Last modified: 2014-09-24 00:49:39 UTC
It is a fact that search engines perform badly with wiki images, as they don't index pages on image: namespace, assuming it will be an image and not a html description. See Commons search engine ranking thread on commons-l (http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/1289) for more info. The engines approach is not bad per se (what do you think when you see a .jpg ended url?) but we're not giving a different information. Thus we should tag the links in images with the type attribute indicationg the mime of linked document, as it is done with <style> and <script> (yes, type is a valid attribute of <a>) http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.commons/1323
Created attachment 3334 [details] Give MIME on image links + Switch to disable image linking Additionaly, this patch also provides a $wgLinkToImagePages setting to disable links on images: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki/18381
Bug 4421 would also solve this (and probably more reliably, since it seems not improbable that search engines won't bother with the type attribute).
(Note that at least Google has already fixed this particular problem and indexes our image pages just fine.) Using the type field as an extra hint _does_ give me the warm fuzzies, though I'm not sure it would actually get used by anything. I'm also undecided on the option to remove the image links. Certainly it's something that sometimes gets requested, but as a global I'm not so sure it's great. Any thoughts?
(In reply to comment #3) > I'm also undecided on the option to remove the image links. Certainly it's > something that sometimes gets requested, but as a global I'm not so sure it's > great. Any thoughts? Oooh, evil thoughts abound. I don't like the idea of having it in core, but I do like the idea of expanding the idea a bit further so extensions can take advantage. A link is to a namespace, regardless of the nature of the link. The parser ought to "ask" the namespace in question how to render a link to itself - an image link would go to some sort of ImageLinker, a normal namespace link, or a link where there's no custom handler defined would exist as it does now. This would move us nicely along the path of potentially introducing an extension which could allow for multiple namespaces that behave like tags (I won't call them "categories"), rather than just the one.
Comment on attachment 3334 [details] Give MIME on image links + Switch to disable image linking Marking patch obsolete since it doesn't apply cleanly to trunk, per automated testing: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2011-November/056340.html
Sorry, Platonides. In the wait trunk changed such that your patch doesn't apply. Any interest in revising?
I don't think I'll revisit it in the near future. If anyone wishes to work on it, can do so.
Given that google likes our images now, and that in all probability, nobody looks at a type attribute on an <a>, should this be wontfixed?
