Wikipedia Adds No Follow to Links

netbuzz writes "In an attempt to thwart spammers and search-engine optimization mischief, Wikipedia has begun tagging all external links on its site "nofollow", which renders those links invisible to search engines. Whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or simply unavoidable has become a matter of much debate." This topic has come up before and the community voted to remove nofollow back in 2005. This new round of nofollow comes as a directive from Wikia President, Jimbo Wales.

Comments

Idea for a New Search Engine with Unique Ranking?

[MBraynard]

How about creating a new Google-style Ranking system that only ranks sites based on the number of no-follow links heading towards them?

Re:Neither good nor bad. It's immaterial.

[David Gerard]

My Wikipedia user page makes me the number one hit on "David Gerard" (with and without quotes) because I use it as the link when responding to blog quotes about Wikipedia (in my role as volunteer press contact). I finally beat the Dutch painter!

Re:In other news...

[dreddnott]

You can keep your precious italics. Wikipedia encourages me to be bold!

Phew 5 +5 comments in a row

[suggsjc]

I am exhausted. The first 5 comments where all +5 interesting or insightful. I didn't get a troll, link spam or random offtopic rant to catch my breath on.

Somebody needs to ban these people. If this trend continues, then /. might get a reputation as a place for on-topic discussion about technology.