Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Dec

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New Template:Spam interlink and Template:Spam-i

Following our motto "Tag 'em to stop 'em", I've been experimenting with some private warning templates for the past two weeks. They include a domain parameter (example.com) which creates:

(example.com | search current)

I've created {{Spam interlink}} for general use, and {{Spam-i}} which has the same code embedded into the standard {{Spam}}, to include in the family of spam warnings. See Spam-i for a description of the parameter.

This has the effect to interlink all usertalk warnings that are given for a particular spamlink, through the Special:Linksearch feature. (See also earlier talk 2006 Archive Oct#Linkspam Database). Once we remove a spamlink from the articles, its history is gone and unknown to others, this has to change. Two examples of how it works in action: here and here. Admittedly of limited use when you're the only person using this template, its real strength will be to make a connection between earlier warnings given to different accounts and by different people. So, try these templates out, and if you think the concept works, help promote their use. Femto 15:03, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This has some potential. Is it better just display the spam site location and not to actually link to it? Isn't the spammer getting the desired link, but now on multiple talk pages? JonHarder 02:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't work without a link, the whole point is that it appears in the linksearch. Links on talk pages have a rel="nofollow" attribute included which tells search engines not to consider them in their page ranking. Spammers shouldn't benefit from these links any more than if we named the site in plain text. Femto 12:46, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of this template, but I also have a concern. When you come across a site that has a large number of links (say Suite101 for example), as you are attempting to clean it up, it becomes difficult to figure out whether there are any mainspace pages which still have links to the site amongst all of the talk page warnings, and some may slip through. This template would work much better if there were a method for specifying that a link search were just in the article space. ScottW 02:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
This appears to be a low level warning. It would be nice to have a series: Spam interlink0, Spam interlink1, Spam interlink2, Spam interlink3, Spam interlink4, etc. It's also not critical to do this and this is certainly not a complaint. It's great to have these. I suspect this would not be too hard now that Femto's done the first templates.
Maybe trickier -- does using this template also write the link to another central page? (I know some templates automatically write data to another page within Wikipedia). For instance, could such a template also write the same "customized search web links" URL (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Linksearch&target=%2A.textamerica.com) to some page such as "WikiProject Spam/Link database"? And as long as I'm gold-plating a wishlist, could it also date-time stamp it on the link database page? --A. B. 02:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
The evidence is clear enough once there is a threshold amount of links to warned users in the list. There's little point in bothering to add further warnings, so I see no danger that the warnings could drown out other links in the search. You need to nag the developers about a filter feature. (While we're at it, I'd also suggest including a (contribs) link if the hit is in the user space, that could be very useful too).
A template can automatically place the page which it's on into a category, nothing more. But I don't think it would make sense to categorize all these warnings to what will mostly be harmless first-time offenders.
The interlink is by no means meant as a replacement for creating other spam databases. It's meant to keep track of that scattered 'below the radar' spam from hit-and-run accounts cleaned up by different people, not of the big cases. Because every big case started as a little case. If you come across a suspicious linksearch with earlier warnings, feel free to list it at this project for further investigation. Or we could keep a dedicated page for listing linksearch alerts to watch for returning spamsocks, though we'd have to maintain the entries manually.
I considered creating a set of templates. But the interlink needs only to appear once on a talk page, and since almost everybody deserves a first warning it should suffice just to have a spam1. Where needed, you can always supplement a high level warning with something like this: {{subst:spam interlink|example.com}} {{subst:spam3}} ~~~~
Femto 12:28, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

University of Mary Washington

At the University of Mary Washington article, Analyzethis (talk · contribs) insists on adding a link to a website he runs [1]. Several other users keep removing this as linkspam but he keeps adding the link back, insisting it's vital to the UMW community. Can we have an outside view on this conflict? Metros232 20:58, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Gave my €0.02. Femto 13:09, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
For the record, the site is middlesell.com:
Given the site owner's persistence, vandalism and personal attacks, this URL bears watching in the future.That or balcklisting.--A. B. 14:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Middlesell.com update:
Analyzethis (contributions), our chronic middlesell.com spammer, apparently exercised his "right to vanish" -- sort of. He was back a few hours ago using one of his IP accounts, 199.111.74.57 (talk • contribs); see the latest spam. 23 November 2006, the Analyzethis account was blocked 48 hours after spamming articles and vandalizing userpages. Then, Analyzethis claimed his right to vanish.
Samuel Blanning gave 199.111.74.57 a 1 month block after the spam-edit earlier today. Nlu also just blocked the Analyzethis account indefinitely.Other actions:
Meta-Wiki admins prefer individual wikipedias exhaust local alternatives to the blacklist when problems involve just one spam domain and just a few Wikipedia articles. Let's see if the above is sufficient. --A. B. 16:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Suite101 dot com

371 links and at least some are due to deliberate campaign by 69.199.39.86 (talk • contribs) and possibly others. --A. B. 05:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

At Suite101 "freelance writers" can write an article about almost anything (sounds familiar?) and get paid "US$2.00 per 1000 unique pageviews". com/freelance_writers/. However, articles can be (and are, in many cases that I looked at) what we call "original research", not requiring any form of peer review or supporting citations. Occasionally there may be useful information there, but given its heavy advertising content and promotion of itself as a cash earner for its editors, it cannot be considered a reliable source. — Moondyne 14:02, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 ?? ...then we'd have to remove links to every site that earns money and pays their staff because it could be unreliable? E.g. nytimes.com (full of advertising)? Suite101's content is definitely useful -- Psb 04:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
There's a difference between editorial staffs and a self-publishing service for individual writers. Femto 13:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Suite101 has editorial staff and editorial supervision, it is not a self-publishing service. How are links to other sites any more reliable? - Psb 15:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
We're not talking about other sites. We're talking about Suite101.com. Incorrect placement of other websites links in WP articles is not a valid argument. As far as editorial supervision is concerned, I am not convinced. — Moondyne 03:07, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. In reading the information page about becomig a freelance writer there (www.suite101 . com/freelance_writers/), note that they encourage editors to spam their story using SEO techniques. Adding these links to Wikipedia is a common SEO technique. Thus, I believe they all should go.
I'm going to take it one step further and request the site be added to the blacklist - a site like that is dangerous to allow links to. --AbsolutDan (talk) 15:37, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's a link to the blacklist request: [2]. --AbsolutDan (talk) 15:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I added it to blacklist. -- mzlla 15:50, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you so very much, mzlla! The black list works -- I couldn't save my edit until I broke the suite101 links above--A. B. 17:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow -- still a lot of work to do. Blacklisting does not remove existing links or warn submitters. Existing links still work until removed.
I think much of the spamming may be by the writers themselves, making it a bit more work to properly clean up. Also, go to the Suite101 articles -- they all have bylines which link to authors' Suite101 sites. Some of these in turn link to similar programs they write for, leading to still more similar sites (see my next post below.) I think some of the individual players in this linking are abusive and operating in bad faith, but many others are just naive, hungry free-lancers inapproriately adding links to their articles (and not the truly abusive, spam-for-a-living types). Former English and creative writing majors being drawn over to the dark side.
The effort I'm describing is considerable, but I think in the long run, it's worth it. Just plan on all of us giving it 30 minutes here, 60 minutes there to winnow the list down over the next week or two.--A. B. 17:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I think I've done my share. No links should remain in the article space. Not that I'd be able to count them right now, I've had so many 101s before my eyes, I would count them in binary... Femto 19:35, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Femto, thank you for removing the suite101 link from Cornelius Kingsland Garrison – Athaenara (talk) 21:24, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Any thoughts on what to do about this: Suite101.com? I'm tempted to tag it as db-spam. ScottW 17:31, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
I wound up prodding it instead. ScottW 18:14, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Femto, you got a lot of work done! Everyone else -- as you can, please go back through Femto's contribution log and warn the folks that added the links he removed. (A real Spamstar-worthy effort by Femto!) --A. B. 22:54, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Good work. Better keep an eye on Femto's talk page as he's likely to cop some abuse queries with that many reversions. — Moondyne 02:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Aww. Never underestimate the efficiency of a bored geek on a free sunday evening. :) Femto 12:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Femto, excuse me, but that's vandalizing other folks' work. Look through the entries you deleted - there were discussions behind them. Would be only fair to restore those links where they made sense -- Psb 04:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Looking at your contributions you sure seem like the impartial judge on this topic. I mostly deleted irrelevant entries from 'external links' and 'further reading' sections. Some actual references which might have significantly contributed to writing the article I merely commented out. If there are discussions behind the content, those are still there, on the talk pages, your point is? Femto 13:20, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
No, there was typically a discussion on the talk pages before any links were included in the external links and furher reading sections. No one was running around inserting those links - Psb 15:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I declare these assertions nonsense. Here's an assessment of a random sample of pages. I'm also going to assume that all "topic experts" as they're called below should generate plenty of hits in a Google Scholar search; I'll point out where authors (with unique enough names to check it) don't.
  • Legolas - Plain external link, no talk. Added by an IP address.
  • Wall $treet Week - Link to a forum, no talk.
  • Jugendstil - Plain external link, no talk. Author is a gardener with no Google Scholar hits.
  • Nora Bayes - Cited as reference. Author has 1 Google Scholar hit. Not even a talk page for this article.
  • Music and movement - In an "Additional Sites" list, no talk. Author has at most 1 Google Scholar hit.
  • Spousal abuse - Plain external link, no talk. Added by an IP address. Same edit added link to "Buy the Book" homepage of that author.
  • Morris M. Estee - Plain external link (dead), no talk.
  • Liberal Christianity - Plain external link, no talk. Author has no Google Scholar hits.
  • Linda Nochlin - Cited as reference. Author has no Google Scholar hits. User's only edits are to the article, no talk.
  • Herbaceous border Cited as reference. Author "never studied horticulture or garden design in school", "trying to get into garden design". Stub article. Not even a talk page for this article.
Femto 17:35, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I used to write for Suite101 (sadly before they started paying again), and I had referenced one of my own articles in Sesame Street. It was the only article I know of that covered Loblaw's launch of the Sesame Beginnings line, other than the press release itself. I didn't link to the article in EL, but within a reference tag. I've reverted the change. Check 101 links before you delete, please. -- Zanimum 16:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I removed the cites. Your original writings elsewhere do not provide any more verifiability to the facts than does your original writing as an editor here at Wikipedia. You can directly cite your sources here which you used for writing the 101 article.
Suppose they had paid for the link, you would have never cited your facts then? Or suppose you get a new contract and they start paying, would you instantly remove all your citations, even against the opposition of other people defending them as legit source of facts? Regardless of your personal good intentions, you see the fundamental problem with allowing this site as reference?
By the way, we should note that the blacklist does not prevent links added through ref tags! Femto 18:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
"the blacklist does not prevent links added through ref tags" Um, but they just did. -- Zanimum 20:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, links in ref tags in templates then. Femto 13:14, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Things should be judged on a case by case basis. We cite blogs and well-made fan sites, why are they immune? How unprofessional most writers are should not inflict on the credentials of other writers. -- Zanimum 20:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Blogs and fan sites are almost never reliable sources, and if we currently cite them anywhere then that material should be removed (except in the extremely few instances in which they do pass RS muster). Have a look through WP:V and WP:RS for further details. --AbsolutDan (talk) 05:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I am Peter Berger, Suite101's president. If you look into the history of links to Suite101 on Wikipedia, you'll see that this is built over a long period of time (even before Suite101 started paying writers for content) - not due to any spamming, but because of the individual articles' value. We did never spam Wikipedia, nor did we encourage writers to include links to their articles. Our model resembles about.com but with more creative freedom to our writers: our 240 writers are screened topic experts, supervised by our editorial staff, and we remove or correct content whenever there are errors. We have over 90,000 quality articles on our site, so I would expect some of them to be worthwhile reference... We would encourage our writers to suggest links to referential articles they have written in Wikipedia articles' talk pages - but only if these articles are outstanding, and never to include those links themselves. I think it is a bit unfair to those who collected and included those links to simply delete all of them based solely on the fact that they are hosted on Suite101, which strives to be a great publishing site for expert writers who would like to earn some money for their expertise rather than only search engines doing that. Please, remove Suite101 from the spam blacklist and deletion suggestions. Berger peter 23:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The claims above about the writers being experts in their field conflicts directly with the recruiting page at www.suite101.com/freelance_writers/, which (currently) invites the "afficionado, enthusiast, opinion-maker, citizen journalist, information junkie" to apply. And again, the means that are suggested for promotion of article links are troublesome, to say the least. --AbsolutDan (talk) 06:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
The Suite101.com as written by Psb (Berger peter himself?) bely Mr. Berger assertions regarding Suite101:
  • Writers are financially rewarded not by the quality of their writing but by the number of page views:
    • "Writers are paid on a revenue sharing model (Suite101.com's current rate is 2 US$ per 1,000 unique page views), and are compensated for material as long as it is kept on the site."
  • The New York Times, which Mr. Berger cites as a similar example of a site with ads, does much more than "monitor" its articles. The employment and supervisory relationships between the reporters and managing editors is an order of magnitude more substantial than Suite101's. The same could be said of any publication meeting Wikipedia's reliable sources policy:
    • "Writers publish material directly to the site, but are monitored by Section Editors and site staff for appropriateness of material, breadth of coverage, bias, and professional standards."
  • Psb linked the article to Suite101.com's application page for freelance writers. Excerpt from the application page (http://www.suite101 . com/freelance_writers):
    • "Are you ... prepared to title, promote, and interlink so search engines will find, rank, and recommend you"
  • Excerpts from the writers' FAQ (at http://suite101 . com/info.cfm/faq):
    • "How long will it take before I start to earn money as a freelance writer?"
      • "You start earning and accruing money right away, but how much depends on many factors including the rate at which you post new content, the quality of the articles, the number of inbound links you build, the aptness of your titles, the amount of promotion you do, the speed at which the search engines index and rank you, your page rank once they do...it could be 2 months, it could be 6, and possibly quite a while before you consider quitting your day job, but writing for Suite101.com is a "long tail" game so whatever you write will continue to earn you page views as long as it's on the site."
--A. B. 15:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Additional excerpts:
"Cash: US$2.00 per 1,000 unique pageviews for all articles you write as long as they're on our site.
"Want an example? Let's say you've written an article on something "evergreen" (i.e. searched for years to come), and promoted the article on the Web to directories and recommending sites. You consistently attract 5,000 pageviews/month for this article, earning you 10$ for the month, 120$ for the year, and so on year after year ... not bad for one 400-word article. Our bestselling articles do far more pageviews and are about topics as diverse as the Wild West, Abbreviations and Party Planning."
"Freelance writing for the Web means exchanging up-front cash expectations, reasonable in the print world, for the long-term increment model used on the Web: the better you get and the more diverse articles you have written, the more money you'll make, but to make top dollar you'll also have to reorient your approach to accommodate the Web Writing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques we stress in:"
"*our freelance writer handbook"
"*frequent seminars"
"*Editor-in-Chief memos"
"*section editor emails"
"*writer discussion forums"
--A. B. 15:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Suite101 links on other Wikipedias:

--A. B. 15:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


Regarding Femto's example of a row of links to a series of Suite's articles on a single topic: we explicitly ask our writers not to link to articles they have written themselves on Wikipedia. However, it seems a writer misunderstood or disregarded our warning. While we take responsibility for educating and informing our writers, we cannot guarantee compliance or insure that everybody heeds these terms. Naturally, we do not want a single writer or instance to jeopardize Suite101's reputation on Wikipedia, or elsewhere, and will use our leverage to rectify the situation immediately.
We propose the following: we will talk to the writer whose articles were linked to from the IP address 69.199.39.86 today and send a memo to our current roster of 250 writers reinforcing that they are not to insert links to their own material on this site.
That said, the majority of Wikipedia links to Suite101 articles were useful to Wikipedia's readers and relevant in context. Many were built up over our 10-year history and span a variety of topics no other site has covered, so we do feel that they supplement Wikipedia's material and add value for readers.
Suite101 strives to attract professional writers who stand behind quality articles, but some are new to Web protocol and inadvertently make errors in posting offsite. I hope you will see poor judgement or naivite for what it is and judge such links on an individual basis, rather than assume that all links to Suite101 articles are suspicious. It has not, nor ever will be, our intention to "spam" Wikipedia, and we will do our best to keep writers in check so that they follow your submission policy with your readers' interests in mind.
Given the above, I respectfully request that Suite101.com be removed from the spam blacklist. Berger peter 01:37, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I propose a compromise: for articles where a high-quality, relevant, properly sourced (etc.) Suite101 article exists, mention the bare link on the talk page of the article (ie like this: www.whatever.com). If possible, link to this discussion as well. Let the demand for specific links drive the push to unblock. --AbsolutDan (talk) 02:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Dan's proposal. Let's get some specific examples of quality, Suite101 articles which truly complement Wikipedia and THEN discuss removal of the block. I don't have a problem with removing the block per se, but not until we get some more substantive reasons to do so. — Moondyne 02:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Even if we wanted to, I don't think it's for us to compromise the community consensus behind WP:RS, WP:COI, and WP:V. We don't represent Wikipedia. We can enforce existing rules, but we're not empowered to change them or negotiate variances. How do we decide which Suite101 articles are "high quality"? Which of us decides? Suite101 is not a notable publication nor does its staff scrutinize and professionally edit each writer's article to meet our WP:RS and WP:V requirements.
While I think some Suite101 stuff is garbage (some of the financial discussions) they also have some great articles. I think they have a fascinating and innovative business model.
Then again, my own personal blog has been written up and quoted in various industry publications (they I think I've written some great stuff ). Yet, it is unacceptable for use as a source for WP articles and should never be linked to from WP articles.
Notwithstanding what Mr. Berger has said, my own anecdotal view after spending several hours on Suite101 stuff is that the majority of those links were added in violation of WP:COI by "single purpose accounts". With financial incentives so strong, how do you or Mr. Berger ensure these links won't start creeping back in if we take Suite101 off the blacklist? If an anonymous IP address or a newly registered user adds the link that's on the talk page, how do we know it's not the Suite101 writer? If we think it is, but we can't prove it, do then we then have to just overlook the incident? Do we put Suite101 back on the blacklist? Then off again after another discussion? It all seems problematic -- we'll get more disputes and discussions chewing up more volutneers' time while seeing bad links start creeping back in.
That's my 2 cents worth. In summary, I hate to say it, but I disagree with taking Suite101 of the blacklist. --A. B. 03:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Linking to Suite101 articles would be no different than linking to these blogs and personal pages from Wikipedia's Suite101.com article (I found them while Googling for acceptable articles to address that article's notability issue):
--A. B. 04:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
The compromise mentioned above was intended to allow for the possibility that perhaps some of the editors are, say, world-renowned experts in their field, writing material that is well-cited and verifiable. I apologize if I my intents were unclear - I agree no exceptions should be made that would violate any guideline/policy/precedent. Based on previous examination of the site and in light of A. B.'s excellent research above, I doubt much (or anything) would be found anyway. --AbsolutDan (talk) 06:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Since yesterday's discussion, we have heard back from the writer who posted links to her own articles acknowledging that she was unaware of Wikipedia's rules on linking to her own material. She was remorseful about having caused this trouble for Suite101 and its writers and apologized sincerely. As promised, we will remind all writers of Wikipedia's link submission rules so that this does not reoccur.
Blacklisting an entire site is a severe penalty for relatively small mistakes would punish a collective for individuals' errors. It should be noted that even uncontrolled blogging sites like blogspot.com (just to name a well-known example) are not blacklisted in Wikipedia when links to blogspot.com are abusive. Instead, individual links to blogspot.com posts are removed by the community whenever this is the case. Unlike the majority of publishing sites, Suite101 does edit its content and manage its writers, yet the same privileges afforded a less vigilant site are not forthcoming.
Like many other sites you reference, we have some articles that are not appropriate for Wikipedia, but we have many more that are. Blacklisting Suite101 would be unfair to the writers of these articles in particular given that they work hard to produce worthy material that is useful, relevant, and appropriate for Wikipedia's readership as well.
Suite101 is compliant with Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources, conflict of interest, and especially verifiability (as all our writers can be contacted directly). Given the above explanation and comparison, we ask for your consideration and remove suite101.com from the blacklist. -- Berger peter 22:55, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
As noted earlier, these links were added by many different special purpose accounts, not just one rogue writer.
To PB: The difference is that blogspot doesn't offer financial incentives for clickthroughs, so the likelihood of people posting blogspot links for purposes of personal gain is smaller. Anchoress 04:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Blogspot links are almost always inappropriate per WP:EL, whether or not there are ads or other financial incentives. The only exceptions I can think of are where an article about someone notable might include a link to that person's blog. Wikipedia has hundreds of blogspot links that need to be deleted. I spot-checked several hundred blogspot links recently and only found one blog, however, that had appeared to have been spammed to multiple articles. That can change pretty quickly, however. See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.blogspot.com I would characterize most of the blogspot links I saw as good faith (but poor judgement) additions to Wikipedia. I encourage folks to delete blog links as they find them -- they're just not encyclopedia quality. --A. B. 19:50, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Anchoress, I would like to note a correction to your last post: Blogspot is owned by Google, and Blogspot's users are free (and even encouraged) to run Google's AdSense ads on Blogspot, thus directly earning money for their content. There is no Wikipedia rule that would disallow links to webpages on which someone also earns money, as long as these links are appropriate. I do not think introducing such a rule re Wikipedia would be a good idea; it is fair to assume that many writers of excellent articles want to be, and should be, compensated and ads offer this remuneration while keeping access to the content free. There are many sites like ours on the Web on which writers directly earn money when their original content is read, and they are not (nor should they be) blacklisted purely because they are professional/freelance writers trying to make a living. In fact, writers who are paid generally are more motivated to fact-check, research, and provide thorough coverage, whereas those who aren't have little incentive.
The blacklist is a severe measure and should be reserved for banning sites that systematically and intentionally abuse Wikipedia. Suite101 does not do that. - Berger peter 19:09, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't mind at all when a page makes money for its author, after independent consensus is established that a link is encyclopedically appropriate and necessary. Personally, I would love to see all links to external sites disallowed by default, so that they can only be added in the article space after getting cleared on the talk page. Won't happen though, so we need a whole WikiProject to deal with a flood of spam from such sites. Femto 15:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Mr. Berger, let me repeat the facts: contrary to your assertion, dozens of Suite101.com authors appear to have intentionally abused Wikipedia, adding hundreds of links using single purpose accounts, in violation of multiple Wikipedia policies and guidelines:
This widespread abuse by so many authors is a hard truth that you have avoided speaking to throughout this discussion, even when pointed out to you by multiple Wikipedia editors. Your persistant denial weakens your arguments. I encourage you to go back through all the edit histories, look at the links added and by whom. Spend 2 to 8 hours going through this as many of us did. Then you'll have the facts, too. --A. B. 20:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
A.B., I do not think what you are writing is entirely fair to me. Instead of avoiding to comment on allegations or denying facts, we have taken action and started speaking to all our writers including one writer who admitted to having unintentionally abused Wikipedia. I have written that above; I believe that this is the opposite of "persistent denial".
"Hundreds of links"... "intentionally abused"... user Femto spent 3 hours deleting all 198 links that were ever created to Suite101 articles. Femto sometimes deleted 4 links a minute. Honestly, how can you verify abusive intention in 25 seconds?
Neither were there "dozens" of abusive writers. When doing spot checks myself throughout Femto's deletions and looking up how the links to Suite101 were originally created over time, I cannot help but feel that the majority of the links were not abusive. Please have a look at Thomas Garrett or F1 hybrid or Jugendstil or Abdul Qadir Jelani or Lunaception or Fort Simcoe or others. Suite101 is about niche topics, and on some subjects we are often the only ones who have quality reference material. Berger peter 02:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Tell you what, I estimate my average decision time on the links was about 3 seconds, as (I repeat myself) I mostly removed them from encyclopedically irrelevant directory collections to external websites. I did not verify abusive intention; didn't have to. You know: we're here to build actual content, not to collect links. It's strange that someone could take offense in the removal of non-content from an article, unless they're interested in keeping the link traffic.
Possible legit uses or not. Fact remains that suite101.com recruited an army of 250 meatpuppets that were actively encouraged with individual financial incentives to place links to the site wherever they can get away with it. It was blacklisted for that reason, and only after the fact you present yourself as victim, and try to weasel yourself out with making concessions. Femto 15:42, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

