Wikipedia:Spam

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This page is considered a guideline on Wikipedia. It is generally accepted among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. However, it is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.
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There are three types of wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, wide-scale external link spamming, and "Wikipedian-on-Wikipedian" spamming or, "canvassing" (also known as "internal spamming" and "cross-posting"). Articles considered advertisements include those that are solicitations for a business, product or service, or are public relations pieces designed to promote a company or individual. Wikispam articles are usually noted for sales-oriented language and external links to a commercial website. However, a differentiation should be made between spam articles and legitimate articles about commercial entities.

Contents

Advertisements masquerading as articles

Blatant examples of advertising masquerading as articles can be speedily deleted by tagging the articles with {{db-spam}}. Other advertisements posted on Wikipedia can be dealt with by either proposed deletion or listing them on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. On some occasions, the content can be removed temporarily on the basis of a suspected copyright violation, since the text is often copied from another website and posted anonymously.

When an article on an otherwise encyclopedic topic has the tone of an advertisement, the article can often be salvaged by rewriting it in a neutral point of view.

External link spamming

Main articles: Links normally to be avoided and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest

Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed.

Adding links to online free videos that promote a site or product is not allowed [see exception below]. Often these videos have been uploaded in violation of their copyright which adds an additional reason for not linking to them. A video is a spamming video if:

  • It has a banner plastered across the video giving you a website address to go to.
  • It has links on the video page—the page that plays the video—that go to a commercial site or to another spamming video, even if it is only one link among many legitimate links. — [see exception below]
  • It has text at this video page that would lead readers to a specific commercial site. For example, "book available at xyzBooks dot net" — [see exception below]
  • It is a clone of a video that has been deleted. Here is how this typically happens: (1) A spammer post a video in in violation of a copyright (2) the copyright holder (or other party) notifies the Video sharing service that the video is not authorized (3) the video sharing service reviews that claim (4) the video sharing service deletes the video (5) the spammer posts the video again. Note: The ID in the address for the video at the video sharing service changes when this happens.
Exception: Generally, a video is not a spamming video if it is posted by the official site associated with the Wikipedia article. For example, if the Wikipedia article is on a movie named "xyzMovie" and the official site for the movie is "xyzMovie.com" then links or references to "xyzMovie.com" are legitimate for a video at a video sharing page—however, all other links at that video page still must also be legitimate. Some judgement is needed here. If the posted video just advertises a bunch of products associated with the movie, then it is a spamming video even though it is posted by the official site.

It is also important to avoid giving an opportunity to spammers. Sometimes, the way an article is phrased attracts spammers. For example,

  • Social networking has flourished with websites such as Friendster and MySpace, ...
  • Examples of detergents include Tide, ...
  • The most notable MLM companies are Amway, ...
  • Many people feel Dr. Pepper is the best tasting soft drink... (this is also weasel wording; it is also extremely likely that those who prefer Coca Cola, Pepsi or even A&W Root Beer, among others, would disagree, perhaps strongly.)
  • Many blogs arose discussing this, see Some blog, ...

because it is far easier to add a link to the end of this sentence than to add encyclopedic content.

Source soliciting

Source solicitations are messages on article talk pages which explicitly solicit editors to use a specific external source to expand an article. The current consensus on Wikipedia is that templates, categories and other forms of anonymous solicitation are inappropriate. Every article on Wikipedia can be expanded as a matter of course, but the question is in the details on a per-article basis. It is not possible to simply say "all articles of X type can be expanded using Y source".

There is no hard rule on when this crosses over from being a legitimate attempt to improve the article into being internal spam, but some guidelines and questions to consider:

  • Is the solicitation being made anonymously through the use of a template or Category?
  • Is the solicitation being duplicated across many articles at the same time, particularly when the articles relate to different topics?
  • Has there been no discussion (of a specific and substantive nature) on why the source should be used in each article?
  • Is the source controversial, such as being non-peer reviewed, old or polemic (see WP:RS)?
  • Is the source a commercial one?

External link spamming with bots

A few parties now appear to have a spambot capable of spamming wikis from several different wiki engines, analogous to the submitter scripts for guestbooks and blogs. They have a database of a few hundred wikis. Typically they insert external links. Like blog spam, their aim is to improve their search engine rankings, not to directly advertise their product.

If you see a bot inserting external links, please consider checking the other language wikis to see if the attack is widespread. If it is, please contact a sysop on the meta-wiki; they can put in a Wikimedia-wide text filter. Any meta sysop can edit the Wikimedia-wide spam blacklist to add or remove the patterns that are recognized by the filter, with the changes taking effect immediately. New links can also be added to the list if a new spammer should start making the rounds.

Sysops are authorised to block unauthorised bots on sight. Spam bots should be treated equivalently as vandalbots. Edits by spambots constitute unauthorised defacement of websites, which is against the law in many countries, and may result in complaints to ISPs and (ultimately) prosecution.

Inclusion of one spam link is not a reason to include another

Many times users can be confused by the removal of spam links because other links that could be construed as spam have been added to the article and not yet removed. The inclusion of a spam link should not be construed as an endorsement of the spam link, nor should it be taken as a reason or excuse to include another.

Canvassing

Main article: Wikipedia:Canvassing

Canvassing (also known as "internal spamming" and "cross-posting") is overtly soliciting the opinions of other Wikipedians on their talk pages. For more information see Wikipedia:Canvassing (shortcut: WP:CANVASS).

How not to be a spammer

Sometimes, people come to Wikipedia with the intention of spamming -- creating articles which are mere advertisements or self-promotion, or spewing external links to a Web site over many articles.

