.

Greg

[Jonny Cache]

I asked my broker what Laughing Stock was trading at these days ...

But she just laughed ...

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

Couldn't WP avoid the appearance of impropriety by not using "nofollow" at all until they can sort out any technical difficulties? It seems to me to be better to tolerate a degree of spam if that is what it takes to keep your integrity.

[Somey]

Couldn't WP avoid the appearance of impropriety by not using "nofollow" at all until they can sort out any technical difficulties?

If they were really smart, they'd just turn it on and off at random, every 15-20 minutes or so. Then, if anyone complained about Wikia getting favorable treatment, they'd just say, "when did you check? I thought we just fixed that! Try it again now, and see what happens?" And eventually, everyone would just get really frustrated and stop paying attention.

But they're not that smart, are they? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

Another ethically acceptable course of action would be to have any principal of Wikia resign from WMF Trustee and other other positions of trust within WP.

[Google News]

Wikipedia's Double Standard On Nofollow Rule
Search Engine Land, CT - 15 minutes ago
Techcrunch discovered that Wikipedia was giving special treatment to their own properties, in terms of using standard, non-nofollowed, links to Wikia, ...

[GlassBeadGame]

Meanwhile back at WikiEn-l Geni says that code is in place to negate "nofollow." He also says that the whole technical glitch is an easy fix that he could take care of in no time. And he should know. His user page has a vague reference to the "turing test." He may not even really be human.

So why isn't this taken care of in prompt fashion? Do they care so little about the appearance of impropriety and ethics?

[Jonny Cache]

Do they care so little about the appearance of impropriety and ethics?

By George, I think that GPS is finally caching on ...

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

[Google News]

Wikipedia's Double Standard On Nofollow Rule
Search Engine Land, CT - 1 hour ago
Techcrunch discovered that Wikipedia was giving special treatment to their own properties, in terms of using standard, non-nofollowed, links to Wikia, ...

[GlassBeadGame]

Do they care so little about the appearance of impropriety and ethics?

By George, I think that GPS is finally caching on ...

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

Das Glasperlenspiel

OMG you must, like, read books.

[Rootology]

The more I read about this, the more annoyed I am getting.

[Jonny Cache]

Do they care so little about the appearance of impropriety and ethics?

By George, I think that GPS is finally caching on ...

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

Das Glasperlenspiel

OMG you must, like, read books.

I do declare,
there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there.
La la la la la la la

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

[Rootology]

Discussion on wikien-l is underway for what it may or may not be worth. Gerard's curious brushing aside of even the idea of conflicts of appearance is troubling.

[Somey]

Well, remember that Dave's a "crossover admin" - he's an admin both on Wikipedia and on a major Wikia site (Uncyclopedia). He was an admin on Uncyclopedia long before Wikia bought the domain, but it was hosted by Wikia all along, FWIW.

As a personal disclaimer, I myself would consider it unfortunate if Uncyclopedia stopped getting preferential treatment for external links from WP, since Uncyclopedia remains, by far, my favorite wiki site to this day and was actually sandboxed by Google for several months last year. However, all inline external links on Uncyclopedia are NOFOLLOW as well, as are (presumably) such links on other Wikia sites. (Not that this would matter much, Google-wise.)

Unless I've been deliberately misinformed, the AdSense money from Uncyclopedia still goes to the site's founder, User:Chronarion, not to Wikia. Also, the AdSense boxes there are less obtrusive than they are on other Wikia sites. That could conceivably change someday, but for now, it's probably the least commercial-looking site Wikia operates.

[Yahoo! News]

Wikipedia has become notorious for using the No Follow attribute to link to all outgoing links from Wikipedia entries. TechCrunch, however, has learned that Wikipedia is lifting the No Follow tag for links to their ‘for profit’ Wikia Search project. The links to Wikia that don’t have the nofollow tag are created using a special Wikipedia [...]

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/searc...her-sites/4813/

[Rootology]

To be fair, I don't care who makes money directly. I just think that the nofollow should be all or nothing, across the board. It's just a matter of time otherwise until all Hell breaks loose when someone does give $10,000 to the WMF and then ends up on the Interwiki map.

Oh, and someone just submitted the TechCrunch article to Slashdot. If it gets picked up... Oops.

