Wiktionary:Votes/2023-08/Installing the WikiSEO extension

A vote on whether to install the WikiSEO MediaWiki extension:

The WikiSEO extension allows you to replace, append or prepend the HTML title tag content. It also allows you to add common SEO (Search Engine Optimization) meta elements such as "keywords" and "description".

The extension seems to be well-maintained and already used in various wikis. By improving SEO, we can hopefully increase the amount of attention Wiktionary gets and attract new editors.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
• Vote created: Ioaxxere (talk) 21:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Grease pit/2023/August § Add the word "dictionary" somewhere in every page
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2008/October § SEO spam on Wiktionary:Main Page

1. Support Ioaxxere (talk) 17:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
2. Support lattermint (talk) 23:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
3. Support Benwing2 (talk) 07:31, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
4. Support — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 15:45, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
5. Support 🤞 — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 16:39, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
6. Support: seems like a useful thing and I don't see anyone presenting any downsides. - -sche (discuss) 17:02, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

   Reading through the Phabricator discussion, I see it passed security review. I assume if there are any clear security risks we could, or the devs would, turn it back off. But if we want to be extra safe, we could always treat it like our other interface infrastructure, major modules, etc, and use an edit filter to stop anyone but admins / template editors / interface editors (trusted users) from adding or editing "the {{#seo}} parser function or mw.ext.seo.set()" (the two ways the documentation says it can be invoked). - -sche (discuss) 00:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

7. Support Megathonic (talk) 18:39, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
8. Support - thanks @Ioaxxere for creating the vote on this. Theknightwho (talk) 19:20, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

   Also just commenting that I found this thread on the Phabricator relating to a request to add WikiSEO to English Wikiversity. There's been an extensive process of making sure it's up to scratch, but the good news is that there seems to have been lots of progress, and it also passed the WMF security review back in April 2022. That's probably the most difficult hurdle passed, and means the WMF don't see anything inherently wrong with the design of the extension. That being said, I haven't read over the discussion in depth, so there may be qualifiers to that which may restrict some of the features - it's hard to be sure at this stage. Theknightwho (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

9. Support Fay Freak (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
10. Support. I'm not sure it will do much, but it won't hurt. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:26, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
11. Support Thadh (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
12. Support I'm supporting this because I think we should have the power to decide what we put in our HEAD tags etc. When I first saw this I thought "SEO is usually spam" (SEO is usually spam and lies). But it's really one of those cases where guns don't kill people, people (with SEO) kill search engines. Yes, why not have a feature that gives us more power? Equinox ◑ 01:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
13. Support. I'm confused as to whether there's going to be a separate vote or proposal on exactly how to use WikiSEO on Wiktionary, but either way we should install it first :-) Ultimately, I'd like to see whether SEO will, indeed, attract more editors and more (constructive) attention, hopefully for the better. Chernorizets (talk) 03:56, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
14. Support: seems useful. — Sgconlaw (talk) 21:13, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
15. Support. I've personally noticed that when searching for " dictionary", Wiktionary usually seems to rank below at least five other results and often more. I've had to go to the second page of DDG and Google to find Wiktionary sometimes. SEO is important, and even a simple description such as "Dictionary definition of " would probably help search engines to better understand Wiktionary pages. I'd also like to emphasize that this is not just about Google Search. There are a variety of search engines out there, and I'd argue that many of these "Google alternatives" would benefit more from better SEO more than Google would. --Veikk0.ma (talk) 23:18, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
16. Support: as other support voters have pointed out, this may not do too much—Google generally chooses to extract keywords themselves from page content, but installing this will not hurt, and it might help Wiktionary appear more prominently in search results on other search engines. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 00:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
17. Support: too many SEO-proficient sites use our content to run ads or other shenanigans. - Jberkel 10:55, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
18. Support. Imetsia (talk (more)) 15:02, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
19. Support But I understand that Google (and others?) use some kind of page index if a site creates one of the right kind. SEO is a kind of game between would-be SEO manipulators and Google, Google attempting to detect manipulation and avoid bad consequences (to Google) from such manipulation. DCDuring (talk) 16:01, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
20. Support Seems like a good idea per many previous comments here. User: The Ice Mage ^{talk to meh} 17:20, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
21. Support - TheDaveRoss 19:17, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
22. Support Metadata should still have an option to be hidden, either on a specific page or sitewide via user preferences. Netizen3102 (talk) 06:09, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
23. Support As much as it feels weird saying it, I support adding the SEO. As long as it doesn't even slightly go out of hand. CitationsFreak (talk) 00:21, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
24. Support per CitationsFreak. 0DF (talk) 11:18, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

1. Oppose I oppose this; I oppose SEO on Wiktionary; I oppose attracting low-quality editors. Wiktionary is already usually on the first Google page and possibly specifically prioritized by Google, so interested people who bother to look can find us, though I don't know how much difference opposing this will make. I am concerned that we might not be able to handle all those low-quality editors. I already see plenty of incidents discussed in WT:V. People making test edits are blocked instead of welcomed like on Wikipedia, showing a lack of resources. I like our current well-functioning community of editors, and I want it to remain somewhat scholarly. A dictionary must not sacrifice entry quality for quantity. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 18:30, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

   So this site is supposed to be only for the cognescenti? DCDuring (talk) 16:03, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

   As apparently scholars don’t use search engines. 🤡 Fay Freak (talk) 16:07, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

   Perhaps if it was like that, cognoscenti wouldn't be misspelled as cognescenti. I just don't want us to turn into Urban Dictionary.

   I might also be biased as I use an offline version instead of online searching as the webpages load too slowly. Anyway, it's 19:1 already so I don't expect my oppose to go far. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 06:20, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   I think that these editors will learn the ropes quickly. (Plus, a few extra hands might help with any other low-quality editors.) cf (talk) 02:45, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   You know that most editors started off not knowing what they're doing, myself included. Vininn126 (talk) 09:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   Myself included, I am learning languages and simultaneously writing Wiktionary for those languages. However, I take the time to research and analyze to reduce the risk of me doing Wiktionary:Requests for deletion/CJK#초면이다 and diff. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 10:12, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   That does not mean we shouldn't train or help new editors. How would you feel if I told you to go away just because you don't know all the ins and outs yet? Vininn126 (talk) 10:23, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   I never said that we shouldn't train or help new editors. I'm saying we shouldn't invite more than we can train or help. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 10:25, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   Perhaps my sentiment is from a similar one in the open source community. We say on Reddit/GitHub that we don't need better advertising, and that should just have a better product. If you build a better mousetrap/dictionary, they will come. Daniel.z.tg (talk) 02:27, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

   @The Ice Mage: I see you were the one who removed the SEO spam a decade ago in diff. The discussion page was moved to Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2008/October § SEO spam on Wiktionary:Main Page. What do you think today? Daniel.z.tg (talk) 06:52, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

   Hmm, I think it seems somewhat beneficial honestly, and implementing it in a proper way rather than the silly way it was done years ago looks good I think. For the record I haven't had the chance to actually look at docs and such for WikiSEO but the description given here for this vote seems to give me the gist of how it works. I guess I'll make my stance official now by adding a support vote. User: The Ice Mage ^{talk to meh} 17:19, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

2. Weak oppose ~ Blansheflur ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡ 20:17, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   @Blansheflur how come? Ioaxxere (talk) 22:42, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

   Vide supra. ~ Blansheflur ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡ 02:15, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

3. Oppose ɶLerman (talk) 20:05, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Passed 24-3-0. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 07:38, 15 September 2023 (UTC)