WebProNews

It’s odd, really - if Wikipedia were a person or animal, we’d be hard-pressed to actually like it, given how untrustworthy it can be.  But we do like it, and the site’s popularity gives some people all the more reason to toy with it.

Whether you’re looking up simple search terms like “dog” and “tree,” or a more complicated query like “computational fluid dynamics,” Wikipedia often shows up in Google’s top five results.  This is extremely impressive.  But as Rand Fishkin asks, “Why Edit Wikipedia Pages if There’s No Link Juice?”

Fishkin goes on to list seven answers to that rhetorical question.  Depending on one’s point of view, the reasons may be clever - “reputation management” - or somewhat cruel - “to spite.”  They’re all realistic, though, and are somewhat hard for Wikipedia’s administrators to guard against.

Wikipedia may be moving past the point where sensitive souls have to worry about encountering random rude words.  Yet more subtle “Wiki-hacks” (to use Fishkin’s term) may be even more disruptive, since few people will notice and correct them.

Personally, I plan to visit and link to Wikipedia just as much as ever.  It’s really very strange, though, how the site gets away with such things.