[norsemoose]

I'm more concerned about the default interwiki map that comes with all MediaWiki installations. I know that MediaWiki is not the same as Wikimedia, but they are closely inter-related,

Here is the version of interwiki.sql included with MediaWiki 1.93, which is licensed under the GPL.

-- Based more or less on the public interwiki map from MeatballWiki
-- Default interwiki prefixes...

REPLACE INTO /*$wgDBprefix*/interwiki (iw_prefix,iw_url,iw_local) VALUES
('abbenormal','http://www.ourpla.net/cgi-bin/pikie.cgi?$1',0),
('acadwiki','http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/wiki/$1',0),
('acronym','http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=$1',0),
('advogato','http://www.advogato.org/$1',0),
('aiwiki','http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/ailab/aiwiki/aiw.cgi?$1',0),
('alife','http://news.alife.org/wiki/index.php?$1',0),
('annotation','http://bayle.stanford.edu/crit/nph-med.cgi/$1',0),
('annotationwiki','http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?wikiid=368&doc=$1',0),
('arxiv','http://www.arxiv.org/abs/$1',0),
('aspienetwiki','http://aspie.mela.de/Wiki/index.php?title=$1',0),
('bemi','http://bemi.free.fr/vikio/index.php?$1',0),
('benefitswiki','http://www.benefitslink.com/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?$1',0),
('brasilwiki','http://rio.ifi.unizh.ch/brasilienwiki/index.php/$1',0),
('bridgeswiki','http://c2.com/w2/bridges/$1',0),
('c2find','http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FindPage&value=$1',0),
('cache','http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:$1',0),
('ciscavate','http://ciscavate.org/index.php/$1',0),
('cliki','http://ww.telent.net/cliki/$1',0),
('cmwiki','http://www.ourpla.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('codersbase','http://www.codersbase.com/$1',0),
('commons','http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/$1',0),
('consciousness','http://teadvus.inspiral.org/',0),
('corpknowpedia','http://corpknowpedia.org/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('creationmatters','http://www.ourpla.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('dejanews','http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=$1',0),
('demokraatia','http://wiki.demokraatia.ee/',0),
('dictionary','http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Database=*&Form=Dict1&Strategy=*&Query=$1',0),
('disinfopedia','http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=$1',0),
('diveintoosx','http://diveintoosx.org/$1',0),
('docbook','http://docbook.org/wiki/moin.cgi/$1',0),
('dolphinwiki','http://www.object-arts.com/wiki/html/Dolphin/$1',0),
('drumcorpswiki','http://www.drumcorpswiki.com/index.php/$1',0),
('dwjwiki','http://www.suberic.net/cgi-bin/dwj/wiki.cgi?$1',0),
('eĉei','http://www.ikso.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('echei','http://www.ikso.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('ecxei','http://www.ikso.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('efnetceewiki','http://purl.net/wiki/c/$1',0),
('efnetcppwiki','http://purl.net/wiki/cpp/$1',0),
('efnetpythonwiki','http://purl.net/wiki/python/$1',0),
('efnetxmlwiki','http://purl.net/wiki/xml/$1',0),
('eljwiki','http://elj.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/$1',0),
('emacswiki','http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('elibre','http://enciclopedia.us.es/index.php/$1',0),
('eokulturcentro','http://esperanto.toulouse.free.fr/wakka.php?wiki=$1',0),
('evowiki','http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/$1',0),
('finalempire','http://final-empire.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('firstwiki','http://firstwiki.org/index.php/$1',0),
('foldoc','http://www.foldoc.org/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?$1',0),
('foxwiki','http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~$1',0),
('fr.be','http://fr.wikinations.be/$1',0),
('fr.ca','http://fr.ca.wikinations.org/$1',0),
('fr.fr','http://fr.fr.wikinations.org/$1',0),
('fr.org','http://fr.wikinations.org/$1',0),
('freebsdman','http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?apropos=1&query=$1',0),
('gamewiki','http://gamewiki.org/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('gej','http://www.esperanto.de/cgi-bin/aktivikio/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('gentoo-wiki','http://gentoo-wiki.com/$1',0),
('globalvoices','http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dyn/globalvoices/wiki/$1',0),