Some people spam Wikipedia without meaning to. That is, they do things which Wikipedians consider to be spamming, without realizing that their actions are not in line with building an encyclopedia. A new editor who owns a business may see that there are articles about other businesses on Wikipedia, and conclude that it would be appropriate to create his own such article. A Web site operator may see many places in Wikipedia where his or her site would be relevant, and quickly add several dozen links to it.

The following guidelines are intended to suggest how not to be a spammer -- that is, how to mention a Web site, product, business, or other resource without appearing to the Wikipedia community that you are trying to abuse Wikipedia for self-promotion.

  1. Review your intentions. Wikipedia is not a space for personal promotion or the promotion of products, services, Web sites, fandoms, ideologies, or other memes. If you're here to tell readers how great something is, or to get exposure for an idea or product that nobody's heard of yet, you're in the wrong place. Likewise, if you're here to make sure that the famous Wikipedia cites you as the authority on something (and possibly pull up your sagging PageRank) you'll probably be disappointed.
  2. Contribute cited text, not bare links. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a link farm. If you have a source to contribute, first contribute some facts that you learned from that source, then cite the source. Don't simply direct readers to another site for the useful facts; add useful facts to the article, then cite the site where you found them. You're here to improve Wikipedia -- not just to funnel readers off Wikipedia and onto some other site, right? (If not, see #1 above.)
  3. The References section is for references. A reference directs the reader to a work that the writer(s) referred to while writing the article. The References section of a Wikipedia article isn't just a list of related works; it is specifically the list of works used as sources. Therefore, it can never be correct to add a link or reference to References sections if nobody editing the text of the article has actually referred to it.
  4. Don't make a new article for your own product or Web site. Most often, when a person creates a new article describing his or her own work, it's because the work is not yet well-known enough to have attracted anyone else's attention, much less verifiable sources. Articles of this sort are usually deleted. Wikipedia does indeed have articles about popular products and Web sites, but it is not acceptable to use Wikipedia to popularize them.
  5. Don't gratuitously set off our spam radar. There are certain stylistic behaviors that will say "spam!" loud and clear to anyone who's watching:
    • Adding a link to the top of an unordered list. This is an A-number-1, red-flag, hot-button spam sign. It suggests that you want people to look at your link FIRST FIRST FIRST! You wouldn't butt in at the head of a queue; don't put your link first.
    • Adding a link that's snazzier than any of the others. If there's a list of products that gives just their names, and you add a product with a short blurb about how great it is, we'll all know why you did it. The same applies to adding a list item that is in a larger or otherwise more prominent font than the other items.
    • Adding many links to (or mentions of) the same site or product. Going through an article and adding the name of your product to every paragraph where it seems relevant is just going to attract the revert button.
    • Adding the same link to many articles. The first person who notices you doing this will go through all your recent contributions with an itchy trigger finger on the revert button. And that's not much fun.
  6. If your product is truly relevant to an article, others will agree -- try the talk page. We usually recommend that editors be bold in adding directly to articles. But if the above advice makes you concerned that others will regard your contribution as spam, you can find out without taking that risk: Describe your work on the article's talk page, asking other editors if it is relevant.
  7. Do not add an external link to your signature. However, external links to Wikimedia projects are acceptable. For example, Talk page.

Warning spammers

{{uw-spam1}} is a useful "first warning" to put on the Talk page of a spammer. For new users, an alternative is {{welcomespam}} may be used for users who may have added spam or inappropriate external links in good faith.

Subsequent offenses can be tagged with {{uw-spam2}}, then {{uw-spam3}} (warning of possible block) and {{uw-spam4}} (final warning). If an editor spams numerous articles in a systematic fashion, they may be warned with {{uw-spam4im}} as the only warning that they will receive before they are blocked. The template {{uw-sblock}} indicates that the spammer has been blocked.

If you have tagged an article for speedy deletion with {{db-spam}} because it is blatant spam, you may add {{spam-warn}} to the originating editor's talk page to warn them of the impending deletion, and to allow them to possibly edit the article so it is no longer spam.

Please remember to substitute these templates using for example {{subst:uw-spam1}} instead of {{uw-spam}}.

Tagging articles prone to spam

Some articles, especially those pertaining to Internet topics, are prone to aggressive spamming from multiple websites. Please tag them with {{Cleanup-spam}} to advise the Wikipedia community to watch the article for abuse. This template expands to the following:

This article or section may contain spam.
Wikipedia spam consists of external links mainly intended to promote a website. Wikipedia spam also consists of external links to websites which primarily exist to sell goods or services, use objectionable amounts of advertising, or require payment to view the relevant content. If you are familiar with the content of the external links, please help by removing promotional links in accordance with Wikipedia:External links. (You can help!)

It's a good idea to remove this tag once the attacks die down.

Another possible tag to use is {{advert}}, which expands to the following:

This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view per Wikipedia policy.
Mark blatant advertising for speedy deletion with {{db-spam}}. (help, talk)

The third useful template is a substituted template {{NoMoreLinks}}, visible only while the page is being edited, after spam links have been removed from a wikipedia article this template can be added to external links section of the frequently spammed article as a preemptive measure (but it must be used as a substituted template or it will not work properly).

<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->
<!--| DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF |-->
<!--| LINKS. If you think that your link might be useful, do not add it here, |-->
<!--| but put it on this article's discussion page first or submit your link  |-->
<!--| to the appropriate category at the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)|-->
<!--| and link back to that category using the {{dmoz}} template.             |-->
<!--|                                                                         |-->
<!--|           Links that have not been verified WILL BE DELETED.            |-->
<!--|  See [[Wikipedia:External links]] and [[Wikipedia:Spam]] for details    |-->
<!--===========================({{NoMoreLinks}})===============================-->

See also

External links

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