28 Jan 2007
Does Wikipedia deserve a “payback”?
Manoel Netto, from Tecnocracia blog, wrote an interesting article and a related WordPress plugin aiming to give Wikipedia a “payback” due to the fact that all of its external links now have a rel=”nofollow” attribute automatically.
Te rel=nofollow thing was created in 2005, I think, in order to fight comment spam. If a link has the nofollow attribute, then the search engine crawlers know that you, the site author, does not endorse that external link, what implies the spam sites will not benefit from the PageRank or “good neighborhood” viewpoint.
Personally, I think small weblogs should not use rel=nofollow in comments or any other hyperlink (and that’s why I will never install Netto’s plugin in my WordPresses), for two reasons.
- Everybody should take care of blog comments; if someone make a comment on a blog of mine, I will be charged for what someone else said, because I am the one who is responsible for that site. So, if a spammer makes a comment just to gain a hyperlink, I, as the moderator, will recognize it, and will not publish anything.
- There are several engines for automatic spam detection and deletion. There is no need to fear comment moderation if you use something like Akismet.
If I never told you before, none of my blogs has the rel=nofollow attribute in comments.
However, talking about Wikipedia is not the same as talking about a blog. Wikipedia is enormous, there are thousend of people creating and modifying content every second, and it is impossible to moderate everything is published. It is not necessary to be a genius to find out that spammers will abuse the open nature of Wikipedia.
Having this said, I tell you that I support Wikipedia’s decision. Because if your link legitimacy is not questionable, every single reader from Wikipedia will give you a click. If some of them happen to have a blog, for instance, if they like your content you’ll be linked, what fully compensates the “lack” of Wikipedia.
If you don’t believe me that spammers love to abuse of Wikipedia, take a look at this article: http://www.bluehatseo.com/how-to-get-a-link-in-wikipedia-my-post-on-syndk8net/.
I’m sorry there is not a hyperlink, but I really prefer you cut and paste the above address. I don’t want Google to think that I endorse any black hat blog.
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