('gmailwiki','http://www.gmailwiki.com/index.php/$1',0),
('google','http://www.google.com/search?q=$1',0),
('googlegroups','http://groups.google.com/groups?q=$1',0),
('gotamac','http://www.got-a-mac.org/$1',0),
('greencheese','http://www.greencheese.org/$1',0),
('hammondwiki','http://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/index.php3?$1',0),
('haribeau','http://wiki.haribeau.de/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('hewikisource','http://he.wikisource.org/wiki/$1',1),
('herzkinderwiki','http://www.herzkinderinfo.de/Mediawiki/index.php/$1',0),
('hrwiki','http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php/$1',0),
('iawiki','http://www.IAwiki.net/$1',0),
('imdb','http://us.imdb.com/Title?$1',0),
('infosecpedia','http://www.infosecpedia.org/pedia/index.php/$1',0),
('jargonfile','http://sunir.org/apps/meta.pl?wiki=JargonFile&redirect=$1',0),
('jefo','http://www.esperanto-jeunes.org/vikio/index.php?$1',0),
('jiniwiki','http://www.cdegroot.com/cgi-bin/jini?$1',0),
('jspwiki','http://www.ecyrd.com/JSPWiki/Wiki.jsp?page=$1',0),
('kerimwiki','http://wiki.oxus.net/$1',0),
('kmwiki','http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?$1',0),
('knowhow','http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~paquetse/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?$1',0),
('lanifexwiki','http://opt.lanifex.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('lasvegaswiki','http://wiki.gmnow.com/index.php/$1',0),
('linuxwiki','http://www.linuxwiki.de/$1',0),
('lojban','http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=$1',0),
('lqwiki','http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/$1',0),
('lugkr','http://lug-kr.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/lugwiki.pl?$1',0),
('lutherwiki','http://www.lutheranarchives.com/mw/index.php/$1',0),
('mathsongswiki','http://SeedWiki.com/page.cfm?wikiid=237&doc=$1',0),
('mbtest','http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mbtest.pl?$1',0),
('meatball','http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?$1',0),
('mediazilla','http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/$1',1),
('memoryalpha','http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/index.php/$1',0),
('metaweb','http://www.metaweb.com/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=$1',0),
('metawiki','http://sunir.org/apps/meta.pl?$1',0),
('metawikipedia','http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/$1',0),
('moinmoin','http://purl.net/wiki/moin/$1',0),
('mozillawiki','http://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php/$1',0),
('muweb','http://www.dunstable.com/scripts/MuWebWeb?$1',0),
('netvillage','http://www.netbros.com/?$1',0),
('oeis','http://www.research.att.com/cgi-bin/access.cgi/as/njas/sequences/eisA.cgi?Anum=$1',0),
('openfacts','http://openfacts.berlios.de/index.phtml?title=$1',0),
('openwiki','http://openwiki.com/?$1',0),
('opera7wiki','http://nontroppo.org/wiki/$1',0),
('orgpatterns','http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/OrgPatterns?$1',0),
('osi reference model','http://wiki.tigma.ee/',0),
('pangalacticorg','http://www.pangalactic.org/Wiki/$1',0),
('personaltelco','http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/$1',0),
('patwiki','http://gauss.ffii.org/$1',0),
('phpwiki','http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php?$1',0),
('pikie','http://pikie.darktech.org/cgi/pikie?$1',0),
('pmeg','http://www.bertilow.com/pmeg/$1.php',0),
('ppr','http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?$1',0),
('purlnet','http://purl.oclc.org/NET/$1',0),
('pythoninfo','http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/$1',0),
('pythonwiki','http://www.pythonwiki.de/$1',0),
('pywiki','http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?$1',0),
('raec','http://www.raec.clacso.edu.ar:8080/raec/Members/raecpedia/$1',0),
('revo','http://purl.org/NET/voko/revo/art/$1.html',0),
('rfc','http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc$1.txt',0),
('s23wiki','http://is-root.de/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('scoutpedia','http://www.scoutpedia.info/index.php/$1',0),
('seapig','http://www.seapig.org/$1',0),
('seattlewiki','http://seattlewiki.org/wiki/$1',0),
('seattlewireless','http://seattlewireless.net/?$1',0),
('seeds','http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki/$1',0),
('senseislibrary','http://senseis.xmp.net/?$1',0),
('shakti','http://cgi.algonet.se/htbin/cgiwrap/pgd/ShaktiWiki/$1',0),
