Michael, I did own up -- it was a stupid article to write, because it cause a lot of people to hit the Wired wiki and create crappy pages -- and I apologize for that.

No, we seriously did not mean for people to create pages to get free links. Believe it or not, as suits your purposes. I think people commented nearly immediately that because of our article, Wired would quickly work to either use nofollow or monitor submissions, making the "free" links useless.

I was actually surprised -- and then felt bad -- when later in the day that I could see people were slamming the site. Surprised, because c'mon, who didn't realize the pages weren't going last long. Bad, because I caused hassle to a site that didn't need it nor deserved it.

There really was no intention to say hey folks, here's a place to get a bunch of free links. We don't tend to write articles like that, as you should well know. So a new shift for us, or more in keeping with our usual writing about general issues. I'd hope you'd give us the benefit of the doubt. But there's no hesitation on my part in saying we shouldn't have done the article period, and I apologize for that.

Michael, I'm not covering for Barry. I'm his editor; responsibilities for stories fall to me. In particular on this one, he came across this page and wondered if we should write something, looking to me for approval and guidance. I gave it. So if you have a beef with the story, that beef resides with me -- not Barry.

Now the difference between Debra's article on how to build links and the one on getting a "free" link from Wired. Exactly -- Debra was giving advice on how to build links without trying to spam anyone. Barry wasn't giving link building advice; he was writing up a potential issue with Wired's Wiki. I agree, we gave the audience far too much credit and simply shouldn't have written it.

Your assumption that we really did mean for people to run over and get some free links from Wired this way isn't correct. You can believe it or not. I can only tell you what we actually thought. And that is, no, Barry's aim wasn't off; I'm not after the fact covering. We simply don't write articles like that as a matter of course.

We don't say on a regular basis -- hey, spam a free link here! Go on through the archives -- go through my past 12 years worth of writing -- and come back and show me that this is a regular thing that I'm promoting. It's not; it hasn't been, and I can simply tell you that it was NOT the intent with this article.

And as for a "Whoops, our bad." I've done that. I've done that over and over again. I get the impression it just isn't enough for you. I flat out apologized for the piece, any issues that it caused and didn't roll back to say things like "but you know, the issue is real, or blah, or wiggle or whatever." At most, I clarified we really didn't mean it for people to actually build links this way, and if you think that's quibbling -- so be it.

And yes, that is indeed what I wrote about nofollow and Wikipedia. Go read it again. I didn't say Wikipedia was wrong in using nofollow. I said that Wikipedia should consider removing nofollow from links to a list of "trusted" sites. A more intelligent application.

For example with Sphinn, we use nofollow on comments. Down the line, we might remove this for members with some history that are commenting, as we've discussed on the forum. In addition, we do NOT use nofollow for links to the main stories that are referenced -- the idea being that if those stories are spam, we already have other ways to police them -- so why not trust those with a clear link.

Wired can use, or not use, nofollow as it likes. But as I've said in some other places, if this had been a Google wiki -- and someone came across it and highlighted spam issues -- I highly doubt folks would be critical of a write-up. Instead, there would probably be chuckles that a prominent site like Google would seeming leave things open like that.

Wired is a prominent site. When we came across this ability to create a page on anything, plus get link credit, which appeared as spam within Barry's RSS feeds, it seemed fair to cover it.

It wasn't. The Wired How To area wasn't that well known, wasn't being that spammed, sure was vulnerable but didn't need the attention we gave it. I'm sorry we did. In absolutely no way did we mean for people to actually go in there and spam the site, and I unreservedly apologized for having caused that.

"Wikipedia’s decision to use the nofollow attribute in outbound links may deter some of the link spam since having a link with nofollow doesn’t help page rank which is the spammers main goal.

The rel="nofollow" attribute was in fact designed for exactly the reasons that Wikipedia has implemented it. Google recommends the tag be used in any situation where users may post public links that cannot be trusted, such as wiki-style editable pages or blog comments....

But most of these criticisms don’t hold much water, particularly the shrill cries of but-we-made-you-what-you-are from bloggers threatening to add nofollow attributes to all their Wikipedia links.

If I remember right, links were created for humans to get from one page to another, so regardless of what Wikipedia’s links may mean for page rank, the links still serve their intended function."