Thursday, January 25, 2007

Wikipedia: nofollow and noMSedit

Some new news from the world of Wikipedia:
  • Minor: All external links from Wikipedia are now using the NOFOLLOW attribute. This attribute tells web crawlers like Google that the link has not been vetted, so it will not be used in their algorithms to artificially bolster the ranking of some pages. Wikipedia’s action will seriously reduce the amount of link spam that currently plagues many entries.

  • Major: Microsoft has attempted to hire Rick Jelliffe, chief technology officer of XML tools company Topologi Pty. Ltd., to “correct” Wikipedia entries on ODF (OpenDocument format) and OOXML (Microsoft Office Open XML). You can see Rick's original post about the offer here. Apparently Wikipedia is keeping Microsoft employees from making the edits themselves, so Microsoft thought a third party could update the entries that apparently shed a negative light on Microsoft’s format. This astroturfing blunder has created quite a few waves.
Posted by Frank McCown at 1/25/2007 11:45:00 AM
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous1/26/2007 2:34 PM

    I can see where Microsoft is coming from and I think that they handled it well. They could have done as one blogger mentioned and discreetly hired someone who loves Microsoft to edit the entries.

    The problem lies in that, even though it is obvious that Jelliffe is a neutral party and was going to be hired to fix mistakes (not spread M$ love), where should we draw the line?

    Who is going to decide whether the person hired to fix "mistakes" is really neutral or not?

    I think the best situation would have been one where Wikipedia listened to Microsoft's complaints about the entries and acted on them. Maybe Wikipedia could have hired someone like Jelliffe.

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  2. Frank McCown1/26/2007 2:56 PM

    It’s a tough call either way. In hindsight, what MS should have done was write a white paper about their format and tried to change public opinion that way. Instead they decided to go the easier route (but as your point out, not the easiest route), and my guess is that most companies would probably have done (and are doing) the same thing.

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