Comments on: Wikipedia and Nofollow: Tragedy of the Commons http://www.playingwithwire.com/2007/04/wikipedia-and-nofollow-tragedy-of-the-commons/ The Internet Startup Blog Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:07:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Curt Sampson http://www.playingwithwire.com/2007/04/wikipedia-and-nofollow-tragedy-of-the-commons/comment-page-1/#comment-2947 Curt Sampson Wed, 02 May 2007 00:05:36 +0000 http://www.playingwithwire.com/2007/04/wikipedia-and-nofollow-tragedy-of-the-commons/#comment-2947 Looking at the comments on the previous post, a specific example might demonstrate better what the problem is. The Wikipedia article <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki" rel="nofollow">Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki</a> includes 84 footnotes, a fairly good demonstration of how reliant Wikipedia is on external sources. It also includes 92 links to pages on other sites that the authors either used as references or felt offered further useful information on the topic. Wikipedia, with its nofollow strategy, is telling Google that every one of those sites is equal in importance to a spam site. Is that a good thing? Is that even an appropriate thing, given how heavily Wikipedia used information from those sites in its article? cjs@cynic.net Looking at the comments on the previous post, a specific example might demonstrate better what the problem is.

The Wikipedia article Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki includes 84 footnotes, a fairly good demonstration of how reliant Wikipedia is on external sources. It also includes 92 links to pages on other sites that the authors either used as references or felt offered further useful information on the topic.

Wikipedia, with its nofollow strategy, is telling Google that every one of those sites is equal in importance to a spam site. Is that a good thing? Is that even an appropriate thing, given how heavily Wikipedia used information from those sites in its article?

cjs@cynic.net

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