From Google's cache -- what do you suppose this is? It's from the editors section of Suite101.com. --A. B. 02:34, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Femto, I kindly ask you to refrain from using terms like "meatpuppets" which disrespect our writers. No, we did not, and will not, encourage writers to directly place links in Wikipedia. I know that there is an old debate about search engine optimization going around, but the value of such links is extremely limited compared to simply publishing great content. Please understand our request: I do not insist that any links you deleted be replaced or restored. They are gone because you deleted them. All I am trying to achieve here is to remove our site from the blacklist. People who have found great Suite101 articles should be free to publish this as reference on Wikipedia and not be told that they are "spamming" Wikipedia. Berger peter 01:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I used 'meatpuppetry' as the common technical term for the kind of social engineering that is used in trying to optimize online content, not derisively of your clients personally.
>> No, we did not, and will not, encourage writers to directly place links in Wikipedia.
That's right, not Wikipedia directly, but the whole Web in general.
  • From your FAQ: >> If I don't earn PVs [page views] as quickly as you like will you give me the boot? - We'll give you as much help as we can, strongly urge you to take our advice, and stick with you if we think it's just a matter of time. If you do none of the above in the first three months and we have a stronger candidate, we will politely ask you to consider other options...
You did, and still do, actively select for the best spammers. Even your own (ex)clients seem to agree about this! Femto 19:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
A. B., I believe the list you found was created a few years ago and has not been in our database for many months. It links to Carnatic Music which does not seem to have linked to Suite101 (?) and to the Wikipedia main page. I do not know why someone wanted to keep track of webmasters of individual sites, but since we used to have a "Carnatic Music" topic and external link lists at one time, it could be that someone in Suite101 wanted to stay on top of who we were linking to (we have a lot of links to other sites, including Wikipedia - simply go to our site and search for "Wikipedia", I cannot even post the direct link here because of the blacklisting.).
I am responsible for Suite101.com and can decide what actions we take. I feel that we, as a site, comply with Wikipedia's rules, despite the fact that one or more of our 250 writers has overstepped. We are speaking to our writers about it and will remind them of Wikipedia's rules. It would be great if someone with knowledge of Wikipedia's rules could let me know what else we can actively do to be removed from the blacklist as soon as possible. Berger peter 01:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Peter, in the end we're not here to be fair to your authors, I don't intend that in a mean way, I just want to point out that our primary concern is Wikipedia's reputation, not yours or your site's authors. We're here to build a great open content encyclopedia and the fact remains that none of the links were great links. The only vocal complaint about a particular link was from the author of the link (and it appears he was using it as substitute for a form of original research that Wikipedia tries to avoid). Wikipedia editors are not up in arms over the sudden removal of a wonderful resource. Balancing this against the fact that there were so many links placed by single purpose accounts, nothing you have said to date indicates that Wikipedia (which is what we are concerned with) will be better off with suite 101 off the blacklist. If you had outstanding content Wikipedia might suffer. But since your articles are of a medium rather than high quality, we seem to have little to lose. We're trying to be an encyclopedia not a portal, so links to the type of site that only supports authors who can keep up with your quantity and click through requirements are unlikely to point to the sort of rigorous examination of a subject that an encyclopedia wants. At the moment all your arguments seem to be about how our blacklisting is unfair to your site and your authors. I have yet to see anything that shows that Wikipedia suffers from blacklisting Suite 101. --Siobhan Hansa 04:56, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Considering what hue and cry people sometimes raise about a single removed link, I agree it's oddly silent after this batch of 200 links. Meaning that not many can have been added by editors still concerned about our articles.
Your clients are under the pressure to generate incoming traffic. This is the reason for the blacklist. This won't change after lifting the blacklist. I doubt it can be changed. To change it would mean to overturn your whole business model. Speaking to your writers won't change this. And there is a lot of speaking to your writers to do. So far we have: (links mostly courtesy of A. B.'s contributions)
  • MaestroC (contribs) - added links to article by Chad Criswell, aka MaestroC.
  • Asorum (contribs) - added links to article by Alan Sorum.
  • Sanders9 (contribs) - added links to article by Chris Sanders.
  • Yvert (contribs) (trevy backwards) - added link to article by Trevy Thomas.
  • 70.152.215.247 (contribs) (BellSouth.net, geolocation Orlando, Florida) - added link to article by Jan Zeiger, Orlando, Florida. Has a bellsouth.net email.
  • 82.181.251.28 (contribs) (geolocation Helsinki, Finland) - added link to article by Lisa Sabol-Sikorski, Helsinki, Finland.
  • 62.162.225.113 (contribs) (geolocation Macedonia) - added links to article and personal page by Sam Vaknin, Macedonia
  • 70.51.155.226 (contribs), 69.199.39.86 (contribs) (geolocation Toronto, Canada) - added links to article by Mary Luz Mejia, Toronto, Canada.
Femto 19:02, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I spent several hours over the weekend going through Femto's edit history for the list of articles that were spammed, then going through the article histories to find, often out of hundreds of edits, which editor snuck in the Suite101.com link. Then I went to that editor's page, looked at their edit history and their edits to see what they had contributed to Wikipedia. Then I gave them the appropriate warning. I also looked to see if there had been any complaints about Femto's deletions on the article talk pages (none). I'm only partially through Femto's list, but so far I'm seeing nothing but bad faith spamming by multiple editors. If anyone wants to see my work, they can look at my edit history, then go to the pages of the editors I warned and check their contirbutions.
Burden of proof: The time has come for Suite101.com's CEO to gather the proof for us that his company, in fact, is not spamming Wikipedia. Show us the Suite101.com links that were added by established Wikipedia editors that were making unrelated, useful edits to this project. Prove to us with citations from the edit histories that his comments above were correct and not disingenuous. Show us the ratios of useful edits to spam edits. Show us how many editors were involved.
Otherwise, my own belief is that this matter is closed.
Good day, --A. B. 12:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Hello Femto and A.B., thanks for your hard work. Let me reiterate that I agree that some of the links to our site were not placed in accordance with Wikipedia's rules. I fully agree that such links should be individually removed. Suite101 on the other hand has never spammed Wikipedia, and we have explicitly told our writers not to insert links to their own articles. Almost all of our 250 writers have adhered to Wikipedia's rules, but a few writers have not. Still, blacklisting the whole site is disproportionate punishment. With 250 writers and 90,000 articles, the vast majority are not involved in this dispute.
Regarding payment of writers disqualifying Suite101, I would say that our business model is very similar to most other websites that display advertising: sites and writers benefit from visitors.
Thanks for agreeing to look into examples of references to Suite101 that are legitimate. I had already provided a short list of examples above - Thomas Garrett or F1 hybrid or Jugendstil or Abdul Qadir Jelani or Lunaception or Fort Simcoe. These articles were included in Femto's list of deletions.
I would like to suggest a solution that would protect Wikipedia and only penalize offenders: our site is structured in subdomains, and only the non-www subdomains' writers earn money for their articles ("www" is archived content of inactive writers). A writer "owns" one subdomain and cannot cross-post. Instead of blacklisting the whole site, I suggest you only blacklist the subdomains that were benefiting from abusive links:
musicappreciation.suite101.com
cookingresources.suite101.com
newworldwine.suite101.com
neuropetravel.suite101.com
childrenstv.suite101.com
beauty.suite101.com
countrymusic.suite101.com
boatingsailing.suite101.com
Is this plan acceptable? I look forward to hearing from you. Berger peter 01:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


I'm not in charge, but since 95+% of the stuff I've looked at has been abusive linking, I have every expectation that almost all of the remaining stuff is abusive spamdexing. So far, you've done nothing to contradict this or prove otherwise (see "Burden of proof" above). The ball is still in your court.
Why are these links from Wikipedia so very, very important to you anyway???? Are you genuinely concerned about Wikipedia's readers? Or just worried about page rank? So what if you don't have inbound links from Wikipedia -- if your highest goal is really excellent content, then Wikipedia links would be nice, but not very important to that goal. --A. B. 03:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


A. B. - thanks for the comments. I think I extracted all subdomains that were benefiting from these links, so if we restrict the blacklist to these subdomains we should not see any further abusive linking. If you found other subdomains, please let me know and we add them.
I am definitely not concerned about page rank or lost inbound links. Our site is very large and very capable of "swimming on its own" (200 or so links don't really help a scale of 90,000 articles a lot: I just looked into our statistics, in October only 0.2% of our visitors had come from Wikipedia). But I would like to avoid that Wikipedia contributors who liked our writers' work and used it to write a Wikipedia article and then link back to us are being told that they "spam" Wikipedia. Suite101 has editorially monitored quality content, we are proud of our site and do not think it's right to assume abusive intention when people link to it. A lot of our content is original research and a great additional resource open to Wikipedia's readers.
I think blacklisting individual subdomains only would be a good solution. Berger peter 19:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


The blacklist is a purely preventative measure, not a punitive, and is not a statement about the quality of a site. You've already talked to these writers, so there's little point in disallowing subdomains only — unless, you're trying to suggest you have little confidence yourself in your incentives to influence your clients not to promote your site. The main danger will continue not from those but from other pages.
Conflict of interest aside, suppose we made a deal to lift the blacklist if you agree taking the burden to personally watch Wikipedia for links to your site. Also aside that both types of links should not be added in any case — how would you distinguish between a merely inappropriate reference, and a sneaky reference intended to promote your site? How would we distinguish? We can't allow the few links that might be appropriate without opening the floodgates to abuse.
The criterion here isn't that your site is not a reliable source or that it makes money from advertisements. What distinguishes it from other commercial sites with unverified content is simply that enough inappropriate links were added in the past that blacklisting seemed in order, and there's no reason to assume that lots of inappropriate links wouldn't get added in the future. Femto 20:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


I added information to the Wikipedia boating safety articles on electric shock drowning and man-over-board procedures. I am a professional mariner, teach boating safety and thought I'd contribute to the knowledge base. I thought the writing I have done for Suite101 had some value in the boating safety arena. Receiving a blacklisting for a total of three links to good information seems very harsh, the text I added on electric shock drowning wasn't removed. Asorum 22:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Asorum, here are the rules which govern this issue:
Your web pages just don’t meet these standards. I’m widely published on the web and mine don’t either, if it’s any consolation.
  • ”Reliable sources” elaborates on what Wikipedia editors can and cannot use to meet the verifiability requirements. Again, neither my web material nor yours makes the cut.
  • ”Wikipedia:Conflict of interest” — this guideline says in a nutshell not to write about yourself or your company; also don’t link to your own site. Even if my web work met the all the other rules, I could not link to it — someone else would have to. Likewise, even the Queen of England doesn’t get to edit her own article. This guideline assumes even greater importance when their's a direct financial incentive to increase page rank and click volume, such as what you have as a Suite101.com editor.
You must feel as if these are a lot of links, policies and guidelines and, yes, they are. I listed them all here because there are many reasons — not just one — why links to your web pages (or mine) just plain aren’t allowed here.
As for your edits, as someone who’s worked in both electrical and marine safety, I appreciated that one paragraph you added on electrocution hazards. I suggest, however, that a more encyclopedic direction to steer people would be to some actual codes (such as, in the U.S., the National Electrical Safety Code and the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 303).
I’m not sure I understand why you added your web site’s link to the text someone else had already written about sailboat racing — it already had 3 links in that one paragraph. I’d think if you really thought it needed another link, then you'd link to something like the International Sailing Federation’s actual rules rather than a self-published site.
Finally, I just don’t see why the Man overboard article needed a link to your site when there were already links to man overboard material from the New Zealand Coast Guard, Sailing World, Yachting magazine, the International Sailing Federation, U.S. Sailing. Are they missing something?
About the blacklist: I just wouldn’t worry about it. I think it would only create a problem for you if you were trying to add a link to your site. But since you now know your site doesn’t meet Wikipedia’s requirements for links, it’s only a problem if you try to "sneak" a link in (which I know you wouldn’t do). --A. B. 01:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
A. B. Thanks for the information (I think). Your response is certainly more than I anticipated. Asorum 02:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Dear all: I think this discussion has been very helpful for many people, myself included. All our writers will definitely be much more sensitive to Wikipedia's rules re link submission and will not attempt to insert links to their own content. As I've said, very few of our writers have made this mistake, but these errors do not warrant denying other Wikipedia readers and contributors Suite101's wealth of information, built over 10 years and used as basis and reference for a range of Wikipedia articles.

I think it is also important to clarify a misunderstanding regarding Suite101's designation: Suite101 is not a self-publishing site. Applicants apply to write for a topic with their resumes, writing samples, and are rigorously interviewed. Writer's expertise and writing track record determine their suitability (we reject many more applicants than we accept). After writers are admitted to the site, they and their content are under supervision, coaching, and scrutiny by a team of 20 professional editors and our Editor-in-Chief, Joy Gugeler. All our writers can be contacted directly and are obliged to respond to inquiries. We and our content meet all Wikipedia criteria with respect to verifiability and reliability of sources.

If at some point in the future despite our instruction to the contrary a Suite101 writer should insert a link to an article on our site in noncompliance with Wikipedia's rules, he/she should be reprimanded individually rather than it being viewed as Suite101's attempt to spam Wikipedia. It is inevitable, given the volume of Wikipedia's contributors, that "bad links" will be inserted to even the most reputed websites, but that should reflect upon the contributor doing this linking, not the site he or she is linking to.

I hope that you reconsider the discussion in light of this and I look forward to hearing from you. Berger peter 01:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

bellaonline dot com -- similar to Suite101 or not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.bellaonline.com

One of the Suite101 writers also writes for this site. Few ads, but 98 Wikipedia links. (Then again, some sites' the linked-to pages can be OK with all the other pages highly spammy) No time left today to investigate if it's as abusive as Suite101 -- it may not be. Freelance writers may be writing for Time magazine one week, Suite101 the next. One's professionally edited and supervised, meeting WP:RS, the other totally fails. So Bellaonline may be OK -- just no time to check it out.

Thanks for the help. --A. B. 17:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's another candidate. witchvox.com Found in a pagelist[3] in an article for an author who also writes for suite101. We have lots of links, and the site prominently features "Times Read" counters and author profiles. Femto 12:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

If there's a Wikipedia meetup some time ...

... it might be nice to have a half-day workshop by folks from Google, Yahoo, etc. about spamdexing. We're all self-taught amateurs and they probably have people that can teach us a lot. It's in their interest to improve our effectiveness. --A. B. 17:34, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd start with learning from your "opponents", take a look at what techniques they use, and feel free to ask :) --Jdevalk 20:50, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Like so many of yours, Jdevalk, that's an interesting idea -- what are your suggestions? --A. B. 00:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Every once in a while, you guys see a weblog coming by, like you did mine, talking about adding links to wikipedia, now if some of you would check technorati for that, you could get to some more of those. If you read their blogs, you can learn about their techniques... Ofcourse, SEO's want links for two reasons: traffic, and linkbuilding / PageRank building. Traffic links need to be on pages that people actually might visit, whereas linkbuilding can be done from less interesting pages, since Google seems to like these just as much. --Jdevalk 12:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

update on rosencomet.com related issue: Starwood festival

Carried forward from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Oct#rosencomet.com:

Many pages on neo-pagans have links to Starwood festival and a mediation group is trying to workout if they should be included, or if these are really a case of WP:SPAM; see Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-11-03 Starwood Festival.

Personally, I'm busy with more commercial types of links, but I though others might be interested in looking at this and weighing in. --A. B. 20:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

This seems to be an ongoing saga that is beyond spam problems:
JonHarder 03:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

knowledgeoflondon dot com

79 links -- came across it while warning Suite101 linkers -- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.knowledgeoflondon.com
--A. B. 22:48, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

looks spammy, i'd remove them, if i had a tool to do it all at once :), is there such a thing for Mac OS? :) --Jdevalk 14:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I've removed all the links I found from the main namespace except for List of London bombings where I couldn't find another source to back up what was said in the article. Also see User:Knowledgeoflondon and User talk:Knowledgeoflondon. I don't know of a tool for removing them automatically - I do it all manually and I think it's more interesting that way. Just tonight I went on a diversionary trip rescuing some high-quality history links to the BBC and rescued the statues article, all because I was forced to read at least the external links section of each article. Graham87 14:18, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

uitinlimburg.nl

189 links at the time of writing link search; as far as I can see, all hotel/restaurant etc lists or non-english pages, lots of pop-ups. Mr Stephen 22:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

All gone. Mr Stephen 00:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
23 links readded by Limboo (talk • contribs). Spam1 message given, will strip out links. Mr Stephen 14:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Another added after this (cleaned up and spam2 left). Worth keeping an eye on. Since only one this time s/he may be beginning to get the message. -- Siobhan Hansa 16:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Adsense-focused blogs

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.500greatestsongsofalltime.blogspot.com

One of several phony blogs set up primarily for AdSense$$$. (There are other blogs that may have Adsense ads, but the blogs are not campaigned across Wikipedia). --A. B. 05:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I cleaned them all up. It was a bit of a pain because almost every one was added by a different IP from the same range belonging to a Brazilian host (telemar.net.br). If the campaign continues, might have to do a range block. OhNoitsJamie Talk 06:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed three more links which were added two days ago. --Chocolatepizza 03:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
2 more 500greatestsongsofalltime.blogspot.com links added this month. Same two Brazilian IP addresses also added links to http://www.lyricsdownload.com
A better solution than IP-blocking may be site blacklisting.
I found these while spot-checking the last few weeks' WikiProject Spam reports -- it might be worth going through our other old reports when we have time, then blacklisting recidivists.
No time to fix these Brazilian links now -- can the next shift take this on? Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 16:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

E-mail_spam EL section needs rework

IMHO, the external link section for the E-mail_spam page could be loads smaller, and most of the links there don't add any info... What do others think of this? --Jdevalk 11:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Not much in the way of advertising there, but I do wonder how many links we need to sites on how to fight spam and to anti-spam orgs. There are links to a couple of forums in there that should probably go. -- Donald Albury 15:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

dpreview

There are 232 links to dpreview.com which need to be sorted through. I haven't detected a spamming campaign, but only checked who added the links to a couple of articles. The /reveiw/* links may be OK. The forums almost certainly have no value. The links to the main page are probably off topic in most articles. Thoughts? JonHarder 15:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

For what's it's worth, dpreview is perhaps the best-known (and thorough) digital camera review site (I've been using it for years to pick out cameras). I could easily see random folks adding those links versus the owner of the site. I agree that the forum links and main page links are probably not appropriate, but a review link for an article on a particular camera model would be OK in my book...that is, assuming that it's not mass campaign on the part of the site's owners. OhNoitsJamie Talk 20:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Second opinion requested - album reviews

On one hand we have a clear spammer in 82.93.41.199 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS). On the other hand, it's not like the links being added are completely useless as they are listing existing reviews of various rock albums. What should we do with this? Pascal.Tesson 20:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Spam of the worst possible sort - they're just trying to get folk to click on the "buy from" links so they get a referral fee. It's also inappropriate for an external ink due to a number of concerns on WP:EL (for starters it's not a reliable source and perhaps "Sites that violate the copyrights of others"), Thanks/wangi 20:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok, going through the list. I noticed that 217.169.231.1 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS) is also spamming... Pascal.Tesson 20:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
All links to www.xs4all.nl/~fsgroen... if you want to start at the top, i'll start at the bottom! Thanks/wangi 21:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
All done. Thx for the help. Pascal.Tesson 21:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
One more just removed added by 217.169.231.1 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS) two days ago. --Chocolatepizza 03:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Nofollow at the village pump.

FYI, this discussion on the village pump should interest people active here. Pascal.Tesson 21:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

It should, but I hope that people have a look at the archived discussion starting at [4] before wading it. Many people regard nofollow as a much wider issue than the spam one. Perhaps they are misguided, but reading previous discussion is never a bad thing --BozMo talk 23:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Second opinion

Can someone please take a look at the contributions of Bodymindheal (talk · contribs)? It looks like its simply promotional to me, but I don't know enough about the topics to be sure. Thanks. Deli nk 22:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Clearly spam in my book. JonHarder 22:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Insertion of XM Radio template into unrelated articles

How does one deal with the insertion into numerous articles of a large template with channel listings to XM radio? See [5] for an example. It's not linkspam; its the insertion of a table.

