Manual talk:$wgNoFollowLinks

My 1.7.1-Mediawiki seems to ignore if I set this options to "false" (to be on save side, i set it to false in Defaultsettings.php, too). Any hints? --134.102.71.189 08:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe your file cache is hanging on to the old version for a while? Try clearing whatever caching you have. It worked peachy on my 1.13 installation the first time I set it on my wiki. --Gadlen 21:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't apply to image links?

With the relatively new feature that let you configure a link for a picture, the rel="nofollow" isn't applied to those links. For instance if I write [http://www.sameplesite.com My Link] it will have the nofollow thing but if I use [[File:Some picture.png|link=http://www.sameplesite.com]] it won't. Which leads to potential issue of a comeback of link spammers. Patheticcockroach 15:02, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki Turn off nofollow for one domain?

Is there a way to allow links to non-wiki pages on the wiki's domain to be excluded from the nofollow rule in MW 1.15.1?--Well then 08:50, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, see $wgNoFollowDomainExceptions. iAlex 09:05, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Changing the default

What do you think of the idea of changing the default to false? I am not aware of any strong evidence that setting it to true does much to help fight spam, either on individual wikis or in the wikisphere as a whole. It's been defaulting to true for a long time now, and there is still quite a lot of linkspam in the wikisphere. The best anti-linkspam measures seem to be effective CAPTCHAs (e.g. Asirra) to keep out the spambots, and lots of patrollers to watch for users inappropriately promoting their sites via external links.

Logic would suggest that the nofollow setting probably skews pageranks in ways that adversely affect the usefulness of search results; if there are wikis willing to allow an external link to a given site to remain on those wikis, then that given site should get a pagerank boost. It indicates there is interest in that site; people find it useful for something. Leucosticte (talk) 23:39, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

A bug report was filed to address this request for a change: bugzilla:42594. By my experience I do not think that this will be changed. Cheers --[[kgh]] (talk) 09:54, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Is that because it's considered a bad idea to change that particular variable, or because of a general unwillingness to change default config settings? Leucosticte (talk) 13:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it does not make sense on Wikimedia websites to change this setting considering their size. I am happy that they provide this setting for others, so why not make use of it and change the setting individually? Cheers --[[kgh]] (talk) 16:51, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Whatever the default is set to, the ability to change it on individual wikis remains. This is not a proposal to change it on Wikimedia wikis. Leucosticte (talk) 17:41, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Uselessness of nofollow

Please note that according to a very reliable source, although MediaWiki "Uses OMGLEET rel=nofollow tags with every link so spammers don't get anything out of spamming it", "Spammers are too fucking stupid to realize spamming it doesn't do them any good, so they still do it anyway." Leucosticte (talk) 17:50, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, funny. However, we know for sure that (some) professional spammers know very well and will target wikis without nofollow with additional zealousness. --Nemo 18:15, 12 November 2013 (UTC)