I just noticed this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...DEX&redirect=no

I stopped counting at 17,000+ NOINDEXed pages here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...9859&limit=1000

Does this do the same thing as "noindex" in robots.txt?

I believe so by invoking ___NOINDEX___ on whatever mediawiki page it's included on.

This is huge!

Indeed, it seems the use of the magic word __NOINDEX__ will put the meta tag <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" /> in the page header. Finally they did something right!

It looks like this was added to the documentation on August 3rd - they should tell us these things earlier, shouldn't they? I mean, I'm not going to take credit for the idea myself, but I think I posted this suggestion almost two years ago.

I'd say the developers deserve a nice round of applause. Also, should I send someone a chocolate cake or something? Or would they just assume there was a bomb inside, if the card said "Thanks from The Wikipedia Review"?

It apparently existed earlier than that. Krimpet put thousands of pages on NOINDEX with these beautiful edits, July 30. Code apparently written July 23 by User:Simetrical.

Upcoming: it will be possible to prevent users from manually stripping NOINDEX in certain namespaces...if Wikipedia someday chooses to noindex namespaces. Devs are always way ahead of the project.

This type of change has been proposed a number of times, and in fact was implemented several months ago (fairly quietly, or at least I managed to miss it) for certain pages such as the RfA and RfAr archives. The change makes it possible to expand this to a greater number of pages on, as I understand it, either a per-namespace or per-page basis.

The programming referenced above was prompted by a thread on the WikiEn-l mailing list. Wikipedia Review is one, but by no means the only one, of the places this change has been discussed for awhile; there also have apparently been threads on Bugzilla (the Wikipedia sub-site for proposing improvements in the software) ongoing for some time. I am sure that precisely which pages or namespaces should be noindexed will continue to be discussed.

Would it be possible to develop a "bot" that would place this transclusion into every article that contain birth data without death data and contained any cite needed, NPOV, BLP warnings or recent event tags?

Easily. Getting people to not go for your neck if you run it is another matter.

What a bunch of morons.

Wikipedia has just created yet another way to hide the evidence of its ongoing abuses — and you're all applauding like a bunch of Wiki-Peanut-Gallery Inmates.

Hoo-Hah …

Jon

Many have taken the stance that difficult to search defamation is desirable. It is the "please whisper when you call my wife a whore" approach. I actually think it has some merit.

One person on WikiEn-l predicted exactly this reaction.... As we've discussed before, no group of people are unanimous on any issue. I still think this is very much a net positive -- and I think that Wikipedia's critics will agree with me. Searches can still be run within Wikipedia itself.


Not everything that should be hidden from search is "defamation," or potential defamation. Some is quite accurate information, or at least information within the realm of reasonable opinion, but is nonetheless of such fleeting importance or is of internal Wikipedia relevance only, such that it should not become high-ranking search results.

Ideally the Wikipedia search engine would be better than it currently is (which isn't hard; anything would be better than its current capabilities).

edit; typo

I take the following stance:

If X says that Y is Z, and Y is not Z, then X brings discredit on X.

The fact that X can distribute the statement that Y is Z by way of a whispering campaign that makes the source of the statement damn near impossible to trace back to X — well, I hardly call that an improvement of the situation.

Jon

Please agree or disagree with the following statement: "It is reasonable to believe that (1) Jon Awbry has used sockpuppets in violation of Wikipedia policy, but (2) this is not the first fact that someone searching for information about Jon Awbry should find when running a search on him."

μ

Jon

If you only can mew at my question, Zen I think we have nothing left to talk about.

I think Jon, in his own inimitable way, was pointing out you spelt his name wrong, because the μ , when you click it, leads to a search (on the wrong spelling of the name) which, amusingly, suggests the right spelling. I could be wrong, decoding Jon is not something that I do very easily.

Now see what you can learn from a simple click of fate?

Yes, that was indeed ½ of it — the other ½ being that μ is the only logical response to someone who is talking complete and utter nonsense, as NYB is doing when he invokes such conceits as "In Violation Of Wikipedia Policy" (IVOWP).

