I'm opposed to this change. A site administrator with a big enough community to address spammy links, and wants to enable this feature, is likely savvy enough to change the preference from true to false.
I think setting this to false by default is going to encourage spam bot authors to target MediaWiki specifically, more than they currently do. On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Nathan Larson <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi all, bug 42594 > <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42594>proposes > changing the default value of > $wgNoFollowLinks > <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgNoFollowLinks>from true to > false. The status quo is that, by default, external URL links > in wiki text will be given the rel="nofollow" attribute as a hint to search > engines that they should not be followed for ranking purposes as they are > user-supplied and thus subject to spamming. If the change is implemented, > you will need to change your LocalSettings.php to switch $wgNoFollowLinks > to true if you want to keep the status quo on your wiki. > > The argument for the status quo is that nofollow deters spammers. The > argument for the proposed change it is that it's better for the Internet as > a whole, and arguably for the individual wikis, to have the links followed > for ranking purposes. I'll focus on the arguments in favor of the change > and let others rebut them. > > Suppose you run a wiki, wiki.foowidget.com, devoted to documenting your > software application, FooWidget. If you link to, say, the main > foowidget.comsite or to a vendor that stocks your software, would you > not want to > improve their pagerank, since this benefits you? > > The same goes for, e.g., nonprofits that are promoting a cause. If you run > CancerWiki and there are a bunch of links on your site to the American > Cancer Society and other allied causes, would you not want to increase > their pagerank? I think that in the wikisphere, what we commonly see is > wikis devoted to niche interests they are trying to promote or share > information about. The reason they link to certain websites is that a > community consensus has decided that those sites are useful for effectively > promoting, or informing people about, those topics. > > If the links are spammy, then the editing community at that wiki should > revert those spam edits. If they do so promptly, then if they have any > effect on pagerank at all, it won't be for long. A well-maintained wiki > will mostly have links to good sites, and the effect of the pagerank boost > those provide will drown out the pagerank boost that goes to the > short-lived spam links. > > Also, we have other antispam tools that are way more effective than > nofollow at deterring spam. Sites that mirror a wiki may not apply nofollow > anyway, in which case those links might still increase the spammers' > pagerank, regardless of your nofollow setting. It's hard to reduce the > benefits that accrue to the spammers, except by vigilantly reverting their > edits; it's easier to increase the costs that the spammers incur, by using > CAPTCHAs and the like. > > $wgNoFollowLinks was introduced in MediaWiki 1.4.0 as a setting that > defaults to true, so I'm not sure that we really gave the other option much > of a chance. Also, well-designed search engines should have other measures > too for sorting out what's spammy. There should be some sort of algorithm > for identifying wikis that have been overrun by spam, much as the search > engines have ways of figuring out which sites have a bunch of links just > for SEO purposes. > > -- > Nathan Larson <https://mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Leucosticte> > Distribution of my contributions to this email is hereby authorized > pursuant to the CC0 license< > http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/> > . > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