('slashdot','http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=$1',0),
('smikipedia','http://www.smikipedia.org/$1',0),
('sockwiki','http://wiki.socklabs.com/$1',0),
('sourceforge','http://sourceforge.net/$1',0),
('squeak','http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/$1',0),
('strikiwiki','http://ch.twi.tudelft.nl/~mostert/striki/teststriki.pl?$1',0),
('susning','http://www.susning.nu/$1',0),
('svgwiki','http://www.protocol7.com/svg-wiki/default.asp?$1',0),
('tavi','http://tavi.sourceforge.net/$1',0),
('tejo','http://www.tejo.org/vikio/$1',0),
('terrorwiki','http://www.liberalsagainstterrorism.com/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('tmbw','http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('tmnet','http://www.technomanifestos.net/?$1',0),
('tmwiki','http://www.EasyTopicMaps.com/?page=$1',0),
('turismo','http://www.tejo.org/turismo/$1',0),
('theopedia','http://www.theopedia.com/$1',0),
('twiki','http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/$1',0),
('twistedwiki','http://purl.net/wiki/twisted/$1',0),
('uea','http://www.tejo.org/uea/$1',0),
('unreal','http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/$1',0),
('ursine','http://wiki.ursine.ca/$1',0),
('usej','http://www.tejo.org/usej/$1',0),
('usemod','http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('visualworks','http://wiki.cs.uiuc.edu/VisualWorks/$1',0),
('warpedview','http://www.warpedview.com/index.php/$1',0),
('webdevwikinl','http://www.promo-it.nl/WebDevWiki/index.php?page=$1',0),
('webisodes','http://www.webisodes.org/$1',0),
('webseitzwiki','http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/$1',0),
('why','http://clublet.com/c/c/why?$1',0),
('wiki','http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?$1',0),
('wikia','http://www.wikia.com/wiki/$1',0),
('wikibooks','http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/$1',1),
('wikicities','http://www.wikicities.com/index.php/$1',0),
('wikif1','http://www.wikif1.org/$1',0),
('wikihow','http://www.wikihow.com/$1',0),
('wikinfo','http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.php?title=$1',0),
('wikimedia','http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/$1',0),
('wikiquote','http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/$1',1),
('wikinews','http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/$1',0),
('wikisource','http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1',1),
('wikispecies','http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1',1),
('wikitravel','http://wikitravel.org/en/$1',0),
('wikiworld','http://WikiWorld.com/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('wiktionary','http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/$1',1),
('wlug','http://www.wlug.org.nz/$1',0),
('wlwiki','http://winslowslair.supremepixels.net/wiki/index.php/$1',0),
('ypsieyeball','http://sknkwrks.dyndns.org:1957/writewiki/wiki.pl?$1',0),
('zwiki','http://www.zwiki.org/$1',0),
('zzz wiki','http://wiki.zzz.ee/',0),
('wikt','http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/$1',1);

We can clearly see, then, that among a bunch of early wikis, crap that probably shouldn't be there, and Wikimedia projects, there are two entries for Wikia (wikicities and wikia) and one for Memory Alpha, which is hosted on Wikia. Most interesting indeed.

[thekohser]

The self-assured puffery on the WikiEN-l list just gets better and better.

Johnleemk said in a post:

As I understand it, the reason interwiki links aren't nofollowed
is because we can be damn sure that they're not spam, since all these
domains have to be preapproved before you can link to them using the
interwiki format.

Really, John. Are you so "damn sure"? Let's take a look at a few of the interwiki links that certainly contain advertising:

FloralWIKI

GameWiki

CNDbTitle

Each of them are ripe with Google AdSense ads, or worse (in the case of CNDb). What exactly is Johnleemk's definition of "spam"?

If I think I know what he would say ("Well, spam is more spammy; it's not spam just because it has advertising; I mean, I know spam when I see it"), then why isn't my Centiare wiki being allowed into the list? Could it possibly be because of a political vendetta against me personally, and not because anyone has actually considered how Centiare could be a productive way to divert Wikipedia spammers to a more welcoming environment for customized SEO efforts?

I'll look for Johnleemk's retraction on the WikiEN-l list. How long should I hold my breath?

Greg