Try to imagine NYB explaining what he imagines that to mean to a Judge. It cracks me up just trying to picture it —

"Sure, I wacked 'im, Judge — he was In Violation Of Mafia Policy …"

Jon

Jon, imagine that you're an average person who might care about the google results for your name due to future employment, or whatever. Which would you rather have:

• Wikipedia's derogatory remarks removed from google.
• Marginally better ability to find Wikipedia's imagined grievances against you (the main one being that derogatory remarks are searchable though google).

Imagining myself in that situation, there's no way I could sanely prefer the latter. I doubt many people would. Yeah, searching for how Wikipedia "wronged" you is neat and all, but I would prefer something to actually dampen the blow.

Based on your comments, you seem to actually like the fame from your Wikipedia exploits. It's much better for the project that we discourage people like you by noindexing. On Wikipedia you cannot write an autobiography, nor can you get your name into Google by prolifically pissing off the admins. That protects users against vindictive admins, and protects the project from people who like to see their own name. That's how it should be, anyhow.

Putting NOINDEX on every single solitary "behavior" or "Dispute resolution" related page at a dead minimum would be huge in discouraging a good number of vandals and lunatics in general. Having no lasting footprint isn't appealing for many people, if they're in it for e-points, and for the other people who just want to get out from under their experiences in Wikipedia, it would make it so that unless someone deliberately searched WP *and* knew where to look, they'd be off the public record.

Of course, some vindictive people HAVE argued that leaving public shamings up is acceptable. Tsk.

As a student of systems design, I view Wikipedia as just another engineered artifact, ostensibly built to serve an array of ostensible objectives and subject to evaluation on that basis.

Systems come into being and systems pass away.

You may think that Wikipedia is something special in the way it mixes up social and technical devices, but when you look closely at the kinds of systems that human beings have been wrapping around themselves for many millennia you will realize that it's not really all that unique. No one here will have any qualms about criticizing Microsoft Windowsâ„¢ in the performance of its ostensible functions, and Wikipedia is not a bit different in that regard.

The very idea that anyone should fear for their livelihood on the basis of what issues from Wikipedia horrifies me. I do not think that we should simply accept that condition as a premiss or fait accompli and then try to retrofit a motley of patches on top of it. Like some systems we know.

Jon

OK, leaving policy out of this

Agree or disagree with this statement: You (Jon Awbrey) have used multiple nicknames in attempts to bypass attempts to prevent you from editing a website, and the edits you have made in doing so have generally been non-constructive (removing content from pages, etc).

You can argue about "in violation of wikipedia policy" all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that what you've done since any initial injustice is the sort of thing that would get you banned from editing and/or posting to most websites.

How about this simple question:

What do you want from us? What, short of unbanning you (being banned, by itself, cannot be called an injustice, since posting to and/or editing a website is not a right), would you have us do to redress your grievance?

Your edits since the ban haven't even been (as far as I know) constructive, so you don't even have the grounds Brandt has for objecting to the idea of being banned. There's no discernable benefit to anyone from allowing you to edit.

I'm becoming convinced that you're just trying to make trouble rather than to genuinely seek any remedy for any injustice that might have been done to you.

Personally, I don't see how commending the implementation and use of a feature to hide individual WP pages from search engines implies that anyone is "accepting that condition" - for one thing, you have to give new ideas a chance to work merely in order to give credence to the idea that you're trying to come up with ideas that work in the first place. Something like this could eventually lead to an opt-out policy, at which point WP will finally have grown up.

Besides, you have to be somewhat realistic - it would be super-great if Wikipedia would just disappear, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon, no matter what we say about it. This particular means of mitigating the damage it does in the short term might make it harder to find and point out where the abuses are occurring, and who's perpetrating them, but then again it might not. And in the meantime, the negative effects are lessened, and the stakes are lowered.

Remember, if it's known that a Wikipedia page can be "de-Google-juiced" by any editor with a conscience who happens by, people whose primary intent is to use WP as a revenge platform (sorry, but it's still my favorite phrase) might be inclined to go elsewhere, and "elsewhere" might even be a place where they either won't be taken as seriously, or where they'll be more accountable for their actions.

I just did a blog post on this subject, by the way, which does include one or two possible negative ramifications - though I think they're outweighed by the positive ones, in a big way. (Note that in the photo, Mr. Awbrey is in the fifth row, second from left.)

For the time being — until the history-rewriters, er, history-non-indexers have their way — there remains enough of an audit trail that anyone who really wants to know the sequence of events can still do so.