User contributions page is at [6]. Kablammo 00:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

There is such a thing as internal content spamming. I'll assume good faith and gave my €0.02. Femto 13:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I have also posted a comment at User talk:TravKoolBreeze. Kablammo 14:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

creativeinvest dot com

See what you think of this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.creativeinvest.com

I just deleted some of their links. --A. B. 18:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Links to Amazon.com

Please let me know where to look if this has been discussed before. Are links to books on Amazon.com allowed, as it is a commercial site? See the links starting at Special:Linksearch&limit=500&offset=2464&target=*.amazon.com (meaning those not used as a source for an image). And as a more specific example the 2 links in 1001_Movies_You_Must_See_Before_You_Die --Chocolatepizza 04:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Generally links to Amazon et al. should be avoided and instead the book's ISBN number should be listed. Links to a particular retailer are discouraged because they presuppose a desire to purchase rather than borrow a book, favor one retailer over another, and fail to take the varied geographic locations of readers into account. Wikipedia has a special way of handling ISBN numbers so that each user can set up there own preference for a default book source that suits them. When you list a book just type ISBN followed by the ISBN number and the wiki software will automatically create a link to the special booksource page. So it looks like this: ISBN 0198611862 (the number can also be written with the standard dashes).
Occasionally a link to Amazon or some other site is provided as a convenience when the text being referred to is actually available on the site through something like Amazon's "Look in side" feature. This is rare for an external link that isn't a reference. Even when the external link is provided, full details and the ISBN link to our booksource page should still be made available to readers. --Siobhan Hansa 20:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

CommodiCast

Is CommodiCast (talk · contribs) editing for clients? The CommodiCast website states ... solving complex technical and business problems across [the government entities, energy, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, automobile, financial services, biotech, lumber] industries ... The goal: to help clients sustain and maintain competitive advantages. I removed substantial copyvio material from Pharmaceutical company. (It is unfortunate that good faith editors will comment on but not confront this type of behavior.) This user has entangled numerous links in similar articles, more than I have time to sort out right now. The more normal edits appear to be cut and paste jobs without a lot of thought if they are appropriate or benificial to a particular article. A related user is Complexica (talk · contribs). Should the added links all be removed as highly probably confict of interest? JonHarder 16:08, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

FYI

I took a fire axe to the best bad example that I've seen. I would appreciate people keeping an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get out of hand again. --GraemeL (talk) 18:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

An interesting discussion on nofollow

As you might remember, BozMo (talk · contribs) recently suggested that we stop using nofollow on all namespaces. Which of course is funny since we recently suggested here that we should start using it on the mainspace (the only space where it's not used). Anyways, I started discussing it with Bozmo and the discussion is quite interesting I have put it on my talk page user talk:Pascal.Tesson#Nofollow. I think some of you will find it interesting and I found his argumentation surprisingly convincing and while it has not completely swayed me (and certainly has not convinced me that nofollow should be removed altogether) it has changed my perspective on the problem. If you want to comment on it, I suggest you use this page rather than my talk page or BozMo's though. Happy reading, Pascal.Tesson 22:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

That is an interesting discussion. I'm someone who generally believes that the nofollow tag should be used throughout. While the arguments Bozmo makes are well thought out, and I agree on some things, I still disagree on a few important points. The main one being that spam isn't getting worse. Perhaps in numbers and visibility, this may be the case, but I think it is getting worse in terms of sophisitication and ability to stick around. Some spam is easy. It's not difficult to figure out a link to a page that's little more than a glorified shopping cart is probably not appropriate. I wouldn't doubt that this is becoming more rare, as it is a technique which is incredibly likely to fail. However, if you look around on SEO message boards, you'll find discussion of more complex plans for adding links that don't get removed. One example is copying text from another source (including another page on wikipedia) and pasting it in the linked page. I've removed a couple of these such links that had stuck around for many months.
Here's one particular point from the discussion I'd like to address . . .
Philosophy: Nofollow is a self declaration of poor quality. I think WP in general is above average quality for the web.
I agree with this sentiment. Inserting nofollow is an admission that there's a chance that this link may not be a good one. Sadly, I think this is an admission that needs to be made. On many (and I would hope most) articles on wikipedia, there are several experienced and knowledgable editors watching the pages who can intelligently evaluate whether a link is legitimate. On these pages, I feel reasonably confident that nearly all external links are good ones. However there is a substantial minority of articles that aren't watched by many editors. In these articles, it's possible to add inappropriate links without much oversite and have a decent chance of having it stick around. Take a look through articles on the hundreds of varieties of mobile phones for example. While some of those are relatively clean, on balance, I'd have little confidence making a blanket recommendation for the links.
I think most of the problems come from articles with few experienced editors watching them. It would be nice to just disable nofollow on pages we have some degree of confidence in. I wonder if it would be possible to use nofollow when the number of active editors watching the page is below a particular threshold, and not use the attribute when it's above. ScottW 23:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
For what its worth personally I think that a default nofollow which can be whitelisted link by link by administraters would be the best solution. It is difficult to administer page by page but a version of the WikiBlacklist where a sysop-edit only whitelist avoids nofollow everywhere would work and may be technically easier. At least a sysop has something to lose if the spam police (that's you guys) disagreed on decisions. This discussion is helpful if only it convinces people nofollow is far from ideal and it is worth making an effort for a better way. It would be nice if we could just take DMOZ listing or similar as a whitelist but I hate to admit (as a DMOZ editor) that quality there ain't great either--BozMo talk 08:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Just a brief note about our role -- in some ways we are the "spam police", but we're a pretty small force and spammers have to be very flagrant to get on our radar screen. Most of what we get involved with is pretty bad faith. That, or else "good faith spamming" but done on a massive scale. (I usually assume that it's good faith if the editor has never been warned before and if no one else has ever been warned for adding spammy links to that same site). In the spammer world, we're often called link-nazis, but we're actually pretty nice guys for the first warning cycle or two. Most spam reversion has to be done by the zillions of other Wikipedia editors. --A. B. 16:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


Intended as a compliment not a provocation. But then I'm middle-aged with loads of kids and regard police as a good thing. If I was still an angry young man I might have a different view (sigh). In the model I propose though someone has to watch for rogue sysops. That's beyond the casual reverter like me: I'd stick to the "afsdsisjm" graffiti --BozMo talk 19:21, 25 November 2006 (UTC)


Spam redirection, and hidden spamlinks

Hi all. In the past week or so, the article Logo has been targetted by spammers whose intent is to increase the Google ranking of buypillz.com. However, instead of advertising this link, they advertise links that redirect to that domain, and moreover nest it in a div with a -10000px offset, so that it's not seen on the page. Even worse, this comes from open proxies with only one edit per IP (examples: [7], [8], [9], [10] etc.)

Could I request that:

  1. We blacklist all the redirect domains immediately.
  2. We blacklist the target domain immediately.
  3. Perhaps someone can run a bot to find articles using similar spamming techniques.

Any comments? Mindmatrix 00:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

See these two threads that mention this as well Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive119#Hidden_div_tag_spam and [[11]]. --71.249.72.21 00:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
One of the IPs seems to be registered to Fairfax Public Schools see [12] so perhaps we ought to use the abuse process in place for that IP. --BozMo talk 10:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
One other comment. Don't rely on blacklists. See Domain Kiting. People can easily run off new domains for free and use autodirects to build up the target domain. --BozMo talk 10:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Oh and one other thing you probably know but the syntax to check if these particular links (as opposed to the technique) are anywhere else is just Special:Linksearch/. As far as I can see these particular links aren't anywhere else. --BozMo talk 11:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I have seen entire wiki's die when they let unregistered users go, and they make huge spam lists that are invisible, using bots. Wikipedia has enough users to stop these thankfully, because I've worked on wikipedia for months before I registered. - Thekittenofterra 19:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

A request

An editor has linked almost all articles on South Korean towns to pages on his own site. I removed some of this links while working on fixing the placement of a template on those wikipedia pages. He asked why on my talk page and i directed him to WP:EL to demonstrate why those links were inappropriate. In responce he readded the links and even created a template to use to link to his site. Granted I could revert war this forever, but I don't think that would accomplish much in this case. I was wondering if someone here would be willing to bring this up with him. thanks --T-rex 20:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

There are a few cases where I don't remove links to a quality site that is added by someone who is affiliated with it. This site may be approaching that quality. It passes the "wiki with a substantial number of editors" test. To me, the wiki's most siginificant problem is lack of references and verifiablity, which keeps me from suggesting that the links should stay. I'll remain neutral for now. JonHarder 04:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Korea#External links being removed -- it looks like Mithridates produced the template in response to a request from another WP:KO editor. I also note that he's a pretty prolific editor without a a history of abuse. That doesn't make the links necessarily good or bad per WP:EL, but it does make me think that this editor is probably operating in good faith. As for whether the wiki itself should be linked to, here's what the "Links normally to be avoided" section says:
"Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors."
Right now, this site has 140 registered editors, 21 of which have edited their user pages. The site claims 6301 articles so far. Spending about 20 minutes processing the most recent 500 changes with Excel and a text editor:
  • 500 edits over 86 hours -- about 5.8 edits/hour
  • 3 page moves
  • 3 page deletions
  • 69 files uploaded
  • 1 user block
  • 4 new users created -- about 1 per day
  • The remaining 420 edits were made to 273 different articles
  • The 500 total edits were made by 25 different editors
    • 12 anonymous IP addresses
    • The 5 busiest editors made 358 edits (72%)
    • Average (mean) edits per editor: 20
    • Median edits per editor: 4.5
After that analysis, I then found a page for all edits through 17 November 2006:
  • "As of November 17, 2006 the wiki has reached over 6,015 pages, 26,343 edits, and 439,060 page views, since we launched on November 23, 2005. That comes to 1.97 average edits per page, and 16.67 views per edit."
By comparison:
After all of this number-crunching, I was still scratching my head on the question what represents "a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors", so I left a query at Wikipedia talk:External links.
I think it's a judgement call, the line in WP:EL was intended to ban wikis with just a handful of editors. It's like any other external link, editors have to check it out and evaluate if it meets the standards set by EL (not just the one specifically mentioning wikis). The one in question isn't huge, but seems adequately stable and has a decent number of editors. --Milo H Minderbinder 14:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


I know this guy is a serious contributor to wikipedia, and thats why I made this request, as it is an instance of a respect editor using wikipedia to smap his own site. If this guy was a new editor he would have been blocked long ago, problem solved. This is different --T-rex 15:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how 234 external links to something that is larly a wikipedia fork to begin with is not spam --T-rex 20:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I tend to give more leeway to an experienced editor with a history of solid contributions. On the other hand, contributions by a single purpose account promoting a site or service are pretty much speedy-delete-on-sight for me. I arbitrarily checked three of the 234 external links that had a corresponding article here and found that the galbijim had a more comprehensive article in each case and either they were not forked from here or had diverged enough that the similarities were not obvious. None of the three articles had sources (included the corresponding three here), which is a weakness already noted. I guess I'm moving from neutral to weak keep for these links. I must be going soft in my old age. JonHarder 00:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • GalbiJim is a good wiki, certainly not a mirror, but as none of the articles there are ever going to provide a unique resource beyond what a page on WP would contain if it were a featured article, it falls foul of "Links normally to be avoided, #1: Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain once it becomes a Featured article." As I've noted to Mithridates, the most WP solution is to flesh out the WP articles rather than link off site to GJ. Deizio talk 02:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Davetabler

While you're handling requests, can someone take a look at the links being added by Davetabler (talk • contribs)? I'd hate to see another newbie escalate to spam4 warnings + a block -- perhaps someone else can talk him out of his current direction. I gave him a spam1; he's since added back some of the links. He's been adding links to his own book plus a number of theispot.com pages. Thanks, --A. B. 03:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Spam only accounts

I've come across a number of long time spam only accounts and IP's, primarily created to spam one or two of their links at a time then cross spam to avoid detection. The most heavily linkspamed sites were:

Some of the more recent additions poping up and to watch out for are:

These last four sites claim they are under construction, however they are just pages of garbage keywords. User accounts connected to the links;

  1. NavigationControl (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  2. Click45 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  3. Alex-Ship (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  4. Eros234 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  5. Alexander-shipping (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  6. Marine2311 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  7. Koeln-traveler (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  8. Olympian28 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  9. EiriniColonia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  10. Bestler (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  11. AcaTekkno (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  12. Tyrvika (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  13. 62.38.171.15 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  14. Momolo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  15. Touroe (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  16. 62.38.92.161 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  17. Serifiotis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  18. Theosbill (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  19. 82.34.120.58 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  20. E2ow (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  21. Tasos73 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  22. Ancientgreece (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  23. Cretantruth (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  24. Sydney-Aussie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  25. Koln-weiser (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  26. Taspapas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  27. 89.210.44.111 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  28. WilliamBruno (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  29. Tasoulis1987 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  30. Realtor2006 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  31. AlexShips (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  32. Alexanderhips (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  33. 89.210.11.148 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  34. SofiaTova (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  35. ConTom (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  36. John-Tonia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  37. Australianwonde (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  38. Turki-Izmir (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  39. GreekEntry (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  40. KostasG1973 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  41. Peter234 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  42. LiberianGod (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  43. JohnBouros (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  44. Italian-Cybermage (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  45. FamilyGuyStewie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  46. Ko.45 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  47. 213.5.29.173 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  48. 89.210.48.184 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  49. Nguyen-Nle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  50. Martinis-Ioannis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  51. Yrlika (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  52. Thing-of-the-future (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  53. Serifiotis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  54. 62.38.171.73 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  55. EiriniColonia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  56. Travelwise51 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  57. Corinthian III (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  58. Creeator (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  59. Olympianas30 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  60. Etow1234 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  61. Tasoulis1987 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  62. Patrinosgreece (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  63. DorisBot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  64. Ew4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  65. Australian boy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  66. 82.34.120.58 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  67. Myconos2006 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  68. 213.5.33.215 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  69. Johnhouse123 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

I have removed much of the linkspam and have searched for related users, but I'm sure theres more. Any way of blocking or removing these accounts? Hu12 08:35, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Checked the contributions again (Corinthian III only edited such a link, weak case) and blocked the accounts indefinitely as spam-only-sock-accounts. There's not much we can do about the anonymous IPs. Femto 12:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

demeuresdegrece.com

  1. DemeuresDeGrece (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Hu12 21:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Definitely not spammy enough for a block, unless you can provide other evidence the warning will suffice. Femto 13:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

kastrokyllinis.com http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.kastrokyllinis.com

  1. Amalia200 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  2. Kastrok (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  3. Kastrokyllinis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  4. Elen2001 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  5. Markussepp (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

love the summary [13] Summary- + Author tselepis athanasios created by tselepis athanasios for www.kastrokyllinis.com projectHu12 21:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity" and I'm not quite sure it can't be attributed to the latter in this case. Gave them all a spam1 with the helpful links. Though if they continue I'll attribute it to the first. Femto 11:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I've usernameblocked User:Markussepp, there's an existing User:Markussep (see also User talk:Femto#Markussepp: 'revenge' account for a removed link?) Won't bother with the others until further evidence, as they seem inactive and we need to watch for new links coming in anyway. Femto 21:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


I gleaned some additional links from the source code of one of those pages:

--A. B. 00:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Uhh -- some of those are legit. And the others don't have links here right now.
  • kennyskingdom.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.kennyskingdom.com

  1. Ryanmcmillan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  2. 141.106.33.40 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  3. 64.83.181.162 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
User talk:Ryanmcmillan was blanked, I'll take that as acknowledgement that he got the message. Watch the IPs in any case. Femto 12:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • southparkfiles.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.southparkfiles.com

  1. 85.146.157.187 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  2. 80.127.172.83 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)

adsense riddled low quality fansite being campain spammed on All of the south park character articles.Hu12 20:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

  • microstockgroup.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.microstockgroup.com

  • microstockforum.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.microstockforum.com

  • talkmicro.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.talkmicro.com

  1. Wikileaf (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  2. Sybille Yates (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  3. 85.166.47.103 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  4. 85.166.6.85 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
  • laurahird.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.laurahird.com

  • danforthreview.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.danforthreview.com

Hirdlaura (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

  • gerardbeirne.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.gerardbeirne.com

  • gerardbeirne.blogspot.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.gerardbeirne.blogspot.com

  1. Gerardbeirne (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  • faber.co.uk

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.faber.co.uk

  1. MDV (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  • oanda.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.oanda.com

  1. KMarie14 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Memory Alpha

It is my opinion that the amount of external links (1525) to http://memory-alpha.org/ is becoming a problem. I first noticed this randomly browsing and had my thoughts confirmed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.memory-alpha.org
See the following examples:

Chronological list of Star Trek stories and all sister pages:

each have hundreds of links to memory-alpha, probably a thousand if you sum them.

Abdul Abulbul Amir is a song that doesn't have much to do with Star Trek, except for the android Lore singing the first verse in a TNG episode, but there's anyway a link to memory-alpha, adding nothing to the article.

Sarah Kerrigan, a fictional character that has nothing to do with Star Trek, has a link to memory-alpha because "it is believed that the borg queen was inspired...".

47 (number) was another good excuse for some spam, because the number appears frequently in the series.

Carrington Award mentions the deep Space 9 episode Prophet Motive (DS9 episode) that has a wikipedia entry, however the Carrington Award article does not link to the appropriate wikipedia article, but to the memory-alpha article.

See also Geoffrey Thorne: only external links, most of them to memory-alpha.

Very often, the memory-alpha folks put external links in the middle of the text instead of placing them in the external links, probably to fool the users who don't pay attention to the different colour and little arrow, or to gain google rank because of the vicinity of relevant text words in the middle of the text, or maybe both. Four of the many, infinite examples here: Richard Daystrom, Eric A. Stillwell, James Swallow, Lady Washington.

Want more? Wikipedia has an article about For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (TOS episode), but Impact event doesn't link to that article - it links to memory-alpha, in the middle of the text. Bleah.

Do I have to continue? Well I can't, 'cause the list is long and life is short. What do you people think should be done now?

// Duccio 12:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Interesting. Only just yesterday I added a link to Memory Alpha. On the Trombone page in the Trombones in Pop-Culture section I added the following:
Will Riker, a Star Trek character portrayed by Jonathan Frakes, loves trombone and plays it well, 
with Mr. Frakes performing his own songs.[14]
I used the Memory Alpha link as a source for the statement that the actor plays his own music in the TV show. Indeed Riker playing trombone is featured in a number of episodes, as ST fans know, and he loves his trombone. So I used to Memory Alpha link to 1) provide a source for my statement, and 2) provide a source that went into much greater detail on the issue for those interested enough to follow the link in the first place.
In other words, I think the Memory Alpha link is appropriate in the circumstance I used it and for the reasons stated. I take no position as to your view of Memory Alpha because I have no experience on which to base a response. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 12:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, providing a counter-example doesn't really help here: of course, among those 1500 links, some might be legitimate, and yours probably are, but this doesn't change the fact that we have 1500 links to memory-alpha and most of them should not be there in my opinion. // Duccio 18:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Agree. Thanks. --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 03:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
WikiProject Spam can only cure the symptoms; you might want to bring it up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Star Trek, there's the people that need to be influenced. Apparently there's earlier discussion on the appropriateness of these links. Femto 13:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
There's more! See memoryalpha template usage: more 1684 links, for a total of 3209 links. // Duccio 13:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

One more reason to avoid divorce ...

Lots of inappropriate on the various divorce and family law pages. Following up on one bad set of links just led to more articles that had become "spam holes", in turn revealing additional inappropriate links. Here's a selection:

Lots of cleanup and warnings left to do on all of these -- I ran out of time. --A. B. 19:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

A partial list of editors involved:
--A. B. 20:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Some affected articles -- many remain very spammy:
--A. B. 20:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Then, if you find yourself living newly alone, you can turn to 101cookingrecipes.com; they’ve been pretty busy around here too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.101cookingrecipes.com
--A. B. 20:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Finally, what do you think of this one: http://www.deltabravo.net
--A. B. 20:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I see MensHealthDaily listed here only yesterday by A. B. Yet another wikipedian who has a personal crusade against web sites containing Google AdSense code despite Wikipedia policy used the site's being listed here only yesterday by only one person as the reason to remove links to the article from Censorship and List of banned books. Then, when I reverted him because of his known position to follow his own policy instead of Wikipedia policy and because the article adds to the underlying wiki page, he reverted again calling what I did "vandalism."

So I have questions for anyone reading this:

  1. Does its being listed on this project page necessarily mean it is spam in all of its uses on Wikipedia?
  2. Is there not a single instance where a cite to the site is appropriate?
  3. On the Censorship page is the following link spam? The ACLU and Book Banning, by Humberto Fontova, author of "Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant," 13 July 2006
  4. Same question, but for the List of banned books page.
  5. Should the link here be restored to the pages I raise in this comment?
  6. If so and that same user continues to remove the links as he has in the past with a mean-spirited attitude, what can be done to stop him?

The article to which I site on the MensHealthDaily web site is substantive to the issues on the wiki page in which it was cited. Here is the first paragraph for flavor:

A children’s school book titled “Let’s Go to Cuba” depicts Castro’s fiefdom as a combination Emerald City and Willi Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Some American parents of Cuban heritage noticed it and filed a complaint with the Miami-Dade school board, who voted to remove the book from the public school library. The ACLU claims to be scandalized and filed suit to retain the book. “Today’s precedent — if allowed to stand” said the ACLU attorney, Howard Simon, “opens the door to yank virtually any book off the shelf of a school library at the whim of a single parent and a school board judgment that there is some inaccuracy or omission in a book.”

That does not sound like spam to me on the Censorship page or on the List of Banned Books page. Read the rest of the article, you'll see. That sounds to me like Wikipedia policy that allows such articles despite some possibility of spamishness takes precedence over one wikipedian's crusade to remove all AdSense pages from the face of Wikipedia. I mean his contributions pages shows huge amount of removals of links from various articles by this one author, all done within a very short time span, then his repeated reversals of other people like me reverting his personal policy Pov presumptuousness.

