Wikipedia to tag all links on its site "no follow"

[mandy]

Wikipedia is always in the middle of some brouhaha or another. This time blogger gums are a-flappin' over the online encyclopedia's decision to tag all links on its site "nofollow," which will render those links invisible to Google and its search-engine brethren.

Whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just an unavoidable thing depends on who's doing the talking.

Wikipedia says it's unavoidable because of the mischief caused on its site by spammers and search-engine optimization schemers...

full article: http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/10642

[jezebel]

The sources cited in Wikipedia, many of which are original sources, will no longer get credit for their appearance there, which should cause at least a little downward pressure in their own search rankings (hence providing a little more upward pressure, relatively speaking, for Wikipedia's articles

SUCKS

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=jezebel link=topic=6785.msg41032#msg41032 date=1169578488]

The sources cited in Wikipedia, many of which are original sources, will no longer get credit for their appearance there, which should cause at least a little downward pressure in their own search rankings (hence providing a little more upward pressure, relatively speaking, for Wikipedia's articles

SUCKS
[/quote]

It will certainly diminish the quantity of the contributions. :blinkie:

[mandy]

Reaction to Wikipedia's decision:

Some bloggers and Wikipedia editors feel shafted by this, as in essensce, Wikipedia was created and is run by free volunteers has established its credibility and Google dominance due to millions of incoming links to Wikipedia material.

Once such blogger, Andy Beal, has launched a campaign to try and reduce Wikipedia’s PageRank to Zero via web publishers changing all of their existing natural links to Wikipedia into links which also include the NOFOLLOW tag.

Will this work? Nope. But, it’s a valiant effort and maybe, just maybe, such action could generate more of a public argument on the use of NOFOLLOW...

full article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/?p=4304

[jezebel]

Until Wikipedia realizes that its popularity (and link value) has only come about because hundreds of thousands of lowly webmasters linked to the site without using the NOFOLLOW tag, I plan to include NOFOLLOW on any future links to Wikipedia and will display the above logo on my site as a battle-cry to rally others.

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/01/...-zero.html