For my part, I find it pretty much useless to converse with people who prefer their convenient fantasies to the truth.

Your line, Jack …

Jon

Well then, let's try to look at this in practical terms. Basically there are two things you have to do to defame someone or something on Wikipedia - you have to insert the defamation, and you have to maintain the defamation. Simply inserting the defamation is easy, always has been, probably always will be, even with edit-approval/flagged revisions in place.

So the issue is can the defamation be maintained? And for the purposes of this thread, we have to ask if telling search-engine crawlers to ignore any given page will help people in maintaining defamation or hinder them.

To be honest, I'm not sure if Jon here is saying is that the __NOINDEX__ magic word will help people maintain defamatory content, presumably by making it less noticeable to the people being defamed, or that it brings up another issue altogether, in so far as it might make it easier for serial defamers (or "POV-pushers" if you prefer) to operate under the radar.

Again, I think this is just a matter of giving the WP'ers some time to sink or swim based on their own predilections. If they really are as mean-spirited and rotten as some of us say they are, they'll find ways to abuse this feature the same way they abuse so many others. In any event, in a few months we can (hopefully, still) search the database for uses and misuses of __NOINDEX__ to see how it's really being used in practice. If it's obviously making things worse - and I seriously doubt that it will - they can always get rid of it. But if anything, my main fear is that it's going to be difficult to prove that this feature will make things better - how do you measure something like that? A reduced number of OTRS tickets? Higher rates of editor retention? More new articles? Fewer new articles?

Rather hard to say, but I guess that's why we're here, actually!

Leading, argumentative and assumes facts not in evidence.

Yes, that's why some of them keep making edits and do that repetitive vandal-revert stuff. It's the dramariffic rush you get from catching and banning those who are excommunicated and who shall burn forever in Hell.

You take that away, and many people will no longer find editing on WP fun.

But fair questions.

"What does Jon Awbrey WANT? (preferably in plain basic ASCII formatted english that a grade-schooler can understand without having to do ten hits of quality acid)"



To paraphrase the old band N.W.A.: "fuck tha RC police".

If people are only doing sites like WP, WR, or whatever else for the mental equivalent of an Internet orgasmic rush of power, they need to

1. Turn off the computer;
2. Go have normal human interaction;
3. Fix their own broken, hollow lives that made them seek out a career of having a firm e-peen.

Can we expand that into a blog post?!! (I'm serious!)

I suspect that Jon. like myself, is not interested in improving Wikipedia. We don't seek "justice." We simply want to be free to discuss and analyze Wikipedia free from it's own culture, values and terms. Telling us what kind of language to use is not likely to get you very far.

No, and use any kind of invective that is desired--I don't care about that. My point when I harp on Jon for his use of irrelevant, distracting, and childlike graphical typesetting toys is that it distracts from whatever he thought he was saying, and makes an otherwise very intellegient man come off as a fruitcake that can only post whatever random µ¶æëكٻאּ☺♫ ﻉ╬ he happens to find in his Windows character map.



Someone else can if they want to. My basic point is the same that I gave to one of my gaming buddies, when he was complaining one day about the lack of any special ladies in his life. This is a whip smart, funny guy, with a tremendous sense of humor, decency, and practically overflowing with drive. To compare him to a fictional character to give an idea of what he looks and sounds like: Rick O'Donnel from The Mummy. 6'2", huge guy, blonde hair, muscles, money. But he spends 1-2 hours per day before work gaming, goes to the gym 1-2 hours after work (sometimes an hour at lunch) and then comes home to play till bed.

"Why can't I ever meet a nice girl around here?"

"Because you're @&*@#%$&# raiding a dragon with me in WARCRAFT."

"How'd you meet your wife?"

"Dude, I used to go out bar crawling ALL THE TIME. You wanna meet life or a girl, you go out and do it. It sure ain't gonna happen in Azeroth (or Wikipedia, or INSERT $ONLINECRAP)".

My understanding is that Jon has a very nice wife. He is not asking you for anything. He does complain about others being thick sometimes, myself included. Judging from the transitional greetings and partings in his posts (the easiest parts to understand) he is not wanting for healthy human interaction.

