Wikipedia Under Attack for No-follow Links Attribute
Marketing Pilgrims' Andy Beal Spearheads Campaign
Andy Beal does not believe this was the best way to handle the spam problem. So, he began the Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia's Page Rank to Zero. With his effort to break the system, many have joined his campaign. The Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia's Page Rank to Zero has gained much needed public support. So much in fact that the web page has become on of the first page features on Digg.
Andy explains what he really hopes to accomplish with this campaign. "I don't expect my response to achieve anything other than highlighting the childish action by Wikipedia. They effectively decided they didn't like some of the kids, so kicked them all out of the play pen. Well, if every kid stopped playing with Wikipedia, they wouldn't have to worry about sharing their toys in the first place. The phrase "biting the hand that feeds" springs to mind."
Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer seems to support Wikipedia's stance. However, Mr. Cutts did say, "In my ideal world, Wikipedia would add no follow to their untrusted links, but would work out ways to allow trusted links to remove the no follow attribute." This mindset seems to be the way that most common people feel about their new policy.
Though, many people see this as a childish or as a move that cannot be of any effect. As one person commented, "While it may be fun to try, I think it will have little or no impact. Kind of like David fighting a million Goliaths with still only five stones."
One feeling among almost everyone is that Wikipedia became who and what they are as a direct result of the little guy. And that is not proper to treat this problem in this way because it does punish everyone badly without no chance of parole for the good guys.
As far as I know, the Campaign to Reduce Wikipedia's Page Rank to Zero has been ineffective. However, as one reader suggested, if everyone starts picking up their own stones then maybe it will be.
Published by Daisy May
Mother of three adult children, wife of twenty plus years. Recently entered Ashford BA program for Journalism and Mass Communication. View profile
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17 Comments
Post a CommentSo they just don't know what to do more with that things.That is like a operation to protect Wiki from spam.Right they are!
Google encouraged these sites to use no-follow, but now they must be paying their price - with all these sites using no-follow how is there algorithm going to work?
Associated Content seems to have joined the club - I noticed that on new articles AC now seems to be no-following links to external sources. Will be interesting to see how this pans out - if it is a permanent change of policy I for one will cease using them.
This article needs to be cleaned up per Wikipedia's standards. Ha ha. No but really, I understood the point of your article, but I can see how most people would not. You should revise it by explaining very clearly what "nofollow" is and how this affects webmasters as much as common internet users. You see, Wikipedia appears at the very top of every search engine result because of anyone and everyone who has ever linked to a Wikipedia page from their blog, etc. This has given Wikipedia an unusually high page rank. However, Wikipedia refuses to return the favor by not allowing bots to follow "external link" in the Wikipedia articles to outside webpages. Meaning, nobody can piggyback on Wikipedia's page rank through linking, even though Google algorithms are based on link popularity. In essence, it's like a superstar becoming a millionaire through all the money her fans pay to see her films, but not giving any of that money back to charity. Add on top of that hostile censorship by Wikiped
yeah... those stupid wiki's!
wonder what happen if we all use nofollow to them?
Have a good one.
"So I had a seahawk at or below cherubs 5 in a bounce when this puddlejumper barges into the downwind NORDO at cherubs 5! The seahawk on the go had no joy, so I had to extend his upwind till I could aldis the jumper for a go around and get a wilco on guard.".. You've flown on airplanes, right? Okay, just breaking chops. I would love to see an article from you about tags and links, in plain language, because frankly I have no clue myself. Add me to your friends list-I really am interested.
Well, we try and keep things from getting to this, but it's an major uphill battle for us Wiki-watchers. We've already automated the daylights out of bad link detection, but it's a lot easier to create a URL than it is for a human to check and validate it.
We'll figure out a way to make things better..... someday.... it's a hard problem to solve.
OH - I forgot the most important question. What does it mean to "make it to the front page of DIGG"?
I use the computer but I was confused throughout this article. Think of it this way, I can walk into a library and find a book without difficulty - but I have no idea how to put my own books away using the Dewey Decimal system. Same goes for the Web - I can find just about anything, I'm clueless as to how it works! I was hoping to understand what a no-follow link was. Is it anything like what happens to the links we put in the resource section of our articles here at AC?
You are right vic. It is just that I forget that not everybody 'plays' the way that I do. A few years ago when I first started learning how to author html code, a freind that wasn't interested in it was constantly saying 'uh-uh' during our conversation. I never realized she wasn't trying to understand it until a week later. Oooops. Guess I still have that problem.
If you don't do web design there is really no reason for you to have heard of "no-follow" links. There are few places where the article could have been clearer for the not-so tech savvy and at times the wording sounded awkward but all in all it was a good article.