So I would like to continue using the link as I used in on the pages I used it. Is this okay? --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 13:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Yikes, LegitimateAndEvenCompelling! I did not know I was on a campaign against Adsense ads as such. In my life off-Wikipedia, I invest money in Adsense ads, so I certainly have nothing against them. As my critics say, I may be "humorless", a "rogue editor" and a "link-nazi", but I'm no Adsense "crusader". Here's what I wrote at the top of this section:
"Lots of inappropriate on the various divorce and family law pages. Following up on one bad set of links just led to more articles that had become "spam holes", in turn revealing additional inappropriate links."
While I characterized the articles as spam holes, I was careful not to describe most of the individual edits as spam. If you look at my edit history as I warned some of the contributors, you'll see most got the standard, lowest-level mild warnings such as Welcomespam, Spam0 and Spam1 depending on how cynically they seemed to be campaign-spamming. If you read the text of these standard warnings, they're basically very polite requests not to do this again.
As for your question, "Does its being listed on this project page necessarily mean it is spam in all of its uses on Wikipedia?" Well, there's nothing very "official" about this page. There's no link-sheriff, crusader hierarchy or spam posse here -- just some part-time volunteers. Having said that, the regulars here have a lot of experience with linking-related policies and guidelines and how they actually play out when working with problematic links.
Some additional comments about links to Adsense pages:
  1. Ads are not necessarily a problem. Time magazine, CNN, etc. all have lots of ads but meet WP:RS, WP:OR and WP:V. Most Adsense pages don't meet those rules.
  2. I see lots of inappropriate Adsense pages linked to Wikipedia articles; I leave most of the links alone. When volunteering as a helper with WikiProject Spam, I'm looking for abuse, not others' poor editorial judgement in picking links. (For an example of my thinking on this, see my comment in the religioustolerance dot org thread I started above.) If I just wanted to pick 1000 fights, I'd start in on Blogspot links -- here are the first 500 of probably a zillion. (Heck, even I've got a blogspot blog, just not linked to a Wikipedia article). As of today, Wikipedia has 1.5 million articles which have received 94 million edits by 2.8 million different editors. There are at most several dozen volunteers at WikiProject Spam that put in more than a few minutes a week. Wikipedia's links are "golden" in the eyes of most search engines; a link from Wikipedia will really juice up a site's page ranking, traffic, product sales and ad-click revenues. They are highly desirable to most web site owners, among whom there are hundreds of full-time "black-hat" search engine optimization and web site operators who will break any Wikipedia rule to get those links -- they're worth money.
  3. The real problem with non-spammy Adsense pages is that they don't meet Wikipedia:Verifiability, a fundamental Wikipedia policy. In particular, see the sections "Sources of dubious reliability" and "Self-published sources (online and paper)". That doesn't necessarily make them spam, but it does make them inappropriate per WP:EL.
  4. Adsense ads are a flag, but only a small flag. When I see a page with Adsense ads, I check out how much value the page adds as a Wikipedia link -- the ad-to-informative-value ratio. I look to see the editorial supervision behind the content -- is this just something that's self-published? I also look to figure out the site-owner's motivations and interest in providing real value. Many are just "scraper sites".
  5. The real red flag for me is the linking editor's edit pattern. If I see campaign-spamming, I go after it. That's how I came up with the list above. It took me about 6 hours to put together the list above. To find who added a link, I had to wade through hundreds of edits per article to find the linker's user name or IP. I found enough spammed links to see there was at least some campaign-spamming. I did not finish looking at every edit (hence my comment about unfinished work).
  6. My interest is in campaign spam, not random link-policing. When following a campaigner's edits, I often find them on pages such as those above that are general spam holes. Since I tend to work editor-by-editor and spamsite-by-spamsite rather than article-by-article, I'll just slap a {cleanup-spam} tag on any afflicted article and keep moving. I'm hoping the tag flags someone to go through and evaluate the other links.
  7. MensHealthDaily sounds like a "real" publication but when I looked, it seemed there was no real editorial supervision. I'm not saying it was bad or that it didn't have good content, but it has to meet Wikipedia's requirements for encyclopedic quality sources to merit a link. I don't think that's true of most MensHealthDaily pages. I won't comment on the Fontova article; this would seem to be the applicable guidance from WP:V:
    "Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by a well-known, professional researcher in a relevant field or a well-known professional journalist. These may be acceptable so long as their work has been previously published by reliable third-party publications ..."
    I'm assuming if Fontova has a Wikipedia article, he meets this criteria.
    "... However, exercise caution: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so."
    I'll leave this for you and Hu12 to sort out.
I know Hu12's very good to work with, so I'm confident you'll get to the right answer.
--A. B. 16:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

LegitimateAndEvenCompelling, I'll just address the edits that you mentioned. The campaign-spammed MensHealthDaily copy [15] on both List of banned books and censorship has 4 adsense ads and 2 banner ads for one article, that would be considered an objectionable amount of advertising. reference External links policy #5 Links to sites with objectionable amounts of advertising. This is not following my own policy, but Wikipedia's. Here is the same article, without the excessive adsense spam on the page [16]. Solution, why not use that in the article or event the print version [17]? Try to Assume good faith with WikiProject Spam members and keep a Neutral point of view. Understand the spam problem from Wikipedia's point of view. Articles are being overrun by spam and it takes the effort of many dedicated members, like A. B. to keep the articles clean of advertising. Also, Please stop the personal attacks as cited in your edit summaries, my talk and on project talk pages. thank you Hu12 17:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

76.186.104.189 (talk • contribs) has continued adding child-support-laws-state-by-state.com spam in spite of multiple warnings, including a last warning. I was unable to get him blocked in spite of meeting all the requirements for listed in the green block at WP:AIV. I expect he'll be back -- please keep an eye out for him:
Thanks, --A. B. 20:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Seeing as 76.186.104.189's already had his "last warning" and ignored it, I left him my own polite note. --A. B. 20:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Reverted it again added a 3RR, user reported and blocked with an expiry time of 31 hours (Vandalism.) Hu12 01:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
A.B., thanks for the long explanation. And I hope it benefits others who come here as well.
Hu12, thanks for the explanation. Based on it, I withdraw my previous statements. (What should I do, go back and put a strikeout through it all?) But may I suggest you pull spam links down in a customer friendly manner. Honestly it was your approach that soured me, including references to problems with my initial edits as a newbie, problems basically everyone experiences when new, and your evasiveness in answering my questions. I see now that it was not really evasiveness, rather just that in your major anti-spam efforts, not enough time is available in a day to babysit every single person who comes along. How about, for example, suggesting the article may exist on a less spammy site. I don't know, whatever. Like the article you found for me that existed at another site. I was not aware of that other site or I would have used it. Now I'm going to add back in those articles, only with the improved link (to the print page). Would this be acceptable to you? --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 13:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe an edit summary like this might help:
Type:
deleted inappropriate link per [[WP:EL]] and [[WP:V]]; leave me a [[User talk:A. B.|message]] if you disagree
to get:
deleted inappropriate link per WP:EL and WP:V; leave me a message if you disagree
Just be sure to take my name out of it if you use it. --A. B. 14:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Most legit sites offer these "print views". If its a "must have" link to meaningful, relevant content but may be a bit user unfrendly (ads flashing,promotions, ect.), but not spammy, you may want to consider using or substituting current links with those. This can be a helpful resource when alternative copies aren't avaliable. Hu12 18:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

child-support-laws-state-by-state.com

  1. 76.186.104.189 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log) back again.. mabey time for a blacklist?... Hu12 00:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
update, the IP for child-support-laws-state-by-state.com has been blocked for six months.request for child-support-laws-state-by-state.com blacklist --Hu12 06:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Innocent looking site but suspicious anyway? -- see the source code

213.184.238.50 (talk · contribs) was adding lots of links earlier this year to articles like Guatemala and History of Guatemala. They linked to adless articles with decent content -- not good enough to justify a link, but still, from his pattern of edits and warnings he was clearly a spammer. What was his angle? Out of curiosity, I opened the source code for zimbab.net, one of his sites.

That was an eye-opener -- embedded in the html but not displayed on the page were over 1000 links to porn sites, many really ...well ... pretty bad and some probably illegal (child porn) from the names of the domains (actualincest.97s3a.org, etc.).

Other browsers may access the source code with some menu bar item with a name such as "Source" or "Page Source".

Articles:

--A. B. 21:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, good catch. This is another instance of a spammer copying text from a legitimate source [18], and using it to mask page rank spam. This is an example of what I meant earlier when I said that I thought spam was getting worse. ScottW 00:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, well I've been reading this page for a bit since making the comment and I can see what you mean. I won't quite eat my words on wanting nofollow at least taken off wikipedia: space but I think getting a proper whitelist or similar working is fairly urgent. Talk pages I have already conceded (anyway Google hardly visits talk namespace any more).--BozMo talk 02:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
How would a whitelist work? Before adding a link, you'd have to go through an approval process? ScottW 17:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

“powered by EJRS.com”

Accounts used:

  • main account: Ejrs (talk • contribs)
    • see this older version of his user page, which lists many of his web sites. Some others were gleaned by searching Google for “powered by EJRS.com site”

Linked-to sites:

I'm only partway through warning and reversing -- any help would be appreciated. Thanks. --A. B. 04:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we're all caught up -- thanks for all the help! --A. B. 17:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

i do not own yummytummy nor hardrockforums.EJRS 16:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)ejrs

Discussion

This is so big, so coordinated and has been going on for so long, what should we do? Go straight to user blocks? Blacklist all these sites? Or just stay with the current deletions and spam0/spam1 warnings? It seems that the individual components are all small but the collective effect is large -- perhaps bigger than Suite101.com's.

What's next? --A. B. 17:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Seeing as you just removed every single link, I see no reason why we couldn't blacklist most of these --T-rex 17:23, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Even if all of them are blacklisted, we will be having this same problem in some months more. Are there precedents in the meta blacklist about this kind of block? -- ReyBrujo 17:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Given the huge list below of additional EJRS.com sites that just turned up, I think we can potentially be overwhelmed. I am reluctant to blacklist sites, but I'm thinking we may have no choice but to ask that all these sites be blacklisted, both the list above plus the 5 pages of new domain names we found. I just don't see how we can keep ahead of this guy, given our limited resources.
--A. B. 19:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


In response to the accusations

AB has asked me to join the discussion, but since minds are already made up what more is there or me to do here?
There is a whole lot of bias and personal vendetta here on what can and cannot be posted. I make educational sites for friends and anyone else.
I added a link to a site on the Vexillology page yet I'm accused of spam. I helped the a guy who does a lot of the flags on the official f.o.t.w website (with their approval and blessings) with design and free hosting. That link is gone now.
My image of the girl playing shamisen is up and so is the spider, yet the mangosteen is removed with a note that it does not conform to standards, yet I posted it in the same manner as the image of the girl, and the spider. I posted a cannonball image which I drew specially for wikipedia in the same manner as other images to enhance the article there. It is gone. The "handkerchief dance" photo is gone even though it's a type of cultural dance to help viewers learn more.
I have 2000 .COM domains of which 200 are sites proper. So now you have taken the liberty of harvesting my url list to blacklist me. I started these projects for my friends who needed help in getting info, and extended it to anyone else as a free tool. I have never sought money of them. All money I use on domains come from sales of webhosting and design. I have always given much of the profit of Adsense back to help people through charitable projects. I have no interest of profiting from you as webhosting adequately meets and goes beyond my needs so I can help others in need.
I only post my own pics and articles here on wikipedia, or because I work with people who are knowledgable in their field, I have been given rights to publish material they personally send me. I am familiar with copyrighting as my stuff is copyrighted at a copyrights office here. So if you see ANY content posted by me then it is 100% guaranteed. Upon the need to post an article that is not by me, I check with the person and when I get the thumbs up I post it then contact the author to show him where it's located. EJRS 16:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)ejrs

19 December 2006: Second opinion wanted re EJRS.com

I just received an e-mail from EJRS requesting that we reconsider the blacklisting of his domains. He's made his case earlier immediately above.

Can some others read what he's written and respond. I've also asked him to add some additional information that he had in his e-mail.

My personal belief is that EJRS has not just inappropriately linked but downright spammed Wikipedia at times. At the same time, he's made many positive contributions and I think we at least owe him a hearing.

Perhaps there's some intermediate step short of the blacklist to enforce our linking rules with EJRS. Please look at what he's written and at the contribution histories of the accounts used (noting both the spam and the real edits).

I'd like some additional opinions and I think EJRS needs to hear them as well.

--A. B. (talk) 21:43, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I have only one thing to add in that you said I "downright spammed Wikipedia". I was new to Wikipedia. With all good intentions I posted my links to the various projects on MY user page EJRS. When I was asked to remove it, I did so. Now you have brought it up in public forum. the projects I had featured on my talk page had to do with my own Tsunami Relief efforts in 2004, Malaysian images, travel sites my friends and I did, Interview with a marine scientist, and a host of other pertinent projects. EJRS 22:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)ejrs

Still more

BozMo gave me this alternate search on Yahoo which turns up even more:

"You can get another list here: http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fejrs.com%2F&fr=FP-tab-web-t340&ei=UTF-8&meta=vc%3D"

That in turn leads to several pages of new domain names registered:

--A. B. 19:02, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Another big one?

As I was working on the EJRS.com spam campaign, I kept coming across links to other sites "powered by ViNSiGN", another Malaysian web design/hosting/marketing company. Here's a list from Google of sites "powered by ViNSiGN":

Caveat: Some links were campaigned (see 219.95.227.128 (talk • contribs)) but for all I know, these are mostly legit, high quality sites. I think any links to them should be checked out, but beyond that, I think "assume good faith" applies until proven otherwise. For all I know, ViNSiGN, like Earthlink or Yahoo, may be purely a host and not associated with these sites beyond that.

Also, 219.95.227.128 also added links to:

I don't know if it's a ViNSiGN site or not.

I can't put much time into this for a while. --A. B. 17:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. When I tried to save edit above, it triggered the spam blacklist filters. I had xoomer.alice .it on my list of ViNSiGN sites and it's already blacklisted. --A. B. 17:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

AGF

I rewrote the opening to the Assume Good Faith section to note that WP:AGF is policy not a guideline. I don't think that it makes a big difference in the general point of the paragraph, but the distinction is an important distinction to make. ScottW 18:45, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Squidoo links

I noticed quite a few links to Squidoo. It seems similar to Suite101, except that it doesn't declare it's writers as paid experts (or experts), just folks who are enthusiastic about a topic. While some of the writeups are comprehensive and interesting, I'm having trouble seeing how it can meet WP:Reliable sources criteria, and wondering if a spam-campaign is afoot. Any opinions? OhNoitsJamie Talk 21:40, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It's a interesting model and any reference to it should be taken with a grain of salt. Some pages are very good, others are not. Each page is maintained by ONE Editor. Think about it as if the person who starts an Article at Wikipedia is the only one who can maintain it. You end up with some good once and a real expert in the topic provides real value and a lot of bad ones and the rest somewhere in between the two. Note also that each article at Squidoo has AdSense and allows the integration of products (Books, DVDs, Furniture, Clothing you name it). Those are all linked to the merchants via Affiliate Links. Some of the revenue goes to Squidoo to pay for the site and some goes to the "owner" of the page. The Page Owner can decide to get the earned commission paid in cash or to donate it for a good cause (charity). He can also break it up and say xx% charity and yy% payout in cash. The creator of Squidoo is Seth Godin. He is a A-list blogger, Author of several best selling books about Marketing and an renowned Industry expert and speaker at Conferences like Ad-Tech, eComXpo, you name it. I hope this clarifies what it is and what it is not. Not allowing any reference to a Squidoo article would be wrong, but I would expect that most references are either self promotion, over confidence (some people actually believe that their article is the best thing since sliced bread) or simply a proxy for the actual source (copied from, linked to etc.). --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 08:42, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

more recent spam campaigns

  1. 81.97.107.117 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.ferrari-cars.net

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.waterfishing.info

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.ferrariworld.com

Hu12 22:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

another

  1. Kidjayhawk (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

slam.canoe.ca http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Linksearch&target=%2A.slam.canoe.ca&limit=500&offset=0

reverted the most recent adds from Kidjayhawk, but there's 353 more. seems it feeds news and articles from other sources. Hu12 00:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I think maybe canoe.ca is sort of like Canada's Yahoo, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure I've heard of it before and that it's big. --A. B. 04:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this guy just likes wrestling. The canoe articles I saw were written by newspaper sportswriters (such as from the Calgary Sun). I think the canoe edits may be good faith edits, not spamming. --A. B. 04:20, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Canoe is a canadian news thing, so it is possible that most of that stuff is in good faith. They don't really have anything origional, but are often rather high in google news serches. I think you would have to track stuff by user to pick up on any spaming. --T-rex 04:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Good to know, never heard of canoe.ca so wasn't sure...thanks for the heads up Hu12 04:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Confirming: Canoe.ca is run by a big news/cable über-company in Canada. Individual links may or may not be relevant but they're big enough that there's 0% chance that they would launch a spam-campaign on Wikipedia. Most likely, all these links were added in good faith. Pascal.Tesson 04:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

ezinearticles.com links

This was getting ignored amidst the clutter massive Suite101.com thread, so I've taken the liberty of moving it here. Thanks, Deli nk, for flagging this one:

I don't mean to distract from the discussion about suite101, but from what I can tell ezinearticles.com seems to be an identical type of site. There are currently >100 links to ezinearticles. I've removed some that didn't seem appropriate to me. In fact, most that I looked at seemed inappropriate per WP:EL. Deli nk 19:48, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I see 124 links as of today. I'm sorry I won't have time to work on it:
I suggest looking at who's adding these links to see if this is a campaign or just a collection of good faith edits. Wading through edit histories to see who added a link is laborious -- I usually start with the articles that look like they'd have the fewest edits, then compare versions at 6 months, zero in to 1 month comparisons, etc. to narrow down to the link's contributor. Then I see if they're adding this link everywhere else. --A. B. 14:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I checked out the last 50 links (#70 - 121) - going through the histories to find out who linked them. I found only two cases of spam like abuse. So I don't think this is in the same league as suite101. These links did seem to pop up on a lot of articles as references which I find a bit worrying, but it's not a spam issue. and I was surprised at how few links seemed to have been added before August. But the vast majority of links were added by editors who seemed to be acting in good faith, and many by good and prolific editors.
One of the cases of abuse I'm not sure how best to deal with. It seems IPs in the 4.252.16x.x range (4.252.162.129 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • block user • block log), 4.252.164.176 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • block user • block log), 4.252.167.211 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • block user • block log), 4.252.164.46 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • block user • block log), 4.252.162.18 (talk • contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • block user • block log)) are adding links to ezine articles by David Ben-Ariel. I can remove these links as I find them and warn the IP address (which I am about to do for these), but given there are a lot of good faith links it could be very difficult to stay on top of them. Any ideas? Is there a way to check contributions for an IP range rather than an individual address?
Just for completeness, the other abuse I found was Kensapp (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log), posting a link to an article by himself. I warned him and deleted the link. --Siobhan Hansa 23:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Follow up - My documentation on the spammer adding links to David Ben-Ariel articles can be found here. --Siobhan Hansa 02:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

EzineArticles.com is one of the better "Free to re-publish" article directories. Authors use them for various reasons, SEO, establishment of authority, direct and targeted traffic, self promotion etc. I use it too ([http:// ezinearticles.com/?expert_bio=Carsten_Cumbrowski my Author Page at EzineArticles.com]). The Author often (most of the times) links to his own website in the "Bio" section of the article or provided links to it in his Author Profile at the Article Directory. Some Authors have the same (or almost idential) article published at their own site as well (like I do here). If the Article is a valid reference and you find the original article at the authors site, link to it, instead of the article at the Article Directory. Btw. Since the Article that was posted at the directory is meant to be re-published, will you be able to find it all over the place, Blogs, Content Sites, eZines and of course god damn scraper sites. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 09:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Spam on user pages

What about people who use their user pages as link farms? See User:Johnhardcastle for an example. I have no quarrel with people adding an external link or three to their user page, but this particular case is a one line snippet about the person and some 50 links to other sites. —Wrathchild (talk) 14:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I come across spam articles and link farms frequently on user pages, whats the protocol? Hu12 21:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
At present the user pages are "nofollow" so its relatively low priority--BozMo talk 21:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
First of all, some of us have lots of links on our user pages to things like sources for future edits. Heck, I probably have even a few links to spam sites for future reference. So this may be benign. See WP:USER.
Second, within some limits, it's OK to have links to your kids' blogs, your favorite bands, etc.
Finally, if the user truly was trying to build traffic with user page spam, the joke's on him. These are nofollow links (as BozMo pointed out) and he just handed you his laundry list of spammy domains on a silver platter -- his secret plans for world page rank domination. He's probably spammed them around articles, too.
Just plug them into Special:Linksearch and start deleting all his links around Wikipedia except those on his user page. Warn him about his spam, but don't mention or touch that user page -- put it on your watchlist and if you are truly lucky, he may even add new links to it if he continues spamming.
If you've really found a user page spam-link farm, you guys are getting an early Christmas, Hu12 and Wrathchild -- enjoy it! --A. B. 23:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
User:Darrendeng appears to be the same person as he has the same links on his page and both users contributions are the same either adding links to their site or adding generic comments to talk pages as an attempt to boost their pagerank... --Chocolatepizza 00:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
One more user that is the same person is User:Johnhardcastl. --Chocolatepizza 00:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


If a user page is clearly in violation of one of the Wikipedia policies it can be submitted for discussion and possible deletion under Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion. Asking the user to remove the links and pointing out the applicable guideline or policy is usually a good starting point if the user is active. JonHarder 03:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That's the thing, I'm not sure if it is in violation. I certainly think it's in violation of the spirit of the project, though. But I recognize that user pages are pretty much "anything goes". Thanks for the insights, all. —Wrathchild (talk) 03:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Take a look at the user pages up for deletion at MfD. It gives you an idea of what kinds of things can and do get deleted. JonHarder 03:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I still think we have more to gain by letting him keep these useless links and then watch to see if he adds anymore. We lose nothing by letting them stay. As for a user page MfD, it's pretty hard to pull off. The general feeling is that folks can put just about anything on a user page as long as its not libelous or an attack. Also, all he has to do is put a little porn on it, then the whole MfD gets hopelessly tangled up in a smokescreen over censorship. As I recall, there was a user subpage with something like 300 explicit hard core porn images -- it was one of the entire Wikipedia's most heavily visited pages. The MfD was very contentious and just barely passed. Folks like me argued that censorship issues aside, we're not a hosting service regardless of whether the 300 images were of porn or hummingbirds. The deletes barely prevailed. Some similar subpages with perhaps 100 or 200 images were nominated for MfD and I think most stayed. --A. B. 04:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Thhis has now changed. We've only started purging out the myspace pages and other crap (using search terms with Google), but you won't see them on MfD any more. User pages can now be prodded. MER-C 12:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

