WebProNews

Someone at Wired had the ringer off on their clue phone

Ross Mayfield took umbrage to Barry Schwartz creating a page on Wired's How To Wiki and pointing the page to Search Engine Land.

Shooting the messenger is a favorite pasttime for people who don't really understand the impact of their actions. Mayfield proved pretty quick on the draw today after Schwartz demonstrated something that Wired should have thought of in the first place.

Schwartz said on Search Engine Land he created a page on the Wired How To Wiki to show how easily one could get link love from Wired:

(1) Register at How To Wired
(2) Add a new page or edit an old page on the site (don't be too evil)
(3) Then add your link to that page

His sample page, a proof of concept, linked externally. Schwartz noted the links appeared to pass weight, an unusual occurrence and one that would draw plenty of grifters seeking the same link benefit. Where was the nofollow Schwartz expected to find?

Mayfield seemed to recognize this as well. Schwartz's original page soon received an edit, replacing the content with this message: deleting this page, 'its spam

on the comment about nofollow -- nofollow works for blogs, but not for wikis where everyone is an editor

Obviously, Mayfield missed the whole Wikipedia and nofollow discussion from earlier in 2007. Wikipedia slaps nofollow on outbound links to foil the kind of mischief Schwartz demonstrated.

Calling the Search Engine Land entry spam soon drew a response from Sullivan, rebuking Mayfield for his spam comment:

Now we come to find that you’ve killed the test page and called it spam. It wasn’t, and it’s somewhat insulting that you’ve called it that rather that understanding it was a test of how your system works. That’s a much different thing from the real spam that clearly happens in your wiki and which, because you fail to use nofollow, was already a magnet for abuse.

Mayfield has since taken down his spam comment, and the test page now contains a link to Sullivan's response, hosted on the How To Wiki.