ValueWiki Blog

David Gerard kindly requested ValueWiki be added to the InterWiki map, and MaxSem promptly approved it. ValueWiki is now part of the InterWiki map.

This means at least two things:

Firstly, if there is a giant InterWiki Map Conspiracy, as TechCrunch has alleged, ValueWiki is now a part of it.

Secondly, this sucks a fair amount of steam out of my snark-attack yesterday.

With Apologies to Furries and Doom Fans and Other Wikis

I stepped on a few furry toes yesterday with Time to Abolish or Overhaul the InterWiki Map. While folks seemed to mildly accept the logic of my argument, there was a fair amount of eyeball-rolling over my method of expression. Consensus was there are better ways to make my point than arguing that other wikis are just as irrelevant as ValueWiki! Suffice it to say, Wikifur is a very active and civil community, very little of which seems to have anything to do with having sex or being a Nazi.

That said, I am extremely pleased to see the topical discussion generated. Sadly, nothing drives traffic like controversy. My more civil posts often seem to generate far less interest.

The Logic of the InterWiki Map

Yesterday I noted that the stated purpose of the Interwiki Map was to create a faster link syntax for editors. Based on this assumption, I argued that InterWiki Map inclusion was arbitrary because it seemed to unlikely that any Wikipedians would find it time-saving to type:

“[[CommunityScheme#Link]]”

Rather than:

“[http://community.schemewiki.org/#Link]“.

Zach suggests I take a different approach to understanding the InterWiki Map. He says I should think of the InterWiki Map as a way for the MediaWiki community to agree on trusted sites that can remove the protection of “nofollow”. If Wikia provides the best source of information on Doom II, and the MediaWiki community agrees Doom Wiki is a trusted site, why shouldn’t the community agree to confer PageRank authority?

This is a nuanced issue and I’m still in the process of sorting out where I stand. In all fairness, ValueWiki runs ads and stands to profit from any PageRank the InterWiki Mapping confers.

As I noted yesterday, some InterWiki Map requests are immediately approved, some are rejected, and some languish for months. Perhaps my angsty post yesterday is really a call for a clearer criteria for InterWiki Map inclusion. This would do much to dispell TechCrunch’s insinuations of Wikia nepotism.

Why Google PageRank is Important to Wikipedia

David Gerard has a funny open letter to SEO-spammers and Googlemancers in which he fairly sums up the Wikipedian spirit. Part of my fondness for Wikipedia comes from Wikipedia’s aura of incorruptibility; refusing to run ads or bow to the pressures of SEO. I take David’s point and whole-heartedly agree with the spirit of his argument.

That said, I wouldn’t be a Wikipedian if I didn’t find a way to split hairs over nuance. Google was very important to Wikipedia’s early development, and continues to drive new users to the site. Here’s Jimmy Wales contributing to Wikipedia:What Google Liked back in 2001, and encouraging other users to Be Bold in updating the list. Here’s Jimbo editing the Aria Giovanni Penthouse Pet article in 2001, and writing in the edit comments, “I wonder if Google will like this page…” Getting Slashdotted was a pivotal moment in Wikipedia’s early history; the ensuing traffic is credited with fueling Wikipedia’s momentum. To this day, Wikipedia’s high page rank continues to drive new users and fuel growth and relevancy.

Part of Wikipedia’s stellar PageRank is due to “nofollow.” Picture all of the internet links as a series of tubes. Pouring water into the tubes is a way of visualizing PageRank. Sites with tons of inlinks and no outlinks end up with a lot of water. Sites with PageRank 8 “tubes” flowing into them get a lot more water than sites with PageRank 1 tubes. In fact, it is logarithmicly higher. Granted it’s a clumsy analogy, but I suspect Wikipedia’s internet prominence owes a bit to its “nofollow” policy.

Apologies again to Wikifur. I am very much enjoying the discussion on the Wikipedia List right now. Very interesting to hear all opinions.

The Wikipedia Mailing List is discussing a fascinating point. Why aren’t Wikia links restricted under no-follow?

For that matter, why are all the arbitrarily favored sites on the interwiki map benefitting from Wikipedia’s stellar PageRank?

Nik Cubrilovic covered this conflict-of-interest story for TechCrunch yesterday, spreading the news to 100,000’s of TechCrunch readers. Time to carefully consider this policy.

Who Profits from the InterWiki Map?

A PageRank 8 link from Wikipedia is SEO Gold. Wikipedia is one of the highest PageRank sites on the internet; a direct link can give your site a tremendous boost in search engine rankings. Recognizing the value of these links, MediaWiki software automatically adds “nofollow” to outgoing links in an effort to discourage linkspamming.