{{db-spam}} applies to userpages too, I've nuked hundreds of spammy userpages with it and tagged the ones indicated above. There's a template for nuking the more corporate ones, see Template:Spamsearch. MER-C 12:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That page definitely should not be transcluded anywhere, for reasons it states itself, and thus has no reason to be a template. May I suggest moving it to Wikipedia:Spam search terms or something like that? Femto 14:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

What about this situation. the Jeffrey_W._Parker article was deleted, obviously recreated durring the deletion process on the user page [19]. Hu12 21:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

  • "This is the user account of 3DScience.com and Zygote Media Group, LLC." 3dscience "We recognize that we will probably be the main contributor to the Zygote Media Group article."
  1. Zygote Media Group (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  2. Abs89 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  3. Zygotemedia (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  4. 3d guru (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  5. 6574533 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
  6. 3dscience (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.3DScience.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.zygote.com

Hu12 07:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

here's a beauty. [20] for Hype_Energy drink.Hu12 02:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Zondor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) has quite a lot of links on their user page and sub pages. Apears to be an active user, however having a linkfarm for a user page seems spammy.--Hu12 13:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Conex India

break out subtopic from above

Here's their combined list: [cleaned up coding, rm redundant subdomains, added more from conexindia.com Femto 14:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)]

  1. *.animations-games-india.com
  2. *.brascomponents.com
  3. *.brasparts.com
  4. *.brass-components-india.com
  5. *.brass-copper-castings.com
  6. *.brass-fastener-india.com
  7. *.brass-fittings-india.com
  8. *.brass-inserts.com
  9. *.brass-nuts-screws-fasteners.com
  10. *.brass-parts-india.com
  11. *.brassfast.com
  12. *.brassfittingsindia.com
  13. *.bronze-castings-fittings.com
  14. *.cableaccs.com
  15. *.cableglandsindia.com
  16. *.conexindia.com
  17. *.conexmetals.com
  18. *.conextechno.com
  19. *.diamond-earrings-india.com
  20. *.diamond-jewellery-india.com
  21. *.diamond-pendants-india.com
  22. *.diamond-ring-diamond-rings.com
  23. *.diamond-ring-rings.tripod.com
  24. *.diamond-rings-india.com
  25. *.elecaccs.com
  26. *.electrical-brass-components.com
  27. *.electricalbrass.f2s.com
  28. *.engagement-rings-india.com
  29. *.fittingsindia.com
  30. *.jambrass.com
  31. *.jamnagar-brass-parts.com
  32. *.myjewelz.com
  33. *.pipefitindia.com
  34. *.primemumbai.com
  35. *.screwfastindia.com
  36. *.stainlesssteel-fittings.com
  37. *.stanlesssteel-fittings.com

--A. B. 01:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

You guys were fast and thorough -- they're all gone now. --A. B. 01:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
New links continue coming in. Femto 15:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC) Clean for now. Femto 15:47, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Note that affiliate links on commercial sites are one thing, but myjewelz.com for example hides them with font color=#FFFFFF tags. Someone's farming this set of links. The site is linked from conexindia.com and until today was from a few articles:

  • Added to Ring size by 59.144.97.240 (talk · contribs), User:Darrendeng edited the IP's contributions a few minutes later. Funny enough, another contrib of the IP was "seo link removed"...

Femto 14:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Femto 15:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

User:Darrendeng is inquiring (and linking) further at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#My_personal_talk_page ∴ here…♠ 06:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
And continues [22][23][24]. See history of Bronze how 59.144.*/Darrendeng/Johnhardcastle take turns, one adds a link, the other covers it up with minor changes. Femto 12:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

We've got evidence: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Darrendeng. Femto 12:49, 17 December 2006 (UTC)


This is far beyond blacklist time (requested), the guy's been busy across many languages.
Here's a list of the non-en: pages, most if not all links were added by an IP from the 59.144.* and 202.159.* range. I'm not going to register for each language, and I'd rather not reveal my IP. Not as urgent as on the English Wiki due to the default nofollow in the non-en: article space, but still. Anyone feel like cleaning these up? Femto 12:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

db-spam rule of thumb?

Is there a good rule of thumb that can be used to determine when tagging an artcle with {{db-spam}} is appropriate? I'm getting better at having almost all of the db-spam tagged articles deleted, but still am not always sure if an article will qualify. Previously new articles had to be tagged within 48 hours; with the new more liberal rules this restriction apparently no longer applies? Can virtually any article that promotes a company or product that was created and (almost) exclusively edited by a single purpose account be speedied? The case I am looking at is a pair of articles created in March, ExpressionEngine and PMachine by Reedmaniac (talk · contribs), who is easily identified as the CTO of the company (on the basis whois lookups of reedmaniac.com and purusing that site). Can and should these articles be speedied? JonHarder 03:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a tougher category to figure out than many of the other speedy delete categories, and the articles you point out are reasons why. But as a general rule of thumb for any speedy deletion, if you have any doubts at all over whether something qualifies for speedy deletion, then that's a good indicator that the article should go through a slower deletion process. For me, the criteria is whether the articles can be rehabilitated into a good article, regardless of who originally created it. I think that, in both of those cases, those articles probably can (assuming that there is some degree of notability for the topics).
For comparison purposes, take a look at Phoenix Ancient Art. It was started by a guy who has a history of adding links and writing articles for what are likely clients. In its original incarnation, it was about as spammy as the articles that you cite. However, there was enough independent coverage of the subject that I was able to make the article less like an ad and start a section on controversies the organization has been associated with. It's still not a candidate for a featured article, but it's definitely no longer spam.
So for the articles that you mention, if there are enough reliable, independent sources to use for writing a passable arguement then that may be the best route to take. If not, then the articles shouldn't be here. However, in that case they should be deleted more for reasons of notability than anything else. ScottW 12:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, another article worth looking at is from is CodeIgniter (linked from the PMachine article). That could be an example of obvious spam. There's realy no way to rehabilitating that, short of writing a new article. Although, if I had to guess, it's more likely a copyright violation from something on the company's Website. I don't have time to look into it at the moment though. ScottW 12:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The four criteria that I use:

  1. The article was created by a corporate single purpose account. This is usually determined by the username. (check the history)
  2. It is a page about a website, company or product that is a user page
  3. Spambot postings (you'll know them when you see them) OR
  4. It's written in the first person.

MER-C 12:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Google Ad Client IDs

I'll probably only embarrass myself for finding out so late. — Did you know that Google Ads contain a Client ID which determines who gets the money? (Search for "google_ad_client" in the page code.) Haven't found anything in the archive where this was discussed previously. Has anybody here used this before as evidence to link seemingly unrelated spamsites together? Femto 19:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

First I've heard. Thanks for bringing it up. I've found that rather than set up a different account for each site, advertisers may use one account for multiple sites. When you see the ads, you may also see small one link that says "Advertise with Google" and another that says "Advertise on this site". Click the second link and you'll get the name of the site Google uses for billing purposes. So if the web site is "amazing-toenail-fungus-cure.com" clicking that link may produce a page that says "Advertise with pedicures-are-us.com" -- if nothing else, you at least get another domain name to check for spam. --A. B. 21:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
PS Any article about toenails or fungus are always spam holes.
Sheesh, I haven't JavaScript enabled and without firing up a virtual machine usually see neither ads nor links. To each his own, I prefer rooting through the code :). I don't suppose Google has a search that returns all pages associated with an ID... Femto 13:02, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with toenails or fun guys? --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 13:59, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
And if you have the google_ad_client but there's not Advertise On This Site ad, you can use the Advertise On This Site code from any other page, substitute in the google_ad_client for the site your investigating, and voila! --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 14:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Even with out the specfic page, if you find to pages with the same id # you can be certain that they are being run by the same person --T-rex 14:50, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Here's the easiest way to find the Adsense Client Id on IE. Simply right click any Adsense ad and view the "properties". The address URL has a long string with "client=" followed by the Adsense Client ID. :-) Calltech 14:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Quackwatch.org links as red flags for spam holes

A lot of spam holes also have a quackwatch.org link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.quackwatch.org

Something about quackish topics seems to draw spam. I see there are 472 quackwatch.org links -- probably 200 of those articles have excessive, spammy links.

In some countries, medicine is closely regulated and there are legal barriers to entry along with restrictions on marketing practices. In those countries, herbal remedies, alternative remedies, etc are not restricted, making those markets fair game for many entrepreneurs. Perhaps that's what's going on here.

As for the suitability of the Quackwatch links themselves, the question is whether they meet the requirements of WP:V. The organization's Wikipedia article talks about scientific advisers and reviewers watching over the non-profit's shoulder -- the key is how involved they are in reviewing individual article quality. If quackwatch is good enough for WP:V, it will meet WP:EL and WP:RS.

Whatever the suitability of the quackwatch links themselves, their presence often flags a site prone to spam.

Good hunting, --A. B. 21:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Quackwatch is published by a reasonably reputable doctor (from what I've seen, most of his vocal critics are alternative medicine peddlers). I'd accept Quackwatch as a reliable source, though in many cases it would be fair to present an alternative view on some of those topics. OhNoitsJamie Talk 21:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I concur with itsJamie but better mention the ongoing war at Stephen Barrett. 67.117.130.181 12:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikia.com links

This was originally posted over at Wikipedia_talk:External_links and I think it got lost over there with all the rewrites going on. Re-posted it here where it may be more appropriate. Calltech 16:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that it is also very important to more carefully evaluate any external links to Wikia.com wikis, because of the obvious appearance of a "conflict of interest". Wikia is founded and operated by the Chairman Emeritus of Wikipedia (Jimbo Wales) and a former Wikimedia Foundation board member (Angela Beesley). There is no good reason why non-profit, donation-supported Wikipedia should be used as a "link farm" to generate for-profit traffic to Wikia, unless the wiki in question truly is authoritative like WP:WEB. I have deleted a few external links to Wikia wikis that had something like 1 or 2 edits in the past 30 days, which is an obviously shameful indication that the external link never belonged in Wikipedia. With how aggressive Wales has proved himself to be in limiting commercial access to Wikipedia, it's kind of embarrassing that he hasn't recused the Wikipedia property from his efforts with Wikia.com. Moreover, Wales sends official "Wikipedia-related" e-mails to users from an account at Wikia.com! --JossBuckle Swami 13:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I concur - I've removed several wikia.com links that appeared to be spam - no new content. I was not aware of the affiliation between WP and wikia.com, but I know that the wikia.com pages are populated with Google Adsense ads. There are currently over 3000 wikia.com links on WP [25]. I've seen some linked pages that appear trivial and even empty over at wikia.com (perhaps under construction). In other cases a one or two line article is created in WP with an external link to a larger article over at wikia. Calltech 15:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Take a look at the section "A request" above for a discussion of the external linking guidelines and and a particular wiki. (If the discussion is no longer on this page, it will be in the November archive). Links to low volume wikis are not appropriate, Wikia.com or not. I'm confident Jimbo Wales and Angela Beesley would agree with and whole-heartedly support their deletion, especially if they were added in bad faith to wikis existing solely for spammy purposes. My understanding is that the community consensus was that very active and vibrant wikis could be considered to be self-correcting when it comes to errors and on a par with professionally superivsed publications.
I suspect some of those inappropriate Wikia links were probably what I call "bad-judgement edits by good faith editors" and not campaign-spammed. See the discussion of "religioustolerance dot org" for an example of what I'm talking about. None of those several hundred links were campaign-spammed by single purpose accounts to my knowledge.
Even some campaign-spamming may be with good intent. Opinions were divided here as to the merits of the Korea-oriented wiki discussed previously but my own opinion is that its creator was enthusiastic about his creation, not trying to make a buck. (Good intentions, however, do not necessarily mean the links meet WP:EL!).
If you see campaign-spamming, please leave a note here of the particular Wikia wikis and the Wikipedia editors adding the links. --A. B. 21:22, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Spam image

(If this has been discussed before, please point me in the right direction!) I've noticed a few folks that use Image:SpamInACan.jpg in relation to this project or related efforts. It seems that it might be a copyright or trademark violation to do so. I'm certainly no expert in copyright or trademark so I wanted to post this message so that others more knowledgable in those areas can offer some insight and advice. --ElKevbo 21:20, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you check out the Wikipedia:Copyright problems page or, probably still more helpful, the Commons discussion at m:Commons talk:Licensing. This is an interesting question involving U.S. government images (normally public domain), U.S. fair use tradmark law, and U.S. intellectual property law in general. The answer's not obvious to a non-expert (at least not this one).
The US Air Force URL on the Commons image page was broken -- I fixed it.
Personally, I'm curious as to what you learn -- if you don't mind, please let me know what you find out. --A. B. 21:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Alright, I'll poke around a bit. I'm also as curious to know about the ethics or appropriateness of using this image as I am about the legalities. It seems to me that regardless of the legality it's not a "cool" thing to do as Hormel as been extraordinarily reasonable and gracious about the whole spam issue. --ElKevbo 22:02, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's what spam.com says: [26]

"We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE [unsolicited commercial email] , although we do object to the use of the word "spam" as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term."

Well, if it weren't for this use of their product image I wouldn't even know about their SPAM™ here in my neck of the woods. If they don't want the free publicity, let them protect their trademark, fine with me.

Means we shouldn't use the image though. I think trademark law trumps public domain government work. But it's a very old image and not the current product—we'd really need a lawyer to figure this out. What to do? We could simply redefine the purpose of this project to deal with everything called "spam" and plant our flag at Spam (food). Problem solved. =) Someone upload another image for the userbox, of a platter with an unidentified generic meat product out of the can? Back to text-only with {{User WikiProject Spam}}? Merge into {{User WikiProject Spam 2}}? No offense to the artist, this does give a boost to my cookie cutter spamstar idea… :) Femto 15:26, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I concur with Femto. {{User WikiProject Spam}}? clearly violates company's trademark and they offer a compelling argument that it shouldn't be used in any negative form or association. Don't even recommend using generic meat - same association. Calltech 15:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
But with generic meat the association would be made by the individual looking at the image, not by the image itself, big difference. Also, association with what? With a product that isn't even shown? Or associating computer junkmail with meat? Would we have the same trouble if we used canned peas instead of canned meat? And WikiProject Spam is positive! The current image doesn't use a red cross-out circle over their product or something like that.
We may show images of products here, pretty much regardless of trademarks. Wikipedia isn't using "spam" as a trademark, and the image itself seems legal. (Hormel doesn't own the rights to the word "spam" concerning computers anyway, according to this [27].) The more I think about it, it's not a trademark issue at all, but a generic fair use issue about the image of a product. This product is the origin of the slang term, that's a fact. Sure, the company may not like it, but making the association in itself isn't illegal. We might want to check again that the image really is public domain government work, but I think legally, we're good. (I am not a lawyer)
Remains doing it not because of the law but simply out of common courtesy. So if no one objects I'm going to remove the image from the userbox and merge them. Femto 17:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Incidentally, there's the "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003", short CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Can. Spam. Hehe. Now that's an association. Femto 17:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

how about keeping both but just replacing the "can" image from {{User WikiProject Spam}} with the image from {{User WikiProject Spam 2}}? Hu12 17:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It would leave us with two templates whose only difference is the background color. We can just redirect {Spam 2} to a unified {Spam}. Femto 19:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Legally, we probably are on the whitish-gray side of a gray area, but personally, I agree with Femto re: courtesy and decency. That probably also applies to just pieces of pink meat. I hate admitting this, since I spent a lot of time Photoshopping that spamstar as well. Let me know what you want to use in place of it. --A. B. 20:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed Image:SpamInACan.jpg from the userbox and merged with Template:User WikiProject Spam 2. I simply averaged the background colors, very diplomatic. All parameters should work as before for both templates (I hope). Femto 15:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

#wikipedia-spam --- help needed

Basically that, we need more people on this IRC channel. If you need help with getting on please contact me —— Eagle (ask me for help). Some of the things that the channel is useful for is:

  1. Seeing every link added to mainspace pages on wikipedia.
  2. Tracking serial spammers, the bot on there does that for us. We know we have problems when we are allowing spammers to add in excess of 50 links before noticing them.
  3. Tracking the actual link domains being added, and alerting people in the channel when the link is added in sufficient quantity. The bot will then tell people in the channel the link that was added excessively, and the users doing it.

Any help is appreciated. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 02:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll second that for Eagle, #wikipedia-spam could use the help. #wikipedia-spam-t This is the channel talk if you'd like to ask about the ropes. JoeSmack Talk 02:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Thirded; help is really appreciated. Veinor (ヴエノル(talk)) 19:02, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Rosencomet.com

Rosencomet.com appears to be the official website for the following for-profit conventions:

These entries in and of themselves are unnotable except for being link-farms and possibly adverts. A user coincidentally named Rosencomet has been adding numerous external links and wiki in-links to articles, which I think meet the criteria set forth by WP:SPAM. Here is a summary of the rosencomet.com links and of Rosencomet's almost single-minded edit history. I don't think that Rosencomet.com even meets the criteria set forth in WP:VERIFY because they seem to primarily be a commercial endeavour selling books, tapes, CD's, videos, t-shirts, etc. and cannot meet the criteria set forth in WP:RS for being a legitimately citable secondary source. - WeniWidiWiki 04:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Well he is already in mediation due to other self promotion here, and appears to have quite a history of spamming. That said recent edit history shows that he has reverted others who have removed his links, but also removed one or two himself. Not much wikipedia history here, so I'd base any decision on the site itself --T-rex 05:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
There's certainly a long history of debate over this site, the propriety of both internal and external links, and the various editors involved in adding or deleting these links:
I see that as of now, there are 44 links in article space -- that's a reduction from the last time I looked
Has there ever been some sort of formal, official determination regarding the propriety of these links? Personally, these links seem inappropriate to me, but I'm certainly not keen to go get in an endless process of edit wars, ANIs, RFCs, etc if these are still in some sort of disputed gray area. If there's either already been a formal, official ruling that these links should go, I'll be happy to delete away. Ditto if there's a ruling in the future.
Others here may have different views and take a different aproach.
WeniWidiWiki, you should also understand spam reports on this page don't start some sort of official process. This WikiProject is purely an unofficial coordination mechanism for a group of volunteers to compare notes and discuss spam. Unlike AIV or Arbitration, there's no official decision or outcome produced here. So you'll probably also want to follow-up on your concerns in other, more official venues. --A. B. 14:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The number of links is creeping back up. Some of the deleted links are being reverted with a label saying this is a subject of "mediation". Can anyone find where the mediation is? --BozMo talk 11:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
My suggestions: see who's adding them, then ask them in a polite way to show you the "mediation". If it's not clear from whatever linked page they provide, then I'd butt in on that page and ask the others about this. If you don't get satisfactory answers, start deleting. Let the rest of us know, too, if you need any help. Thanks for taking this on. --A. B. (talk) 12:02, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Nature.com Paid Articles

Technically not link spamming, but it appears virtually all some of the articles contained on nature.com links in WP require one-time payment or paid subscription. I found reference to over 1300 links in WP and checked the first page - all most required payment. Calltech 19:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm surprised it's so few. Nature is a hugely influential scientific journal and is likely to be well represented in sources for many articles. You'll probably find similar numbers for the New York Times' subscription articles. While we shouldn't have links to a paid subscription site in the external links section, a convenience link in a citation (which should be fully detailed to allow looking up at the library too) is generally accepted by editors as a service, not abuse. As I recall, they had a rep here at one point who wanted to post articles to relevant pages, but stopped when asked to by the community. Do you think this may have changed? --Siobhan Hansa 19:44, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
You've got to watch out for scientific publishing companies, I suppose. There was the iop.org spammer, 193.128.223.36 (talk · contribs) for IOP Publishing (Institute of Physics. He even used one of their IP addresses. Then there was Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., a major publisher of scientific journals -- the owner, a VP and an anon added a ton of links; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Oct#Need help with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. What made these both tricky to clean-up was that there were also important links added by good faith editors to papers in these journals that were serving as key references for various science articles; we had to be carefull with what we deleted. --A. B. 00:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the info and the historical context. It appears that most of the recent links are to paid articles that probably should be removed from the External Links. Checking with some of the older ones, I found many were not paid article links and were valuable references, so I corrected my original statement above. Looks like it will have to be reviewed on an article by article basis. Calltech 20:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

paid articles and spam

I thought the rule was to use the best available source? In scientific articles it will usually be a paid one, unfortunately. I would say you are inviting loss of good refs in eliminating links to articles, which are in no sense spam. Most of them are available free to anyone with a university connection. Others can almost always see the abstract, which at least is some help.

It is extremely unfortunate that this limitation on the many WP non-university users is the case, and I have devoted much of my RW career to changing this. If you would like to do something about it, see the suggestions at Open access.

