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Why Wikipedia is bad for the Web

Last updated on Aug. 11, 2008

4 Comments

Wikipedia bad for the Web? No, I'm not kidding.

Now don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is easily the best research tool I've ever used. I'm constantly amazed at the things I can find on there.

So what's the problem? Well, it's how the rest of the Web works...

Most search engines give websites rankings (PageRank) based on the amount of incoming links they have.

For example, if 50 sites link to my article about backpacking up a mountain, and 5 sites link to a similar article on John Doe's site, more than likely I'll end up closer to the top of the search engine results when a user types in, 'backpacking up a mountain'.

Search engines count a link to my site (incoming link) as a vote of confidence. The best sites have the most high quality incoming links.

This system has its flaws, but the major search engines do a pretty good job of working around them.

The problem comes in with nofollow. Nofollow is an attribute you can add to make search engines virtually ignore incoming links.

There are countless instances on the Web where this is a very good thing.

On places like forums and comment areas you want to give your readers a place to sound off without moderating their content, and nofollow helps ensure you won't take a hit in your search engine rank if your readers link to stuff they shouldn't.

So what's the problem? Well, virtually every link to another site on Wikipedia has the nofollow attribute. You can think of it something like a blackhole. Links go in, but they don't come out.

Why is this a problem? Lets say you write a new article about backpacking up a mountain and you want to direct traffic to it.

Now if most sites are already pointing to Wikipedia you're going to have a heck of a time beating it out on the search engine results page.

And if you want Wikipedia to link back to your newer, better content — good luck. More than likely they'll look at your attempt as spam and remove any mention of your site from the entry you edit.

And thus begins a vicious cycle. Wikipedia guards against links to other sites. You can link in, but only a few get linked out to, and those links have nofollow attributes on them making them count for almost nothing.

Who gets screwed? The person putting in all of the hard work to write compelling content.

Because of how Wikipedia runs their operation, it's a very one-sided affair. They can take and re-write your content and reap the benefits of traffic and readership — and you get nothing.

Now you might be thinking that since Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, I'm being too harsh on them. But the Wikimedia Foundation, the owners of Wikipedia, have a 5.9 million budget for 2008/2009. So they're obviously not scraping by.

How could Wikipedia fix this? Setting up their reference links without the nofollow attribute would be huge. Wikipedia would cease to be a blackhole and be a more productive part of the Web. They'd be playing under the same rules as most other websites.

How can you fix this? Simple, by not linking to Wikipedia. Even though it's a great resource, with the way they conduct their business, do you feel it's fair to other websites? Would you want people to take work you've done and offer you little to nothing in return for it?

This is what Wikipedia does to other websites.

This is a system fully under their control, but it's up to us to make them realize there's a problem.

You can write to Wikipedia at info@wikimedia.org and tell them to stop their nofollow practice.

Jon Berlinghoff is the EventHubs.com webmaster and can be reached at jberlinghoff@eventhubs.com.