The WordPress team responsible for the official documentation has introduced a new external linking policy. This policy prohibits links to blogs of commercial sites, even if those sites are not directly selling any products. The reaction from the community was largely negative.
Members of the WordPress development community with connections to commercial sites argued that the policy was unfair.
Goal is to Protect WordPress Documentation from Abuse
The primary aim of the new policy is to prevent links to "helpful" articles hosted on the blogs of external commercial sites.
According to the statement on WordPress:
“During discussions about external linking policy, we concluded that we won’t allow, at least initially and for the time being, any commercial blogs.
So before you start arguing that some popular plugin’s blogs have valuable information, let me stop you right there.
…this will completely move focus from the initial idea which is:
Benefit for the documentation user.”
The goal is to benefit the documentation user, as stated in the announcement. However, the statement does not explicitly address that the decision also aims to make the official documentation the primary resource users turn to for answers.
The goal seems to be to relieve documentation editors from policing links to commercial sites.
Loose Definition of Commercial Site Creates Confusion
The definition of what constitutes a "commercial" site was made broad enough to include blogs of sites that don’t sell anything.
“So any WordPress plugin official blog, theme’s official blog, market’s or shop’s (with themes, plugins, etc.) official blog, hosting’s official blog, other service’s official blog, etc., regardless if they are selling anything or not, is not allowed.”
Links to Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow Are Okay
The policy explains it’s okay to link to Stack Exchange or Stack Overflow.
“We need to determine what is not a ‘commercial’ website but doesn’t fall under personal blog either, which can be allowed. For example, Stack Overflow or any of the Stack Exchange websites.
This is not really a non-commercial website but is completely neutral toward appearing on wordpress.org.”
The rationale is that links to Stack Exchange are naturally occurring and not added by Stack Exchange themselves.
Further explanation:
“This is not to say that being ‘neutral’ in this regard is a requirement but merely pointing out that they have no interest in trying to abuse the opportunity for getting their link to appear at wp.org.”
It seems the team behind the policy wasn’t primarily focused on making the documentation so comprehensive that no external links would be necessary, given that links to Stack Exchange are still allowed.
New WordPress Policy Unfair?
Joost de Valk, founder of the Yoast SEO plugin, asserted that companies contributing significantly to WordPress are being treated the same as those who’ve done nothing.
Joost said:
“I understand that you want to prevent discussions about bias.
But I think your premise here is wrong: you’re saying you’re not ‘biased’ if you’re not linking to commercial companies.
I would say we’re all inherently biased, because some of those companies do a lot for the WordPress community, while others do not.
The companies that contribute to WordPress a lot used to get some links, and thus some promotion as benefit from the fact that they’re contributing.
By removing that from them, you’re basically treating those that don’t give back the same as companies that do give back, something which I think is simply wrong.
So I very heavily disagree with this decision.”
Another community member voiced similar opposition, arguing that the new policy is discriminatory against commercial sites.
“The more this gets discussed, the more it sounds like really undesirable gate-keeping.
In cross-post comments, there is discussion of having a preference for trusting links from persons active and ‘well known’ in the community over others.
And here, a prejudicial policy against all things ‘Commercial’ suggests they’re inherently corrupt, not trustworthy, nor valuable.
A links value is inherently subjective and ought to be dealt with subjectively. Trying to create high-level objective rules doesn’t seem beneficial or realistic. I certainly disagree that all ‘commercial’ sites should be blanket banned.”
Are Self-created Links from WordPress Unnatural?
If companies contributing to WordPress receive links, does their "volunteer" work become payment for a link?
Google’s John Mueller recently stated that guest posts could result in unnatural links because the article providers are also creating the links.
There seems to be a parallel between businesses helping WordPress documentations by adding their own links and someone contributing content to a blog while adding their own link.
In the official WordPress "manual," all links are nofollowed, which means they do not pass PageRank. However, links from certain WordPress developer pages do pass PageRank, which brings another dimension to the issue.
Is a Ban on Links to Commercial Sites Fair?
Opinions in the WordPress discussion were divided between those who supported the idea and those who found the ban unreasonable.
It makes sense that volunteers should focus on creating documentation without the added burden of policing blog links. However, exceptions for Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow, which are ad-supported commercial sites, contribute to the perception that the rule is arbitrary.
The policy might have been less controversial had they also banned links to Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow in the name of making the documentation self-sufficient.
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