BTW, MAL is a problem in several respects, which I can detail offline, but I know her personally & can try to help. Nature is another matter--especially since most of the content is also in print, and every college library & many large public libraries have it. DGG 16:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Cross-wiki spamstar for all Mzilla's support of the blacklist

Mzilla works on multiple Wikipedias and handles many of our blacklist requests on meta-wiki. See:

--A. B. 19:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject Spam Members

Created catagory [[Category:WikiProject Spam Members]] , wondered how project members felt about having our own... Hu12 21:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the current contents of the category, I feel... alone... Pascal.Tesson 03:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
mabey someone could do some more work on it like an include for the boxes, like a <includeonly>[[Category:WikiProject_Spam_Members|{{PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>

. not sure how to do it correctly.. its lonely in there.. Hu12 04:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Added <includeonly>[[Category:WikiProject Spam Members|{{PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly><noinclude> [[Category:WikiProject user templates|Spam]] </noinclude> to the templates..spam 2 and spam. not sure if this is right. Hu12 04:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
looks as if its starting to populate Hu12 05:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It will add members who have the project boxes automaticaly, however you can add [[Category:WikiProject Spam Members]] if you choose not to use one Hu12 06:09, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Seeking a third opinion

I am having a slow-motion edit-war with another editor over some links in Raylene. I'll gladly accept someone else's opinion on what links are appropriate. -- Donald Albury 00:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Being commercial is not, by itself, a reason for removing a link. We generally expect official sites of the article's subject to be included in the External links section. The references in particular should definitely not be removed because of their commercial nature, only if they are unreliable sources or do not actually support the statement. The Stacey & Staci site is a bit of a stretch since she's primarily known for being an actress, but since the article covers her move into real estate it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. I don't know how valid the Biography by Luke Ford is, but if he's generally considered a reliable interviewer (seems like more of an interview than a biography) and the publication is generally considered a reliable publication within the adult entertainment field, then there's nothing wrong with that link either. We link to newspaper interviews that carry advertising all the time.
The article itself may be spam - that is it seems to contain very little information of note and would probably be more appropriate wrapped in with a bunch of other similar stars. But that's more of a general comment about our approach to minor entertainment industry subjects than to this particular article. If the article's acceptable to the community, I don't think the links themselves are particularly problematic. --Siobhan Hansa 03:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
PS The Raylene wikilink above is a red linked for me - I'm not sure why, there is an article at Raylene, and the wikilink I made appears to blue to me. I had to go into Donald's contribution history to get to the true article. Anyone know why this happens? --Siobhan Hansa 03:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Don't know, but fixed. AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Siobhan Hansa, its an official site, i genaraly like seeing those in articles, especialy when incorporated into the article itself. However there may not need to be two links to teamstacey.com. If other editor of the article wants to have a section to "promote" and cite the teamstacey "real-estate" biz, i would tend to agree to a compromise by allowing the one actual useful link stay in the reference section only. Having both in the reference and in external links section just seems spammy. Hu12 03:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
I tend to disagree because I don't think the real estate site qualifies as an official site. The reason the article exists is because Raylene gained notable status as a porn star. The real estate website is not her official biography nor is there any information on this site relating to her notable profession that I could see. The site is about a real estate business in which she is now a partner. It appears to be more promotional than anything. The exemption for a commercial link when its the official site doesn't apply - it would if the site was a commercial website promoting her notable business of being a porn star. She is not notable because she is in the real estate business. (I'm starting to sound like a lawyer - someone shoot me!) Calltech 01:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Pretty much my thinking. However, I'll stay out of it now, and let consensus deal with this. -- Donald Albury 13:05, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

providetechnology.com

Lots of spam has been added over the last year by a Dallas area user using these accounts:

These are sites that he owns or spams for:

There are other sites he does not control but is an affiliate of:

Finally, he linked to his account at Commission Junction. Any site with this domain will have a commission code for the person adding the link. His links were reverted earlier, however, I found links add by other editors (each with their own unique code). If you ever see one of these, it's hard core spam:

--A. B. 03:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Spammed again. One account blocked for a month -- I've requested blocks on the others. --A. B. (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Blocks declined; referred to m:Spam blacklist. --A. B. (talk) 19:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to begin reviewing these links and loading them into Shadowbot's blacklist. Shadow1 (talk) 21:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, done. I've blacklisted most, if not all, of the above links, except for one or two that didn't resolve. Shadowbot should revert these links. Shadow1 (talk) 22:26, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

steelecommerce.com and related sites

68.106.68.114 (talk • contribs), has 90 edits to date. Probably 80% are spam and some of the rest involve edit-warring or deleting other people's stuff. Traceroute and Whois data indicate this spammer is a Cox Cable subscriber in the Abilene, Texas area.

Now user 69.148.184.91 (talk · contribs), an AT&T (SBC) DSL account, also in Abilene, Texas, is spamming the same steelcommerce.com links to the same articles: steelecommerce.com

Other domains User:68.106.68.114 has linked to in the past: myphoneservice.net

myinternetaccess.net

cheap-online.net

  • ld.net
Note: other, unrelated spammers also add links to this multi-level marketing site with their unique referral codes
  • cognigen.net Now blacklisted
Note: other, unrelated spammers also add links to this multi-level marketing site with their unique referral codes

myphoneservice.net

Comment: this Roy Masters meditation site may or may not meet WP:EL when linked to other articles besides Roy Masters (radio presenter)

--A. B. 22:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How could I forget -- another user, 61.183.11.195 (talk · contribs) was adding some of the same links a while back, however they tracerouted to China. --A. B. 00:29, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Cognigen and ld.net

I'm seeing more of the cognigen.net and ld.net links being spammed by unrelated parties. Each has his own referring code at the end of the URL such as ?796231. Examples we've dealt with just in the last 2 days:

Both spammed a lot of their own, unrelated sites, but both were also spamming Cognigen stuff.

Cognigen (owns both domains) is a multi-level marketing company that once was telecom only but now sells other stuff. Example: ld.net/travel

We've also had spam linking to at least one Cognigen agent site:

Congigen is publicly traded over the counter. They probably are somewhere on the cusp of corporate notability and growing. If we have an article on them, we'll want to have one link (and just one) from it to the corporate web site. If they are now notable, I suggest we consider starting a stub with a link, then protecting the article and black-listing ld.net, cognigen.net, etc. While I don't like giving spammers articles, we are an encyclopedia and we have rules. That one link will still be there for enccyclopedia purposes. That way someone won't try to unblacklist the domain to get an article.

Finally, note that there is an unrelated pharmaceutical consulting company, Cognigen Corporation (http://www.cognigencorp.com//content/aboutus/index.html?nav=aboutus&sub=overview). --A. B. 22:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

junglephotos.com

If someone is looking for something to do, AbsolutDan (talk · contribs) convinced 65.87.174.156 (talk · contribs) to stop adding links back in June, but the junglephotos.com links have yet to be cleaned up. I haven't looked to see if others have added them too. JonHarder 00:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

(This is the first paragraph of JonHarder's two paragraph post; the second paragraph was subsequently moved to the "matses.org related links and articles" section of the WikiProject Spam talk page. --A. B. (talk) 13:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC))
Note: This section subsequently turned into a very long discussion of what turned out to be unrelated links and articles associated with the MATSES organization. To reduce confusion, I have moved the matses.org discussion to its own new section. I also split JonHarder's orginal two-paragraph comment of 00:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC), moving the second paragraph to the new matses.org section. For MATSES-related material, see the subsequent WikiProject Spam talk page discussion, "matses.org related links and articles" --A. B. (talk) 13:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Whois info:
  • 65.87.174.156 (talk · contribs) -- cablemodem user in the U.S. South -- probably the Raleigh, NC area (junglephotos.com)

matses.org related links and articles

Note: This section was orginally part of the WikiProject Spam talk page discussion in the "junglephotos.com" section. It was moved to its own section to avoid confusion between the unrelated junglephotos.com material and the matses.org related links and articles. --A. B. (talk) 13:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Some of the "jungle" articles intersect with articles edited by Matses (talk · contribs), 200.60.247.140 (talk · contribs), 200.107.154.75 (talk · contribs) and 201.240.105.143 (talk · contribs) whose edits mostly involve adding links to matses.org, amazon-indians.org and iquitosnews.com which are all colocated on the same server. The editor is most likely Dan James Pantone; that article and MATSES may not have sufficient notability for Wikipedia. I'll get to these links eventually, but others are welcome to pitch in. JonHarder 00:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

(This is the second paragraph of a two paragraph comment orginally posted by JonHarder on 00:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC) in the "junglephotos.com" section of the WikiProject Spam talk page; this paragraph was subsequently moved to a new "matses.org related links and articles" section. --A. B. (talk) 13:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC))
Oh, and look at the image on Matsés. Seems like the attribution should be cropped off. JonHarder 00:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Whois info:
  • 65.87.174.156 (talk · contribs) -- cablemodem user in the U.S. South -- probably the Raleigh, NC area (junglephotos.com)
  • 200.107.154.75 (talk · contribs) - Peru (matses.org, amazon-indians.org, iquitosnews.com)
  • 201.240.105.143 (talk · contribs) - Peru (matses.org, amazon-indians.org, iquitosnews.com)
  • 200.60.247.140 (talk · contribs) - Peru (matses.org, amazon-indians.org, iquitosnews.com)
Since most of the spam in the last few days has been really cynical stuff, some of it not only spammy but also scammy, I must say I find the matses.org/amazon-indians.org/iquitosnews.com stuff pretty benign. I'm not even sure I'd call it spam -- just inappropriate linking to a site that does not meet our reliable source and external linking criteria. It has ads, but they seem a small part of the endeavor. There's a lot of content and I doubt anyone's getting rich off of the videos of painted Indians. That's my two cents worth; call it Stockholm syndrome.
I don't sense there is any linkage between these and the jungle photos stuff, but I haven't looked closely yet. --A. B. 03:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
An additional single purpose account that added matses-org related links: 190.41.186.197 (talk • contribs)
--A. B. (talk) 16:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I left several long messages at User talk:Matses about links, images and articles (as well as thanking him for some very good contributions). I left briefer notes on the three anonymous IP talk pages and I sent Matses an e-mail. Finally, I left notes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peru and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants asking for help with the notability of those two articles. We'll see what happens. --A. B. 04:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I did not have time for the links. --A. B. 04:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to imply there is some connection other than that they share an intersecting set of articles. I don't believe there is any other connection. JonHarder 04:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
JonHarder and A. B., thanks for your comments and input. To answer your questions, simply put MATSES (the Movement in the Amazon for Tribal Subsistence and Economic Sustainability) and its vice president (Dr. Dan James Pantone) are saving lives and preserving the culture of indigenous people and therefore has "sufficient notability for Wikipedia." Please think about it; how many other organizations or people found on Wiki can make that claim? There are no ads at www.matses.org and nothing for sale and therefore can not be considered spam. Moreover, Matses.org is not colocated on the same server with the other websites mentioned. Please note that I will be glad to take the attribution off the photos. Note also that I am an editor at DMOZ and want to contribute to Wiki in my area of knowledge (indigenous people). That's the whole of it. There is no link with Junglephotos.com. I am just trying to saves lives by educating people about the plight of indigenous people. Please do not misinterpret my many contributions as spam. I have worked hard researching and creating new pages for Wiki on many subjects, especially indigenous people, my specialty. Simply put, I think Wiki is great and want to continue contributing. The Wiki editors are doing a great job and I would like to become more involved in the Wiki project, especially since we have been having a system failure at DMOZ for the past two months and we have not been able to edit anything. Thanks for your guidance and I would like to continue contributing to Wikipedia. Matses 06:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
There are, fortunately, thousands of charities, individuals and trusts doing comparably very valuable work but in itself they do not qualify as notable. So the "simply put" isn't really good enough and we will have to look around for the notability of the organisation.--BozMo talk 12:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
BozMo, thank you for your comment. You should not have to look too far for the notability of MATSES (the organization) and the people it represents (the Matsés Tribe). Take a closer look and I am sure you will agree that they are truly worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. They are worthy because they are an indigenous tribe that only recently (1969) made permanent contact with the outside world. Moreover, they represent an entire culture and language. The Matsés survived the napalm bombs that were used against them by the Peruvian Air Force in the 1960s and I am sure they can survive a few misguided comments by Wiki editors who are not familiar with their incredible history and what MATSES is doing for them. Just because the Matsés live in a reserve without electricity and telephones is no reason to cut them off from inclusion in Wikipedia and telling the world about them. MATSES (the organization) represents the Matsés people, and at present is their only hope to prevent their continued genocide and the destruction of their rainforest in the Amazon.
BozMo, you state that you are an employee of SOS Children. Strickly speaking, SOS Children should not be listed in Wikipedia because you created and edited the listing and employees of organizations are prohibited by Wikipedia from listing and editing them. Please see ”Wikipedia:Conflict of interest” for more information. Am I proposing that we delete SOS Children from Wikipedia because you did not follow Wikipedia guidelines? Of course not, as there is no "spam" involved with SOS Children and nor is there any with MATSES. Now please, rather than devote our energy to hurting these organizations and deleting them from Wiki, let us get back to business with our respective organizations and continue helping people. Matses 15:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
let me cut to the chase here. I spent 1-2 hours last night writing up detailed notes and suggestions on the talk pages for User:Matses, Dan James Pantone and MATSES as to how you can address the issues with these two articles. I am sure that if MATSES really meets the criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia, you can address that with some references on the MATSES talk page in about half that time. Just calling the other editors and myself "misguided" just isn't advancing your goal (although we work hard not to let that influence our decisions here -- this is an encyclopedia, not a social network). As I've written before, you need to find references that meet the requirements of:
The essay, Wikipedia:Independent sources is also worth a read.
We're just a big encyclopedia edited by unpaid volunteers. We're not a directory or an advocacy platform. Just an encyclopedia, one of those dull things that exist in the physical world as a shelf-full of heavy volumes. Only an encyclopedia -- we work hard not to be more. We'd be happy to include MATSES in this encyclopedia if it meets our guidelines. If not, well grow the organization and come back to us. You've had multiple volunteers collectively spending several hours trying to figure things out with your stuff and help you where we can within our constraints. It's your turn now. Work with us here and dig up those references so we can keep your article. Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 16:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
In the meantime, most of those links must go per our external links guideline. --A. B. (talk) 16:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Additional domain: matses.info:

--A. B. (talk) 16:18, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Still another: amazonz.info
An AfD has been initiated by another used for the MATSES article; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MATSES --A. B. (talk) 13:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

According to Criteria for Speedy Deletion, the Author can elect to delete the page by blanking it. I have elected to delete the MATSES page. Debate over! Matses 16:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles as Lists

How best to handle articles that only serve as lists, such as List of backup software, Wikipedia:Chemical sources and List of Horrorcore rappers .Hu12 04:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I suggest leaving Wikipedia:Chemical sources alone. I think they're trying to make it more than just a list -- perhaps something like Special:Booksources. I'm not sure they've got a good handle on it, but it's not spam. See Wikipedia talk:Chemical sources for more.
As for List of backup software, we've got WP:NOT on one side and the pragmatic concerns expressed by Austin Murphy on the other. If it was me, I'd probably either try to delete the whole thing via AfD or leave it alone, as opposed to trying to pick and choose.
Also, I think categories sometimes serve the same purpose as lists but in a more Wikipedia way -- and without links. There art times, though, when categories just aren't the same. For instance, if the list is of software packages, then to use categories, we'd need articles for every software product a software company sells (as opposed to just one article for the whole company).
Finally, if I did want to delete the article, I'd try to find some larger venue to discuss the entire category of list articles. Perhaps start with a comment on the talk page for WP:NOT.
It's late and you just added the rappers to the list after I started this reply -- I'll use that as my excuse to let someone else deal with the rappers. (At first glance, the rapper-list looks like a spam-pit). --A. B. (talk) 05:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_backup_software, we'll see. Hu12 06:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Here are some resources in addition to WP:NOT-- I was surprised to see how many lists there are on Wikipedia:
The precedents search may be the most useful of the links above in determining list acceptability -- a quick skim of the others turned up not much about what lists are Ok.
However, items on lists do have to match the same verification and notability requirements as everything else:
I hope this helps.--A. B. (talk) 15:03, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

In the area of software, some list articles limit entries to those that actually have articles and then don't allow external links. In Comparison of content management systems this has been working well for some time, except for one very unhappy individual. This policy keeps the notabily discussion with the article itself, and if a link goes red it can be removed. I think it is a model that can be applied more widely. JonHarder 04:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

aside from being potential linkspam traps, they will attract and encourage article spam. Dissalowing any external links and the spammers will create their own page for incusion. Always seems the argument for these list articles are they have "potential", well I ask when? so far 3 "keeps" and no deletes... Hu12 05:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Some lists are useful, but many are crap. Nevertheless, I've been burned trying to get a bad list deleted, and I don't bother any more. -- Donald Albury 13:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Hu12, you are absolutely correct that they encourage article spam. Comparison of content management systems mentioned above sees a lot of that. The editors only create a new article and then come over there to link it. The link goes red within a day and is removed from the article. I like the idea that the notability discussion stays with the individual software article and it doesn't have to come up with every external link that someone wants to add to the list. It would be interesting to have someone go through all of the existing items in Comparison of content management systems and report back how many were created by single purpose accounts. JonHarder 02:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
great resources A. B. thanks Hu12 06:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_stock_photography_archives precident if needed... for future ref Hu12 05:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_open-content_projects --Hu12 09:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fax software (2nd nomination)--Hu12 14:02, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion wanted

I found this when removing matses-related links:

I've got to go; time for the next shift. I left a few matses-related links that I was not sure we should delete. There are still 40 junglephotos.com links left.

--A. B. (talk) 17:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Well the content on rain-tree certainly gets re-used e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=Bitter+melon+grows+in+tropical+areas,+including+parts+of+the+Amazon,+east+Africa,+Asia,+and+the+Caribbean,+and+is+cultivated+throughout+South+America+as+a+food+and+medicine.+It%27s+a+slender,+climbing+annual+vine+with+long-stalked+leaves+and+yellow,+solitary&hl=en&lr=&rls=RNFA,RNFA:1970--2,RNFA:en&filter=0

but it does look to me that it might be the original content owner in which case it is arguable. --BozMo talk 21:13, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Different governmental designations for truly charitable organizations

Sometimes we see links to charitable organizations. Sometimes they are appropriate links per the external links guideline for a particular article, more often they're inappropriate, but they have been added in good faith.

Then there's the case of plain old spam to pseudo-charities.

As we've seen, a ".org" address means very little and Wikipedia gets a lot of .org spam to profit-oriented companies, some of them scams.

If the non-profit is based in the U.S. and it's truly charitable, it will say something on the donations page about "501(c)3", a section of the U.S. tax code relating to charities. Except for some religious organizations, donations to any other organization do not get the donor a tax break. As a result, you can expect any charity covered by 501(c)3 will say so somewhere on the donation page.

There are some other organizations that are legitimate non-profit, but non-charitable, organizations such as clubs, advocacy groups (MoveOn.org, League of Conservation Voters), trade associations (National Business Aviation Association) and others -- the 501(c) article goes into detail on this.

Are there any similar provisions in other countries we should look for? Cleaning up the matses.org links, I came across links to a British organization, http://www.brazilink.org. It looked legitimate, but I did not know if there was particular language I should expect from a true British charity. --A. B. (talk) 16:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Any British charity is required to quote its registered charity number whenever it solicits funds or trades. If you drop the charity number into google generally you get the page on the charity commission website with the proper charity contact details account summaries and actual website address: e.g. the one I work for is http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNFA,RNFA:1970--2,RNFA:en&q=1069204
if you don't then the charity commission website also allows search by name. It is a big issue there are lots of charity scams. --BozMo talk 18:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Of course I should add not being a charity does not mean they are not a legit commercial or political organisation and one "famous" international charity (GreenPeace) has been barred charitable status in the UK because the rules exclude political rather than philanthropic ventures. The one you mention (Brazilink) does not seem to claim to be a charity, and looks commercial to me. --BozMo talk 12:37, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

wildanimalsonline.com

Found while deleting the last junglephotos.com link:

No time to clean up or track down the source. --A. B. (talk) 17:35, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

IPs: BRATISLAVA-CUSTOMERS-CABLE
Added links to:
Same Google Ad IDs. Femto 18:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC) ... 14:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
more spammers
"Mothership" is eSite, s.r.o. in Slovakia
Many links left
--A. B. (talk) 20:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up. I think this is sufficient evidence to block these accounts as a set of spam socks (found no edits other than the links). Femto 14:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

watchtower.org

Found while beavering away at wildanimalsonline.com spam:

Watchtower is the name of the Jehovah's Witnesses' magazine. There are several hundred links, most of them linked to religion-related articles and probably appropriate (or at least good faith).

There are some links that are off topic, for instance to some animal articles, that should be pruned. They link to very basic animal articles in the magazine.

This is pretty sensitive; even if someone campaign-spammed some links, they may likely have done so in good faith. --A. B. (talk) 20:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I've cleaned up all the links not related to the Jehovah's Witnesses, Chrisitanity or religion in general. --A. B. (talk) 08:34, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd suggest taking out a lot more of them but yeah, sensitivity is needed. I may remove a few but it's low priority for me. 67.117.130.181 12:46, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that some there may be some Jehovah's Witness links that are relevant, but not necessarily at first glance to folks unfamiliar with this faith -- for instance, a link in an article about blood transfusions.
To be safe, I just followed the one campaigning editor's links, then looked at both the Wikipedia article and the watchtower page. I eliminated all the campaign spam to articles not remotely related to the Jehovah's Witnesses. There are other religious denominations with many more links, especially when you consider they may have 100s of sites (for instance, Catholicism). Where links have not been campaign-spammed, why not just let the regular editors for those articles make the call? That or leave a note at the related WikiProjects asking for advice first. Otherwise, you'll get a talk page full of grief and eventually end up an WP:ANI or WP:RFC -- who's got time for that? Take a look at the whole chabad.org situation as a precedent.[28], [29], [30], [31] --A. B. (talk) 16:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

enature.com

Another one spotted while working on wildanimalsonline.com links:

--A. B. (talk) 20:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Abraxas Engineering Virtual Environments

Found while working on wildanimalsonline.com cleanup:

"Mothership" is Abraxas Engineering Virtual Environments

This may or may not be the tip of an iceberg since at the bottom of each page are many links to Abraxas web sites for different desert locations and towns.

--A. B. (talk) 20:35, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

messybeast.com -- spam or just inappropriate links?

Another seen while from cleaning up wildanimalsonline.com spam:

No time to look into this one. The page or two I looked at seemed unencyclopedic but not spammy -- but then there are 106 links which certainly got my attention. --A. B. (talk) 20:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

There's Messybeast (talk · contribs), a lot of image uploads and good contribs (including to replace previously linked pages with uploaded photos). She's releasing her content under GFDL, appropriate notices gradually appear on messybeast.com. Femto 13:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

geocities.com/nozomsite

An anonymous user has been forever adding geocities.com/nozomsite links to a small set of related articles. Recently I had PIC16x84 semi-protected which prompted the creation of Microcon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) which didn't work out very well for the spammer anyway. The links are added and removed almost daily. Is this a good candidate for the spam blacklist or should the slo-mo add and revert just continue indefinitely? JonHarder 02:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I recommend this site be added to the spam blacklist as well. Numerous attempts today to add this link using multiple IDs. Calltech 03:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I have indef blocked User:Cromoser as an abusive sockpuppet.---J.S (T/C) 03:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Anonymous user again spammed Talk:Microcontroller. Calltech 23:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Still at it PIC microcontroller . Calltech 14:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
As I said, this has been going on forever. I added a request to the blacklist some time ago, but no action yet. JonHarder talk 15:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

geocities.com/nozomsite Is not a spam, it's a real and related website with real data, please remove it from the spam blacklist.

