Jdevalk

RE: external links

Hi Joost,

When you run into sketchy looking links, there's several ways you can handle them. First, you can compare them against the criteria for inclusion/exclusion at WP:EL (Wikipedia's external links guidelines). If you're still uncertain, you can mention the link on the article's talk page and wait for other editors to take a look and make an evaluation. Be aware that if an article is being frequented solely by those who have a vested interest in a topic, you may only get one point of view. You can also list the link and the article containing the link on the talk page of WikiProject Spam as many of us do. There you can get opinions on links from those of us who are dedicated to sifting out the spam links from the legit ones. Lastly, you can simply leave a message for one of us directly.

It's not very difficult to get the hang of which types of links are inappropriate. Generally we want links that contain specific information that pertains to the article topic - information that for one reason or another cannot be incorporated into the article. We try to avoid general site links. For example, an article about bubblegum should not try to list all bubblegum manufacturers (unless it is specifically a list article). However if say the original manufacturer of bubblegum has a lengthy and informative history of bubblegum on their site, then that might be an appropriate link. Even then, however, most times this sort of information should be used as a citation rather than a "bare link". A good article requires few or even no bare links, but rather cites its content from reliable sources. I think of bare external links as the top portion of the food pyramid - sometimes they're nice to have, but almost never required. The question I generally ask myself when evaluating links is "does this link add specific information to the article, or is it the beginning of a link directory?"

I hope this long rant is helpful. Let me know if you have any further questions or need any guidance. --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 22:25, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'd be happy to look them over (as time permits, of course). If there's any particular edit you'd like me to look at just leave me another message. --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 22:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Yup those can go (at least the ones in articles - talk pages are less important as they're usually talking about the link there). Good start! --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 23:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

WT:WPSPAM

Joost, I very much appreciate your participation and viewpoints, given your professional background in SEO

SEO is not necessarily a "bad thing" -- I've read some of the books and try to apply many of the techniques to my own company's web site and blog. I'm also fascinated by the cleverness of some of the black hat stuff, although I find it parasitic at best from an ethical viewpoint.

I hope you'll keep chiming in despite being surrounded by so many of us "link-nazis". If you have a reading list that would help us do a better job on spamming, I think some of us would be very interested.

A. B.

Barry Schwartz

Hi Joost,

I've taken a look at the AfD, and it seems that all viewpoints seem to be fairly well covered, and I really don't have anything new to add. It seems to be leaving towards a default-keep anyhow. Cheers --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 06:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Yikes, Joost -- maybe I should ignore your messages on my talk page in the future. (Well, just kidding.)

Anyway, no good deed goes unpunished:

• User talk:A. B.#Opinion on article up for deletion
• User talk:Caydel#Your blog and AfDs

Perhaps this public excoriation is some sort of karma payback for some other editor's kneejerk past deletion of a SEO article.

Anyway, it looks like a sure thing the Schwartz and Cutts articles will stay which is good.

Thanks for your work here. --A. B. ^(talk) 23:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"nofollow" -- Wikipedia finally "gets it"

At Jimbo Wales' directive, all external links within the English language Wikipedia are now coded "nofollow" -- this should help cut spamming once word gets out in the SEO community.

This change was mentioned on the Administrators' noticeboard at the end of the section, "Globalwarming awareness2007/SEO world championship -- expect a spam onslaught."

If you pull up any article's source code, you can see this is now in place.

Thanks for fighting the good fight in pushing for this. I'm glad Wales overruled the very naive, foolish consensus against doing this.

If you can, please put the word out within the SEO world.

I think many white hats will be pleased and hopefully the gray/black hats will move to something else. --A. B. ^(talk) 16:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Citation removal in Ari Shaffir in the name ANTI-SEO?

Can you give me a policy based reason you removed the link to the blog which identified ari shaffir in an IBM commercial? Yeah the blog has spam on it, so what, it was being used to support a claim in the article and without, the claim goes unsupported. Please give me a good Wikipedia policy based reason why this is legit or find another to support that sentence the in the article. Otherwise I'll just revert your edit since it leaves that part of the article unsourced. There wasn't even a discussion on the talk page about it. --Quirex 03:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

You claim the site has been hijacked but in WP:EL it says that content has to have changed. Those are only comments. The actual content, the information which is linked to is intact. Is there some discussion which says that if a link has any comment spam it is actually a hijacked link? --Quirex 03:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Joost,

Thank you for your excellent contributions in wikipedia.org we sure need more people like you. I seen how you are helping A._B. and we really need you to help him dearly. For some reason he just can't grasp the concept of wikipedia.org. This user will not take comments. Nobody can talk to him after he edits. It took more than 1 month for us to get the user to become active. The user page says inactive yet he was making more edits than any single user on wiki. Worst of all this user is very offensive to females. I was reading this users edits including mine and this user assumes everyone on wikipedia.org is male. It makes us females seem very unhappy to think wikipedia.org has something against all females. Is this the case or just this user?

Not me :) would you be so kind as to sign your edits though? :) --Jdevalk 11:32, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

FYI, Joost, if you're really, really bored:

• User talk:24.119.101.26
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#DSB Worldwide spam on Wikipedia: texomaland.com

The male-female thing is a little odd coming from someone that's used Tony.dean as one of his/her accounts. I'm certainly confused (but hopefully he/she is not.) --A. B. ^(talk) 11:00, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

DMOZ and Wikipedia

Talk about oafishness. You left a link to your blog post about DMOZ and Wikipedia almost 3 weeks ago on my talk page and I never got back to you. I was archiving my January talk page comments and noticed I'd done this to you and another editor. I guess I was just spacey; it's not as if I don't get a big message on my screen when I log in and have a new message! In any event, I certainly did not intend to blow you off.

In response, I absolutely agree with you and I am a big proponent of this synergy.

I appreciate the patient coaching you and Cumbrowski have those of us concerned about external links on Wikipedia from the viewpoint of the SEO world.

Here's a good essay someone wrote a while back:

• Wikipedia:Spam Event Horizon

I have observed that the phenomenon it describes it absolutely true; DMOZ is the answer for most of it. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Help needed with SEO article

I've nominated search engine optimization for featured article status. Could you possibly look at the references on the article and then leave your comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Search engine optimization to say whether you think the blogs and forums cited as references qualify as reliable sources. In order to achieve featured article status we need community consensus that the references are reliable. If you have objections, please say so and we will try to make improvements. If you know any other Wikipedians who have expertise in this area, we welcome their comments. Thank you! Jehochman ^☎ / _✔ 17:36, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Article notability notification

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