You're responding to two different posts. My grumbling about Jon was the heavy-handed use of nonsense typeface scratching rather than clear thought. The fact that some people conflate e-life with real life to their detriment and social failings wasn't directed at Jon and was/is a separate conversation. I know Jon has a normal home, family and social life.

So how do I, as an editor with a conscience, "de-Google-juice" things here? As we all know, WR can be just as much of a revenge platform as WP.

That's odd. I own and operate a topical- and directory-based wiki, and of our over 500 registered contributors thus far, Jon Awbrey is one of our most prolific, most welcome editors. His pages snare about 5% to 10% of all of our site's inbound traffic. In fact, Jon won a content/style contest in 2007, taking home a $200 prize check from the management. How is it that Awbrey is so able to succeed in the wiki environment I have established, if he is so disposed to the "sort of thing" that would get him banned from most websites?

Greg

And if he decided that you had offended him so he would keep coming back to your site and keep blanking the GFDL content he had submitted and others had built on and collaborated to expand, what do you suppose you would do?

Speaking of most websites, it's rather like what got Poetlister desysopped here.

(I'm not familiar with most of his work, so I'm only commenting on the "writers strike" "blank-in campaign")

He doesn't play well with udders?

Is this a trickle question?

In spite of the inherent fascination of seeing my name more or less correctly spelled several times in a row, this thread appears to have gone totally tsas;dr at some point shortly after I left for dinner — but Mr. MR's crypto-logical remarks naturally caught my attention, and I have at long last with some earnest sweat of my brow finally decoded them, to wit, or not, by means of this clue:

COW = Controllers Of Wikipedia

To Have And Have Not …

Jon

My reaction would be to pick up the phone, call Jon Awbrey, and discuss with him what it was that I might have done in the management of my site that would cause him such distress as to want to blank content that he had submitted and (rather doubtful on this part) others had built on.

Why is it, Random832, that this simple reaction was not pursued by anyone at the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its administrative agents, when Jon blanked GFDL content on their site?

Why did it take shame and public disgrace to finally motivate Jimmy Wales to restore blanked content about [[Arch Coal]] that Guy Chapman had plagiarized, erased, and taken credit for personally?

You're asking very simple questions, with very easy and ethical answers. Why are you having such a tough time delivering sound answers to my questions?

Query: would Brandt have accepted NOINDEX on PIR and all of it's redirects?

Would Don Murphy now accept NOINDEX? Would the inclusionists accept it?

HUH?
I'm still alive you know.

Who let Brad back anyway?

He sneaked in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon.

There isn't the slightest resemblance.

Great! I was hoping you'd show up. haven't seen you around in a while.

So: would you like to have you Wikipedia "biography" kept off of Google or what?

For Jimbo's Sakes, don't let ignorance of the facts or history stop you from blathering on about it. That is after all the very essence of the Wikipediot Way.

Jon

In the NOINDEX template something that anyone can stick on any Wikipedia page?

Does the NOINDEX template itself force the "noindex" meta for that page in the headers, or is it merely advisory that one should be there, or that one is there already?

If the NOINDEX template forces the header, what happens if there is an edit war over a NOINDEX template on a mainspace article? Is it the same as any other edit war (i.e., the cabal wins)?

Why don't all the mainspace Talk pages have a NOINDEX template? Is everyone aware that for at least a year, Google has refused to index mainspace Talk pages, even though there is no prohibition on this from Wikipedia? Yahoo does index them, and so does Live.com. All three engines index the user pages and the user_talk pages.

Is there any discussion on forcing NOINDEX for all mainspace Talk pages? I doubt it. Apparently Google has better judgement on this issue than the Wikipedia cabal itself.

So far, the NOINDEX thing at Wikipedia appears to be a measure to protect the Wikipedia cabal and its hordes of promiscuous editors, more than a measure to protect the reputations of article subjects, or improve the presentation of this so-called "encyclopedia" to the public.

__NOINDEX__ adds noindex to the meta headers for search engines. {{NOINDEX}} is just for tracking where it is used.

No, you probably could not get away with adding __NOINDEX__ to a mainspace article. Regardless of who wanted to, unless they have the magic power of OFFICE.

Well, Duh … at least somebuddy gets it …

Jon

To an article, no, but I bet you'd have less trouble adding it to a redirect, particularly where the subject of the redirect was decided to be non-notable at AFD.

Probably. Doubly so since few people watchlist redirects.