Spam for venture capital?

I just finished cleaning up puramatrix spam added by Bioxpert (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) and Zenchu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log). What better evidence to present to a venture capitalist of your corp's potential than an "expert" adding it unchallenged all over related articles? Purely speculation, but the edit pattern is interesting. Besides removing the links, one article speedied (gone) and another prodded. JonHarder 14:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

whitelist very slow, very annoying

if you guys have to do this by blanket banning sites, could you please take the trouble to ensure that the whitelist requests page runs a little faster. while you're engaged in these crusades, some of us are trying to add content & its anoying when we can't source it or can't provide external links  ⇒ bsnowball  17:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Which links are giving you a problem? Some editors who work with the blacklist also monitor this page. Remember to reserve your irritation for those individuals and groups who have caused this problem by their concerted effort to abuse Wikipedia for their own personal or corporate gain. JonHarder 17:39, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Refers to the Jas H. Duke article, first collateral damage from the suite101 removal. Femto 18:35, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Book / blog spam

I would like to pass this case off to others who have time. The edits of 194.94.133.193 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) involve adding links to edublogs.org, amazon.de, peterlang.com and perhaps others. JonHarder 17:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

AWeber spam

User 67.80.157.43 (talk • contribs) has been adding links to the sites below. They are all very similar, have "ads by google", offer a free newsletter and have hidden links pointing to www.aweber.com, which sells advertising tools.

Although the user have added just a few links, it looks like a careful attempt of spamming without being noticed. This search points to many other related sites. However, I couldn't find any of those links on Wikipedia yet.

—Red Thrush 21:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

FBUI

I've just found another suspicious links:

They were randomly added to X86 assembly language and X86 architecture at 12:43 and 12:41, respectively, on 2005-08-05 by 64.241.37.140.

At 18:54, 2006-05-08 they were added to ThinkPad by 71.253.57.234. That same user added the following link to Skull and Bones some minutes later, which is hosted by the same site:

Plinius (contribs) created the pages CTX notebook computers, FrameBuffer UI and Toshiba Satellite and pointed them to the links in the beginning. Also interesting is that most edits of FrameBuffer UI were made by Fbui (contribs), who also mentioned FBUI in other articles. On 2006-10-08, while Fbui edited FrameBuffer UI, 71.224.255.193 made references to FBUI in yet another articles.

Could it be that someone is trying to promote FBUI and/or its site? And what about the "plutarch" link?

—Red Thrush 14:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I do a lot of editing in the whole Computing tree and the fbui links aren't that troubling to me. However, I cleaned most of them up by either replacing them with the equivalent internal link or deleting them as an unnecessary how-to manual. Someone should look at the plutarch links yet. All of these links seem to be attributed to Zack Smith and are likely added by the author. The links all appear to contain original research and could be deleted on that basis. JonHarder talk 22:19, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Major article spam?

Seems Trade2tradewell (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) is the one who appears to be heading up, maintaining this marketing of essentialy non notable bio profiles from a book called The New Market Wizards. also noticed a history of vote stacking Vote Please(bottom) and Vote Please(top) so expect this if these come up for AfD.

Bill Lipschutz
Randy McKay -- deleted
William Eckhardt
Monroe Trout -- nominated for AFD
Al Weiss -- deleted
Stanley Druckenmiller
Richard Driehaus
Gil Blake
Victor Sperandeo
Tom Basso -- nominated for AFD
Linda Bradford Raschke -- nominated for AFD
Mark Ritchie -- nominated for AFD
Joe Ritchie -- nominated for AFD
Blair Hull
Jeff Yass
Charles Faulkner
Robert Krausz
Louis Lukac -- nominated for AFD

opinions? Hu12 05:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Wait a minute. I think you're waaaay over-reacting. This user has been around for 9 months now and seems to have a number of perfectly decent, constructive, NPOV edits. And even a few anti-spam edits! Ok, so maybe he likes that particular book a bit too much but I suggest you just engage in dialog with him. This is a case where presumption of good-faith seems natural. Pascal.Tesson 05:30, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Havent done anything to be considered an "overaction", asking for "opinions". Some of these articles have been hitting my radar for months wanted some clarification before presuming anything. please presume of good-faith with my post. Hu12 05:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
  • note; forgot "?" in title, hope his clears up any further confusion.--Hu12 05:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Support prodding and notability tags, if that fails, AFD. (Randy McKay (trader) for example is already up, independently of this). Content guidelines for the articles apply regardless of the good or bad faith of their authors. These people may be notable in their field, but Wikipedia isn't a Who's Who for the business world. We've got a notability problem if there's little else to say in the first paragraph other than "is profiled in the book The New Market Wizards".

Besides, there's an article on that book. (Also for Jack D. Schwager, same pattern by the way.) It's already linked in the lead paragraphs. Internal links are always preferred. Why another link to amazon.com? Is the ref=sib_aps_ref/102-0664723-1657710 code in the URL one of those referrers that give its owner a sales commission if you buy there? Far as I checked, the links would work without it (though they're inappropriate anyhow).

The articles all invariably feature

  • 'Published works'/'Bibliography' sections.
  • 'References'. (loads of indiscriminate references, for a one-paragraph article?)
  • 'Further Reading' sections. All with an amazon.com link to The New Market Wizards. (Yes, sections. Another 'Further Reading' was dumped with the amazon.com link at Tom Basso in addition to the existing section. You'd think a concerned editor would notice this in a four-sentence article.)
  • AND 'External links' sections.

I think that's creating a lot of promotion for those publications, in return for very little encyclopedic content.

Femto 14:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

The Amazon.com links don't belong. If possible, they should be replaced with ISBN links. —Wrathchild (talk) 13:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

same format
Bruce Kovner
Toby Crabel -- nominated for AFD
Van K. Tharp
Brian Gelber -- nominated for AFD
Michael Marcus
Larry Hite -- nominated for AFD
Martin Schwartz
Mark Weinstein -- nominated for AFD
Michael Steinhardt
--Hu12 18:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at Munehisa Homma history Pleclech 18:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Prod them all. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randy McKay (trader) is currently unanimously in favour of deletion and as soon as this one goes through we can get out the flamethrowers. A suggested concern is "Fails WP:BIO: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randy McKay (trader), possible spam: see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Major article spam?". Unfortunately, prod is backlogged 500 articles at the moment but I've mobolised some admins to take care of that. MER-C 03:07, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

It's been a week since I encouraged further discussion on the purpose for these articles, and have recieved no response. Being mentioned in a book, is this enough to make these bio's notable? AFD; Fails WP:BIO and Wikipedia:Notability see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randy McKay (trader), Al Weiss possible spam: see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Major article spam?.--Hu12 11:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I nominated the following for AFD, Toby Crabel, Mark Weinstein, Larry Hite, Brian Gelber, Monroe Trout, Tom Basso, Louis Lukac, Joe Ritchie,Mark Ritchie, Linda Bradford Raschke. Hopefully we can get a broader consensus. Hu12 13:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

world.guns.com

I found this one after removing an external link added at the same time to multiple gun related articles:

It deserves attention…

—Red Thrush 12:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Likewise riflesnguns.com should be removed - commercial website linked multiple times by primarily one anonymous user. Not as many links as above and I started removing. Placed warning on anon users Talk. Both spam sites generally appear in the same articles and if removing the ones above, might as well remove these while you're on these firearm sites. Calltech 14:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
It looks like some of the gun-specific links are actually relevant and useful. this one chosen at random seems relevant to the article it's in. ---J.S (T/C) 03:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree J.S. re world.guns.ru. Red Thrush, it appears to be a personal hobby website from an authority on guns (written several books). Links (small sample) have been added by different editors, some with a long history of contribution. Plus the content is extensive. Riflenguns, on the other hand, is a self proclaimed "social networking" website requesting registration with excessive advertising (need to scroll down past ads to see anything meaningful. After listing gun specs, there's a "Buy this gun online" message on sampled pages. Three strikes IMO. I went ahead and removed these links per WP:EL. Calltech 13:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

searchtexoma.com - second opinion

Can someone take a look at the Texoma article and especially the talk page? Another user, 24.116.127.234 (talk • contribs), has insisted on keeping a link tosearchtexoma.com in the article. I've removed it several times; I'll leave it to a third party to assess it, delete if appropriate and leave a comment on the talk page. The editor insisted it was needed due to a "copright violation", so I rewrote the article and substantially expanded it. Now she says I just copied the rewritten material from elsewhere on the web and that the link should stay because it "still has copywrite information". Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 15:42, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think your in the right in this situation. The directory-link is an acceptable alternitive searchtexoma.com. ---J.S (T/C) 20:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
added my 2 cents as well on the talk page, doesn't seem talking will prevent the continued Insertion and again of this spam link.--Hu12 04:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Reported AIV and "blocked "24.116.127.234 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 31 hours (Continual reinsertion of a spam link) --Hu12 06:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
31 January 2006: Now blacklisted

cut-the-knot.org

Another advertised site:

Adsense pub-9118218894256794

Added by:

—Red Thrush 12:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Even have an article (cut-the-knot). Hu12 12:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
just a note; curious to know how cut-the-knot.org has used wikipedia as a dumping ground for405 links. most generaly low quality. especialy since most of those are Direct links to documents that require external applications (such as Flash or Java).Hu12 13:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I found the links to cut-the-knot useful (although many of them require java). I know the guy who put them (Alexb@cut-the-knot) from personal correspondence, and he was inserting only links which were relevant, as far as I know.
I totally agree with removing external spam links, but I suggest you think carefully and on a link-by-link basis when removing links to cut-the-knot. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I recommend removing these links. There are several WP:EL issues here. First, adding links to a site you own, manage, contribute to is against WP guidelines (need to get consensus on talk page and have another editor add them - not done here per user contribs). Second, adding links to a site with excessive amounts of advertising. 3 sets of Google Adsense adds plus others raises a red flag - all classic signs of website promotion WP:WPSPAM. Calltech 17:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I recommend a case-by-case for this one. I don't object to the number of ads, as they are out of the way, since they are along the border. Do we disallow links to nytimes.com because of the huge Flash ad along the right side, as well as the Google Adsense near the bottom? In any case, I agree that the direct links to Flash/Java should be moved to the page containing them or removed entirely, as well as the links added by Alexb himself if there's any doubt. Veinor (ヴエノル(talk)) 18:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
If you view the links added by the other 3 anonymous users, they likewise fit the external link spam pattern. All contributions in a short period of time on 1 day, all links to the same website, and in some cases multiple links to the same article. Not thoughtful contribution but simply attempts to link spam. All those should be removed as well as links by Alexb, whose contributions are mainly adding links to his own site. Regarding advertising, 3 sets of Adsense ads (max allowed by Google), 1 Google search (paid), and full right side ad. All put together, these fit the classic link spammer pattern. Calltech 18:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Its tricky. Some of these links are clearly excessive/irrelevant: e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Archimedes&diff=prev&oldid=93816003 were links from Archimedes to weak pages on theorems of his with the added links to the cut the knot page. However, it isn't quite true yet AFAICT that "adding links to a site you own, manage, contribute to is against WP guidelines", its still only a proposed guideline and it may well have been less true when the links were put in (I've broken that one myself I'm sure although admittedly not 405 times in succession, and my sites don't run ads). My test would be if there was a relevant link to the site and material on the site which wasn't in the WP article I might keep it but I'd be inclined to warn the site owner (whose good faith we should assume) not to run against the judgement of another editor when he was partial? --BozMo talk 19:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, BozMo, for your comments. Just one point. I believe there has been a guideline against links to your one's own site for at least a year (went back into history). It was written a little differently in November, 2005 - links to avoid.
  • "Links that are added to promote a site, by the site operator or its affiliates."
The wording I quoted (roughly) preceded the recent proposed changes and has been kept somewhat intact. Calltech 19:58, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I have no personal experience with the operator(s) of cut-the-knot. I do have experience with the mathematical quality of the pages, which I find consistently high. Every time a web search or a Wikipedia link takes me there, the visit is worthwhile. I see no evidence that the purpose of the site is financial gain or personal aggrandizement, and it has a ".org" top-level domain. Contrast this with our many links to MathWorld, which is far less helpful for the general reader, and is operated by — and acts as an advertisement for — Wolfram Research and its Mathematica product. (Nevertheless, MathWorld links also enjoy support among Wikipedia mathematicians.)
Any attempt to broadly classify cut-the-knot links as spam is misinformed and misguided.
I do agree with Veinor that we should not directly link to Flash or Java (or PDF) content, as is good Web design practice. (Accessible design is good for everyone.) --KSmrqT 20:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Just for the record, there is no requirements for getting or keeping a "org" top level domains. ---J.S (T/C) 20:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I took a look at the site and it appears to be useful. It's possible many of the Java-files could actually be relevant to wikipedia. (linking to an HTML file with java on it is different then just linking to the java file). I don't think a wholesale blacklisting would be appropriate... just a careful review for relevance. ---J.S (T/C) 20:49, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Please use some restraint when dealing with links to this site. Both the site and User:Alexb@cut-the-knot.com have been good for Wikipedia's math articles. Alexb has been editing here since before our external links guidelines were quite so clear cut on adding links to your own site, and he may well have come to an understanding with many other math article editors that the links were appropriate. It would be a great shame to lose (or make less effective) a good editor because we go in with a heavy handed approach when a simple request and some conversation would clear things up. I agree with several others above that the content of the site is generally very good. It has won several awards in the past. While this isn't a peer reviewed journal, it's a site with a very respectable reputation, and one of the few sites that provides explanations of classic math "problems". --Siobhan Hansa 21:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Well stated, Siobhan Hansa, and I agree that a wholesale blacklisting is not the answer here. I do believe the mass linking needs to stop and that the selective removal of some of the prior links is in order. Calltech 12:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I got this e-mail:

Date: 13 Dec 2006 03:12:55 GMT
To: Femto (talk · contribs)
From: Alexb@cut-the-knot.com (talk · contribs)

How, paranoid [refers to my userpage Femto]. For a fellow who's affraid to give even this much information, your behavior is truly impudent. How dare you? At least show some courtesy by giving an indication of what makes my link a spam. A spam? I am indeed at a loss for words.

I've been working on my site about 10 years now. Mostly in the after hours. Enjoy this tremendously nonetheless. Yes, I would like more people to learn about it. Anything wrong with that?

I receive daily offers to exchange links and to list the site in various directories. I do not do that. I do add links to my site at wikipedia where relevant and worthy.

Have you checked the links? As a trained mathematician, I am pretty sure most wikipedia visitors will benefit from the information they provide.

You know, I am actually ashamed to have to talk to an identified fellow trying to explain and justify my attitude.

I run an online forum at my site. The CTK Exchange. Boy, you have to see the spam I am fighting there and the effort I invest to keep the forums clean. To compare my link to the daily hundreds I block at my forums is unconscionable.

You must be ashamed, if you can.

Alexander Bogomolny

If you had actually read my message you'd know why your links are problematic. Since you have to fight linkspam yourself, you'll surely understand why Wikipedia's external link guidelines must be so restrictive on website owners linking to themselves.

I actually considered to second here that your site has a reputation in its field, that there may be independently added links, and care should be taken in removing them. Though as an anonymous contributor I'm not entitled to this opinion, I suppose. Femto 12:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

You know what, I am awfully sorry. I spent about 1 hour writing a response which then got discarded due to a loss of session data. I just do not have more time to spend on justifying myself to an anonymous and likely an incompetent crowd. I am nauseated at needing to do that. I thank every one one who found kind and encouraging words for my site. AB
Not to be confused with the other "A. B." on this page
You need to cut the attitude. Err... I made a pun. Dangit. Sorry. I won't do it again. I'll cut it out...ERRR noooo. ---J.S (T/C) 15:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Open proxies -- worth checking for anon. IP spammers

I just found a useful tool, CompleteWhois:

http://www.completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=127.0.0.1&display=webtable

Just replace the 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address and Completewhois will look for open proxy info. If it appears it may be an open proxy, report it at Wikipedia:WikiProject on open proxies where someone will take a closer look and block it indefinitely Wikimedia-wide if necessary.

I'm thinking it might be worth our going back through all the old IP addresses reported here as time allows to see which are open proxies. --A. B. (talk) 20:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

lala.com

Mxpx775 (talk · contribs) keeps adding links to band/artist articles for [32]. The site is an online store that trades CDs it appears. I'd appreciate if others would keep an eye on this too. Metros232 22:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

See also Image:Lala2.jpg - It's tagged as PD-Self. ---J.S (T/C) 23:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Boomp3.com

I just found links in a couple of articles (Amelia Earhart and Joseph McCarthy) to http://boomp3.com/, a site that allows anyone to upload audio recordings. The IP that added these links only hit 4 articles today (and 2 of them happened to be on my watch list), but I don't know if any other IPs have been adding links. The site has no ads, and the links do seem to be pertinent to the articles, but there may be copyvio problems. This is just a heads up to keep an eye out in case these links become a problem. I don't think this is spam, yet, but it could become so. -- Donald Albury 23:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

There are about 12 links from WP to that URL see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.boomp3.com%2F . They look ok but they are being put in suspiciously (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Max_evil ) four or five at a time with different IDs. I have deleted a couple to see if I get a reaction, but I might put them back the audio tracks are quite nice... --BozMo talk 10:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess it doesn't need action now, but something to keep an eye on. -- Donald Albury 13:02, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

igottarant.com

An anonymous editor is busy adding links to igottarant.com in various college sports articles. Worth keeping an eye on and looking out for in the future. --ElKevbo 15:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

118 links on user SR_-_RE (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)Hu12 16:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I blanked his user page and asked him not to add so many external links next time. I added it to my watchlist as well. ---J.S (T/C) 16:48, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

1. WPSpam's mission 2. Good faith/bad judgment edits

I think it's telling when there's so much good faith disagreement here over some site's links , such as in the cut-the-knot.org case.

Here's my two cents' worth on WikiProject Spam and external links:

The English Wikipedia has over 1.5 million articles. By now, there are probably just under 3 million links. I'd estimate perhaps 30% to 40% of these links are inappropriate per the External Links Guideline ("WP:EL"). Here's how I categorize these links in my own mind:

1. Good faith edits to that don't meet the external links guideline added by some enthusiastic editor. I call these "good faith/bad judgment edits". (Peruse the most linked-to sites list and you'll see some of this.) Examples
a. Many forums, for instance. They're very useful, but a Wikipedia link confers an encyclopedic endorsement of the content and there's no quality control over the posts. See the Reliable Sources Guideline and the Verifiability Policy -- there's a lot of wisdom there about quality control and what's "encyclopedic". Our external links guideline is really very narrow in how few useful sites it will accept and these other documents give the good reasoning behind these narrow criteria.
b. Blogs -- same issue. Often good content but no guarantee of quality control.
c. Self-published articles by others -- same issue. See our recent religioustolerance dot org discussion
d. Some editor's favorite vendor -- same issue greatly magnified with neutrality issues thrown in.
2. "Not-so-abusive" spam even if added in a campaign. This is the stuff added by an earnest employee or entrepreneur who immediately backs off when warned. Subsets include:
a. "Somewhat-more-abusive" spammers that perhaps start out with milder intentions but get stubborn, angry and disruptive. A few turn into our meanest, toughest cases; cases in point: the searchtexoma spammer and the middlesell.com spammer.
b. Smooth, corporate types (example: Suite101 dot com) glibly denying anything ever happened.
3. Very gray area stuff added by a mix of campaigners and long-time editors to non-profit sites (or even sites supported by a few ads, but clearly maintained as a "labor of love"). One example was the addition of some watchtower.org links to non-religious articles by a longstanding editor. (Note: Most of the hundreds of watchtower.org links are appropriate and link to relevant articles.) Another might or might not be all the cut-the-knot.org links now being discussed.
4. "Abusive" spam added by sneaky people who know better. Sometimes campaign-spammed, sometimes slipped in one link at a time, frequently using open proxies. Some are Google AdSense abusers, others are "black hat" search engine optimizers/spamdexers. (The Spamdexing and AdSense articles are interesting must-reads for anyone working on this WikiProject).

Folks can probably improve on this personal spam taxonomy of mine -- it's just how I think about it.

My own priorities:

Category 1 -- zero priority:
With several million links to police, this is what those 3.0 million other registered editors are for. Yes, they make a lot of poor calls, but I'm not trying to reverse them all. Coming in as an outsider to an article and playing link-sheriff only antagonizes folks. I may put on a {cleanup-spam} template tag and move on an article is a real spam-hole. I don't want to get bogged down in arguments over this sort of stuff.
Category 2 -- low priority except for big campaigns
I track down, warn and move on. I spot these and handle them purely as a byproduct of looking for Category 4 abusers; sometimes it's not clear initially what kind of spam I'm looking at, so once I'm involved with a #2, I stick with it.
Category 3 -- I try to avoid but still handle
These are really, really sensitive, as the cut-the-knot.org situation shows. I try to address these carefully and tactfully -- even kindly (this is often done by our best and most earnest contributors). In the watchtower case, I reverted the o-topic links and left a nice note for the editor just pointing out that he really shouldn't do this anymore. In other cases, I may leave a note on some related WikiProject's talk page asking for advice, such as this or this (I don't always get a response). Mostly I just try to avoid these. These can mushroom into real controversies.
Category 4 -- my real priority
These spammers' activities cut across multiple articles and it has to be tracked down systematically by someone willing to work on one spammer at a time, perhaps for a number of hours: finding the spam, who added it, what else they added, what other web sites are they maybe associated with that have spam here -- then warning the offenders, removing the spam and reporting the problem.
This is only my personal opinion, but I believe Category 4 is WikiProject Spam's "highest and best use". We're really the only people on Wikipedia doing this.