Only sites on the InterWiki Map receive PageRank from Wikipedia.

If your Interwiki site is for-profit like Wikia, receiving 100’s of PR8 links from Wikipedia, this translates into thousands of dollars of increased ad revenue, as well as a competitive traffic advantage over every non-interwiki site.

Can Anyone Explain the Logic of the InterWiki Map?

So there are huge monetary and traffic advantages to being included in the InterWiki map. So the map must be a pretty exclusive list, right?

Wrong.

Look at the completely arbitrary hodgepodge of sites allowed on the interwiki map. First of all, there are a large number of for-profit sites commercially benefitting from this PageRank gold; sites like WikiTravel, the Cellphone Wiki, and Comixpedia.

Next we have for-profit sites like Del.icio.us which is not even a wiki! Whatever happened to never commoditizing Wikipedia?

The map is dominated by a dozen Wikia sites, including Wikifur, a site dedicated to people who have sex in animal costumes.

Presumably the sole stated purpose of the InterWiki map is to allow people an easier syntax for linking to useful sites. But who needs a faster way to link to the New Paltz, NY Community Town Wiki? Or a wiki devoted to the middle earth game of Wurm?

Why the InterWiki Map is Arbitrary and Unfair

Case in point.

ValueWiki, a site covering 65,000 publicly traded stocks, funds, and securities, was rejected from inclusion in the InterWiki map. The request was simply deleted without any explanation.

Yet it seems clear that potentially thousands of Wikipedia pages could relevantly interlink with thousands of ValueWiki pages. ValueWiki contains many articles on publicly traded companies that simply don’t exist on Wikipedia.

But presumably, it is more important to include the for-profit Doom Wiki on the InterWiki Map, for all the Wikipedians who need to quickly link to a wiki about a PC game from 1993.

To give a sense of the power Wikipedia’s PageRank 8 confers on ad sites like Doom Wiki, consider that of ValueWiki’s 23,801 inlinks, the highest PageRank inlink is a 6. This is how rare a PR 8 site is.

Add NoFollow to the InterWiki Map, or Delete the InterWiki Map Altogether

This list is arbitrary favoritism. It commoditizes Wikipedia, and provides an unfair competitive advantage to a number of for-profit sites. It is also deeply unclear the InterWiki map saves anyone much time when writing links. I can understand shortcuts for Wikipedia’s sister projects, but I find it hard to believe many Wikipedian Canyon-enthusiasts have memorized the syntax for linking to CanyonWiki.

The Map provides no explanation or criteria for why ValueWiki is excluded from the list. But more importantly, it provides no explanation for why dozens of arbitrary sites are included in the list. I refuse to believe that Nazis who have sex in animal costumes are more relevant than ValueWiki.

ReadWriteWeb, one of the internet’s most widely-read blogs, published an interesting progress report on Citizendium today. This was quickly followed by a lengthy list of corrections from Larry Sanger.

Highlights

ReadWriteWeb author Josh Catone compares Citizendium’s progress to Wikipedia’s early progress, much to Wikipedia’s favor. Although he does pay much deference to the fact that Citizendium has only been publicly viewable for one month.

Article Comparison

Catone compares Citizendium’s 13 approved articles to their counterparts on Wikipedia, stating that the Citizendium articles are “generally more fleshed out than their Wikipedia counterparts, but not necessarily more accurate.” He further notes that “…in at least one case, I actually preferred the Wikipedia entry.”

For the article on dogs, Wikipedia’s entry begins, “The dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is a domestic subspecies of the wolf, a mammal of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term encompasses both feral and pet variants. It is also sometimes used to describe wild canids of other subspecies or species.” The Citizendium entry, meanwhile, starts off, “Domesticated from selected wolves thousands of years ago, the dog is often called ‘man’s best friend’. Throughout the world today, dogs are found associated with humans, although certainly not always as a part of the household!”

Though it’s easy to cherry pick examples of poor writing on any wiki, Citizendium is highly protected and vandal-free. So it is extremely interesting and relevant to the Citizendium experiment, to compare the quality of Citizendium articles with Wikipedia.

General Article Comparison

To this effect, Catone goes on to write that:

The ‘CZ Live’ articles are mostly woefully inadequate. Wikipedia trumps them in almost every case, so comparing them isn’t really worthwhile. For amusement’s sake, though, compare Citizendium’s article on itself to the Wikipedia entry on the site.

I know first hand how difficult it is to gain momentum on a new wiki. And it is daunting to be compared to a juggernaut like Wikipedia. However, given Sanger’s repeated and aggressive attacks on Wikipedia, he is inviting this sort of open comparison.