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

Re:Wikipedia and Internet-Topology

[David Gerard]

"If somebody were really intent on "overgrazing" wikipedia, automated troll-bots would have no difficulty spewing crap all over it faster than the community could work to revert it. I'll be honest, I'm surprised I haven't seen more if it already."

You will be utterly unsurprised to know this happens already ...

In general, any obvious objection to the idea of a wiki encyclopedia already happens and is already dealt with day to day. We have a ridiculous array of spambots and vandalbots already attacking Wikipedia and trying to turn it to their use, never mind our work trying to write an encyclopedia. So we have an EQUALLY ridiculous array of antivandalbots to deal with these things as needed. Our immune system is quite frightening to contemplate at times ...