Wikipedia nofollows is best thing since sliced bread
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I don’t really think I get why SEOs think they have a God-given right to get a non-nofollowed link from the Wikipedia. Wikipedia hurts poor, innocent businesses if they don’t allow the links. I know links are the lifeblood of SEO. Links are an SEO’s crack.
I checked, and we don’t even have a Constitutional ammendment that guarantees the SEO right to a link from Wikipedia.
Actually, I think I have a clue. It’s not very complicated. SEOs think that Wikipedia is great because of how many people have linked to Wikipedia. Everyone else thinks Wikipedia is great because of its content.
It’s the old Links vs. Content debate.
The problem there is that the links are not vetted through an editorial process. The whole point of nofollow is exactly this. Google states it quite clearly, use nofollow “anywhere that users can add links by themselves.” (*)
Now, let’s see. Can users add links by themselves at Wikipedia? Oh, my gosh, yes they can!
“But if an editor/volunteer ads a legitimate external source, it should pass on the PR value.” (*) Should it? Well, only if you turn the reason nofollow came into being on its head. That’s the exact opposite of what nofollow is meant.
Could there be a process where certain links are vetted, and thus have the nofollow removed? Sure there could. But, then that wouldn’t be any link randomly added by whomever, whenever, and however they wanted. Wikipedia would need to make a strong process to ensure the quality, and evenhandedness of that, because SEOs would surely give it a prompt ass-humping if it wasn’t.
But, the larger question is should Wikipedia even be in the business of deciding which links are to pass editorial review? I don’t see how that would enhance the Wikipedia. The links already appear for users, and to me that’s good enough for their purposes. Why, exactly, should the Wikipedia be in the business of helping random websites improve their search engine rankings?
In the end, this controversy just serves to give us people interested in these esoteric things something to blog about.
Peter Davis is a web developer, investor, author, entrepreneur, and most importantly a father. 
It is a 2 way street, after all the Wikipedia article might be defaced with porn spam or malware links.
Seriously, my main bone of contention is the ethical – Wikipedia contains no original research and thus should be obliged to link through with a followable link to source documents, otherwise it messes up search algorithms that rely on followable links to avoid a “chicken and the egg” scenario with duplicate content.
The SEO content that was pointed to was a very poor example to use for taking the action. If anyone from Wikipedia read the rules for the competition, they would clearly have seen that the rules forbid any naughty behaviour.
I thought I’d come here and annoy you.
Andy Beard, you make some good points. With the porn and defacing, I’ve noticed those get cleaned up much more efficiently than does the link spam. And, I think what you’re getting at is that Wikipedia shows up in the search above better resources, but I think that’s a Google problem not a Wikipedia problem.
And, Andy Beal, you’re welcoem to annoy me here whenever you’d like. I can take as well as give.