Wikipedia unethical conflict of interest
TechCrunch has an interesting story here:
There was a lot of controversy recently when Wikipedia announced that all outbound links from the online encyclopedia would include the nofollow tag. The nofollow tag on a link is said to prevent link spamming since some search engines (Google among them) do not count links containing the tag towards any weighing of the destination page. What this means is that a link from Wikipedia will no longer boost the position of a page in search results, the intention being that this will deter spammers from sneaking links onto Wikipedia.
Now, this is a good thing in theory. An approach where no one would be able to benefit from link spamming Wikipedia in and of itself–if applied evenly and uniformly–is at least fair then. “You all abused it, so now nobody can.” There is one major, fecal smelling conflict of interest, here, however, and TechCrunch summarizes it perfectly:
In Febuary of 2005 the Wikipedia community voted in favor (by a vote of 61% to 39%) of removing the nofollow tags, but this outcome was overruled by Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, earlier this year. It seems that while the nofollow tag is added to the standard outbound links, it isn’t applied to inter-wiki links, including links to Wikia, Wikipedia’s for-profit spin off. For example, on the Wikipedia page for Wikia there are a number of links to Wikia pages which do not contain the nofollow tag.
In other words: Wikia, the for-profit privately owned spin-off of Wikipedia (legally, they are completely seperate, unrelated entities) is due to Jimmy Wale’s personal decision on Wikipedia turning a profit on the “Google juice” that Wikia is getting from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is non-profit. Jimmy Wales does not own Wikipedia. Wikia is for-profit, and privately held by Wales and others. See the conflict of interest and ethical failure by Wales here? It may not be the hugest of conflict of interests, but it it is frightening for the already shaky merit of Wikipedia as an “unbiased” source of information. Why? Wikia.com is one of the financial contributors to the Wikimedia Foundation. Other corporations, which have also contributed, are on the Interwiki map which decides who gets excluded from the no-follow restrictions.
Wikipedia has enormous weight and power with nearly all search engines. Any website heavily linked outbound from Wikipedia will certainly benefit tremendously for search engine optimization and potentially fiscally from not being covered by the no-follow restriction.