I sense WikiProject Spam is getting some new traction and some new attention, both on Wikipedia and in the black hat community. Occasionally, I see a comment by a long-time editor about some ill-advised overzealousness by some sort of link-police in category 1 and 3 situations. Such a reputation, if developed, would not help us in getting support from admins and the broader community in dealing with spam; it might even backfire into knee-jerk, adverse changes to the External Links and the Spam Guidelines.

Again, this is all just my opinion posted as a starting point for discussion. --A. B. (talk) 16:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the summary. Perhaps you can simplify it and add it to the project page?
I'm actually just getting involved in this project, but I've been working on removing a more serious form of cat1 ELS (Well intentioned, but potentially damaging). I am an administrator (as of yesterday) so if there is a serious situation that need immediate action (bot-spammer, etc), let me know on my talk page.
I think I'm going to shift much of my attention to the cat4-type spam. I think your right... we are the only organization setup to work on this.
Ps, I think you forgot to end a sentence there... ---J.S (T/C) 17:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Please note... we are tracking Category 4 spammers on #wikipedia-spam on the irc.freenode.net network. Feel free to join in on the fun! —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 08:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC).
Eagle 101, I'm sorry -- I've been bad about this IRC initiative. It's not for lack of interest; I've just never used IRC and I need to set aside the time to figure it out. I tried tinkering with connecting to this channel for about 20 minutes, got nowhere (I didn't understand how to set up the software) and put it aside. I learn best by taking an hour or two and just reading a manual or help file from the top. --A. B. (talk) 15:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Find a Grave

Sorry it must already have been discussed but which category is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.findagrave.com ?

--BozMo talk 17:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people
Template:Find_A_Grave
Find A Grave
not spam, i think--Hu12 17:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
14,000 links? Hmm I'd be inclined to put a page on WP about find a grave and then list all of them as internal links under "see also". But I agree not category 4 anyway. --BozMo talk 18:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

must be a part of some project, with a robot adding the template. thats literaly a jaw droping number of links.--Hu12 18:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd say a lot are legitimate or at worst, category 1. It's sort of self-published, sort of a forum, but when you have a picture of a tombstone, it's a pretty reliable source for exact names, birth and death dates, etc. There are many Medal of Honor winners, 19th century governors, etc. that are notable and need Wikipedia articles but lack much material on the web -- it's all in books somewhere. Google finds a million hits on some professional wrestlers but may come up with just 40 (mostly useless) on some important, long-dead politician. I've used Find A grave information myself for articles I've started.
If you're really concerned, I'd pick 50 links at random and spot check to see who added them, then see if those editors were just spamming Find A Grave. Even then, I'd be real careful that I didn't shoot or revert people working on Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people, a systematic effort to use Find A Grave material to start articles.
In fact, before anything, I'd start with a discussion on Wikipedia talk:Find-A-Grave famous people. As for me, I'm after the herbal remedy spammers and Adsense trolls. --A. B. (talk) 18:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Follow-up: there were long discussions about this at Wikipedia talk:Find-A-Grave famous people a year ago. Relevant sections:
There was an editor good-faith spamming some links outside the consensus of the project but that was a long time ago. I'd read the whole thing before drawing any conclusions.
I'm still stongly inclined to leave all this alone (and I hope you won't delete the Find A Grave links I've added!) --A. B. (talk) 18:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I have no issue with these, except for the sheer number of them. They do seem to compliment encyclopedic content, except the ones you added A.B... for shame..LOL ;)--Hu12 19:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

courttv.com

Another user to keep an eye on (found while reviewing my watchlist, not through the top-500 listing):

He's been mantaining a collection of links to:

There are, however, a few minor useful contributions around August 2006.

—Red Thrush 18:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

66.162.64.213 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log) contributions are self promotional:
Time Warner Telecom, Inc. TWTC-NETBLK-3 (NET-66-162-0-0-1)66.162.0.0 - 66.162.255.255 Courtroom Television TWTC-NYCL-C-COURTROOMTELEVISION-0 (NET-66-162-64-208-1) 66.162.64.208 - 66.162.64.223--Hu12 19:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
So, may I start removing all those links?
—Red Thrush 13:28, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Neutral second opinion wanted -- gocashiers.com

A good-faith, new editor, Gocashiers (talk • contribs), has added links to his really nice commercial website about the Cashiers, North Carolina area. He's frustrated that I have removed them. Perhaps one of you can explain it better to him while staying within WP:BITE. That, or confirm that the links are OK. --A. B. (talk) 19:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Note, I took down all of the links except one, on the page for Cashiers, NC. I understand you don't want people spamming all over Wikipedia, but it's totally relevant for Cashiers and does a much better job than the Chamber of Commerce site for non-commercial information for the area. My site is like 90%/10% non-commercial, which the Chamber site is more commercial than not. Thanks! --<a href="http://www.gocashiers.com">GoCashiers.com</a> 19:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
That may be true, but adding links to your own website fairly clearly violates the Wikipedia:Conflict of interest guidelines. A better way to handle is to offer a link on the Talk page for the article and let other editors decide if it's relevant. —Wrathchild (talk) 20:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
(EC)Yeah, despite being spam, it's useful spam. I took a look at the website and I'd be inclined to leave it.
If I were you, I'd leave it but give him a stiff warning about WP:COI. ---J.S (T/C) 20:02, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Agree. His website is one of the better links on that page anyway and satisfies the main test of providing lots of additional information, with few adverts. Conflict of Interest is a difficult concept for a newbie (heck, I spent three years managing in West Africa and it can be difficult culturally for some people to get ever). Just ask him not to add more himself, leave one and move on. --BozMo talk 20:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the good advice. I left one link and left him a message. --A. B. (talk) 20:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


Good-faith with alterior motive. I don't want to be the grinch that stole someones christmas spam, however gocashiers.com was Created on "06-Sep-2006". This is promotionaly motivated. Here are the google linkbacks to the site link to www.gocashiers.com. I apreciate the open discussion, but I stand behind the initial decesion that was made by A. B. and my post on the talk page. If this did not have serious conflicts of interest problems (admittedly), and it existed long term without advertisements, I'd feel like leaving it. "My site is like 90%/10% non-commercial" the site hasn't been around long enough to get commercial. look in a few months, it will be commercial.

Use of Wikipedia to link to a website that you own, maintain or are acting as an agent for is strongly recommended against, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked to.--Hu12 21:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Not a Grinch, and I don't say you are wrong. But if this link had been proposed on a talk page (and if I ever went to obscure US articles), personally I would have added it to the article. Plus it was a Newbie editor AFAICT. I don't know about alterior motives but much of wikipedia is added on a "win-win" because people are at least adding material which they would like other people to see or understand. There is a tiny line between that and promotion. I don't think we can expect a newbie to read the entire guidelines before editing it: the warnings on the edit box are perhaps the best we can assume. There is a reason for assuming good faith. --BozMo talk 08:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I totaly agree with the talk page proposal, and would have added it myself without question or assumption. Assuming good faith is about intentions, not actions. However considering the attention this site has received, some fact checking was warranted. Evidence of the intention, not actions, has come to light as a result of the examination, and is why i posted. The guideline does not require that editors continue to assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary. We know this person owns the site,"conflict of interest", self admitted. We also know this site is very new from the whois data "Created on 06-Sep-2006", and from the web page itself "GoCashiers.com was launched on September 10, 2006". We lastly know now the owner is "new to SEO", self admitted on his userpage. Any webmaster launching a brand new site (intended for visitors) is interested in one thing only, promotion and traffic. The spamming was stopped after 5 articles, obviously bound for many more. Knowing all these things, I was confident the intentions were promotionally motivated, with no reason to assume otherwise. Hu12 13:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
First off, y'all should have a warning somewhere that says to copy your edits before you press Save. (You probably do, and someone is about to link me to it!) I just wrote a semi-detailed response/apology/explanation that said stuff like I understand the anti-spamming policy and am glad that y'all are on patrol, that I didn't mean to spam per se, but I understand I am a spammer (insert Spammers' Anonymous joke here), that I'll add some content to the Cashiers, NC page soon, etc. Anyway, I lost all that, and this is all you get now. :) BTW, thanks for the compliments and to Hu12 for the confidence! ;) --Gocashiers | Talk 08:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
From your Talk "I'm totally new to SEO...I tried dmoz the other day, and it wasn't cooperative." DMOZ recieve's alot of requests for inclusion and depending if there is an active editor in the category, it could take a long time to get through the back log. Look forward to you becoming an active content editor for the Cashiers, North Carolina article. best of luck. Hu12 10:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
FWIW DMOZ also has technical problems and we've been unable to edit it since early Nov or so. --BozMo talk 12:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Shadowbot's last 250 warnings

I have temporarily posted information on the last 250 users warned by Shadowbot on a user subpage at User:A. B./Sandbox3 along with the articles they spammed if anyone is interested or sees any familiar faces. --A. B. (talk) 01:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


Wikispam Charter

Looking at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#1._WPSpam.27s_mission_2._Good_faith.2Fbad_judgment_edits I wonder if there are two other useful roles which this team could play as well as fighting the most sinister threats I think you (?we) should have an upfront unilateral declaration that you also wish to promote understanding of the issues around spam in the wider WP community and help to produce guidelines. You ought really to have FAQ:Spam pages and the like or if you have someone ought to tell me where to find them. Thoughts? --BozMo talk 08:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Please note... we are tracking Category 4 spammers on #wikipedia-spam on the irc.freenode.net network. Feel free to join in on the fun! —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 08:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Second opinion

Can someone take a look at the contributions of Ankit bond2005 (talk · contribs)? It looks like spam to me, but I'd like another person to take a look too. Thank you. Deli nk 18:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Nuke it. Commercial website, links are misleadingly titled, and links to word documents directly. ---J.S (T/C) 18:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Great catch -- how'd you spot that one?
Hacker is on my watchlist and this edit simply raised red flags. Deli nk 14:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Nofollow

There was some speculation a couple of weeks ago about whether google ignored nofollow on WP anyway. At least googlebot appears to: it has just turned up with a vengence at http://2007-wikipedia-cd-selection.fixedreference.org/wp/index/alpha.htm which (unless someone has done a rapid copy I cannot find) is only linked to from WP talk and project pages (and has only been up a week). THere are no links to it from other bits of the site. Last year when there wasn't nofollow I forbad googlebot with a robots.txt from the 2006 version and actually got what appeared to be a genuine letter from google letting me know they wanted to bot the site but were forbidden. Hmm. --BozMo talk 11:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Only robots.txt will prevent a well behaved bot from entering a site at all. Nofollow on the other hand is quite a misnomer, it merely means that links found on the talkpages aren't taken into account for calculating the pagerank of the site; they still get spidered. Femto 13:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok. That makes sense I guess --BozMo talk 14:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
If you want a page to not be indexed, you want noindex html tags around the unindexed region. See: robots.txt. 67.117.130.181 13:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

By the way, is there any reason WP uses nofollow on talk pages but not on article pages? I don't know whether spammers come to WP to lead readers into their sites or to get a better page rank. But, if the later, nofollow on links could discourage some of them. I can't see any problem for good external links, as they should exist only for completeness or verifiability. Does WP help itself by giving more page rank points to its sources? Just my 2 cents…

—Red Thrush 15:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

There's about five pages of discussion on that involving around 200 users so don't expect a quick answer. --BozMo talk 22:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize there was a special page for that question (Wikipedia:Nofollow). Thanks anyway.
—Red Thrush 10:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

carsfromitaly.net

82.44.132.196 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
carsfromitaly.net search results

This user also changed the link within cite tags from .com (dead site)to .net. the now obsolete citation, was reverted by User:Clawson, claiming " this ref was well-established'. For example carsfromitaly.net which was resored, is low content page with links to ebay, amazon.com, adsense, screensavers, walpapers and a section with stuffed with keywords. Clearly fails the External links policy. Here is internet archive version of the carsfromitaly.com from before it expired [33]. It was a cleaver attempt to subvert the spam policies, by vandalizing an existing link hidden within "cite" tags, and campaign spamming other articles. I would like some input whether these should stay or be removed. --Hu12 16:47, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm having a rather long discussion about this on my talk page. Looking for a second opinion or possible consensus on wether this is realy spam. --Hu12 18:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Spammer with a conscience?

Wow, look at this edit by 195.83.215.2 (talk · contribs) - JonHarder talk 00:15, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

... of course not ("CPayscom2 Online Casino")

No conscience at all -- just a sense of humor. I'm sure it's connected to the "CPayscom2 Online Casino" SEO Contest. If you watch, we'll be getting some spam here and there that links to sites that link to sites, etc that will enable winning this contest.

If you're interested, I suggest you put Casino and SEO contest on your watchlist. If you're really feeling zealous, consider also watching every article linked to Casino and everything linked to SEO contest.

But then again, you'll need a sockpuppet account just to manage that big a watchlist.

While you're at it, you may find a few abusive accounts that have been spamming other stuff and/or open proxy accounts.

Enjoy the show. --A. B. (talk) 01:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Linksearch improvement

It would be useful a lot of these times for linksearch to show who added each link. It would just record the info when the link got inserted, so no substantial extra overhead. Someone want to suggest that to the devs? 67.117.130.181 16:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Ummm it would be nice, but it seems technicly difficult to impliment. It would be so very helpfull if it's posible. ---J.S (T/C) 02:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I think it should not be terribly difficult based on how I think the server works. I added a feature request at bugzilla.wikimedia.org.[34] 67.117.130.181 08:56, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

criterionco essays

linksearch there are 400+ of these film essays linked to various film articles. The essays I looked at were pretty good (written by real writers or notable people, etc.) but man there's a lot of them. Thoughts? 67.117.130.181 17:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The Criterion Collection - I guess they are a notable company... I looked at two links... they seem quite relivent to the articles and contain the kind of stuff we can't publish. So far it looks good. I took a look at one article to conduct a little research: Withnail and I. The link was added with this edit 06:09, 7 January 2006 by good faith editor User:Girolamo Savonarola. So far I see no red-flags. ---J.S (T/C) 02:48, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't doubt Criterion is a notable company but are we here to promote its products? Is it really the case that every one of those links points to a unique resource that wouldn't be in the article once it reaches featured status? If they're so much better at describing movies than we are in our own articles, why are we bothering to write an encyclopedia in the first place? Also, is it so good that in a lot of our articles there are multiple links to that site. Anyway these links clearly aren't spam in the usual sense. They just raise more general questions about extlink critia because there's so many. 67.117.130.181 08:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the links provide information that we can't provide... such as OR and POV reviews. Just because the site is commercial in nature doesnt make it unsuitable. Newyorktimes.com for example. The site is commercial, they sell subscriptions and they have advertising... but they also provide useful info that can't be included in the article.
Now, I've only looked a little-bit at the criterionco site. Are the essays well written? Do they actually provide information about the movie? Is the information completely redundant to the Wiki-article? I don't know... but my first impression is that the site is legit and useful for really old/obscure movies. It might not be a RS... I don't know if they do fact-checking or peer review on the essays. ---J.S (T/C) 16:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

squidoo.com on ban-list?!

I noticed the domain "squidoo.com" on the spam black-list. It's not visible in the comments of the change history, because it was added as part of a bulk on 12/13/06. "04:17, 13 December 2006 Dmcdevit (Talk | contribs) (adding many sites per request)".

Squidoo.com is a portal site with user generated content. Do you think it is right to ban the whole domain because of the 0.0001% of the users that proudly add a link to their "creations" to a wikipedia article? I mean the ban removed a link even from my user page to the portals homepage. It's like removing a link to wordpress.com or youtube.com.

I suggest to remove that ban. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 01:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you care, but I'm in the process of removing a large number of YouTube links. ---J.S (T/C) 02:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Have all these links been spammed or are these links added by editors in good faith? Speaking for myself, I'd say I'm not interested (at least in the context of WikiProject Spam) unless these were campaign-spammed. My outlook on this may vary from others'. It looks like this topic is already getting plenty of attention at WP:ANI.--A. B. (talk) 05:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
They are primarily "good-faith/bad-judgement." Most of them are copy-vio uploads... and since YouTube requires the copyright owner to bitch about it, copyvio uploads stay up for months. They are apparently getting a bit more active about it since google took over... hopefully they can clean it up. ---J.S (T/C) 16:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
not personally, I also do not care much (personally) about the squidoo.com link. However, the signal being sent is not right. Wikipedia is user generated content and devalues without exception the content generated on other sites by as much, if not more people than editors at Wikipedia. Squidoo.com is somewhat related to Wikipedia, but with a different business model. The Idea of Squidoo is to create articles or pages to a subject that is useful and informative to others. Okay, that's where the similarities with Wikipedia end :). YouTube.com is a platform to store and access Video. Video is often a very strong reference or proof of statements made, stronger than a Text article or simple photograph. If you would add YouTube.com to the spam black-list, a valuable source of reference would inaccessible for Wikipedia Editors. Was the ban of Squidoo.com ordered from someone above or who made that decision? I don't see YouTube.com in the list yet so I assume that the cleanup is being done somewhat manual (in the article name space at least). --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 04:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't see much in the way of "orders from above" around here. We're more of a well-intended anarchy.
The place to check would be the blacklist itself. I just looked at it and I think I see what happened -- I requested squidoo.com/inexpensive-wine and squidoo.com/localphoneservice be blacklisted and all of squidoo.com got blacklisted instead. Let me see what I can do about this. --A. B. (talk) 05:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I've requested the other squidoo links be removed from the blacklist. --A. B. (talk) 05:13, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
That makes more sense. You don't want to ban blogger.com just because some of he blogs created there are splogs. Allthought that thought crossed the mind of more than one person hehe ;) --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 05:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Roy, thanks for catching the problem! I'd bet that 95+% of blogspot links we have are inappropriate for Wikipedia not because they're exactly spam, but because fail to meet those sections of the External Links Guideline that derive from our fundamental, bedrock Original Research and Verifiability policies. Most the linked-to blogspot pages aren't "encyclopedic". As a general rule, if a person isn't notable enough to qualify for an article here, then anything they self-publish is unlinkable. Even when they're notable, you still have to look at a bunch of things like context, etc. before linking to self-published works. If Bill Gates has a blog, it's may be a good link for the Microsoft article, but not for the Microsoft Excel article.
Personally, I'm not here to play link-police, just to help with hard-core spam (and in some cases, less commercial, but systematic and widespread campaigns like the well-intended watchtower.org linker's). I suspect many others feel the same.
Even if we wanted to get rid of blogspot links, the spam blacklist is reserved for hard-core stuff. It's a nuclear option in my mind. That's especially true given the rumors that some search engines may or may not be using our blacklist as a vetted source of data in their own efforts to identify spamdexers. Blacklisting by Google is much more devastating than blacklisting by Wikipedia. (Not that they'd ever block their own Blogger group.)
Finally, if a page has a blacklisted link, someone edits the page, and then tries to save it, the Wikia software blocks the save. When we blacklist 100s or 1000s of links added in good-faith/bad-judgement we effectively block editing of 100s or 1000s of articles, some of them our most-edited.
My personal take-away lesson from the squidoo situation is that the next time I propose something for the blacklist, I need to flag any subdomains I list like "squidoo.com/inexpensive-wine" as applying to the subdomain only. A busy meta admin working rapidly through a list of 30 domains to block might easily consolidate such a subdomain with the overall domain. That's especially true if they normally edit in another Wikipedia and perhaps unfamiliar with "squidoo", blogspot and similar sites in the anglophone world. --67.166.208.24 A. B. (talk) 16:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
That's why we help each other out. Nobody can be everywhere, every time and think of everything. No harm done and we are on the same page. Some months ago when I learned about the ban-list was the ban done intentionally. It lasted not too long because of the backlash. That was the reason why I asked if it was intended or not. You never know. Keep up the good work. Cheers! --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 16:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I added an explanation to the earlier post (end of November) about Squidoo and explained what I what it is (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Squidoo_links). Sorry, I did not see it earlier. I watch this page, but not as closely as some others that get actually spammed a lot :). If you have a question to a site or suspect some Internet marketing scam, leave me a message at my talk page and I will have a look at it. Internet/Affiliate/Search Engine Marketing happens to be one of my Expertises, next to ASCII/ANSI art, Demos, Warez BBS and Web/DB Development ;). --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 08:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Audio links

Got a reply back about boomp3.com from User_talk:Max_evil, see his talk page. --BozMo talk 08:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I would say this situation will be manageable. Possible copyvios are my main concern. -- Donald Albury 13:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

mediaman.com.au

There appears to have been a long running low level campaign to promote this site. linksearch - mediaman.com.au. Numerous Sydney registered IPs making small flurries of additions over the last year or so: 203.206.163.162, 202.59.25.83, 58.104.229.132, 60.231.129.157, 220.236.27.70, 220.101.67.140. See my research so far (I'm happy to paste it all here if that's preferred, but it takes up a lot of space.). --Siobhan Hansa 10:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't have time to finish right now, will come back to it later. If anyone decides to work on this, please note there appear to be legitimate and good faith uses of the domain on some professional wrestling articles. --Siobhan Hansa 11:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


Sliver.it

195.137.109.177 added this to 10+ pages in the space of about one hour. I removed it, and they're saying that it's legit. On the one hand, it doesn't appear to be an ad site, on the other hand, it was added to a lot of articles fast. Comments? Veinor (ヴエノル(talk)) 16:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks like some kind of Nirvana fan site under construction. I left a note on the person's talk page, I don't think the links should stay. We're not a link directory. It doesn't matter whether the site is commercial or not, we're not here to promote external sites. 67.117.130.181 17:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided prohibits "Links mainly intended to promote a website," and these links don't add to the quality of the articles. -- Satori Son 19:02, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I had a slightly tense exchange with the contributor on his talk page and removed all the links from article space. I ended up suggesting that he post them to the talk pages of the different articles and leave it up to the other editors whether to put them into the articles. I noticed there was a somewhat similar situation from livenirvana.com, kind of a similar site. There were a lot of links to that site's info about individual songs and records and I left those alone, but a lot more links to their main index page (a lot of which were in the "references" section of articles). I removed the links to the index page. I also left a note at Talk:Nirvana_(band)#sliver.it_links about the matter. 67.117.130.181 20:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that putting it up on Nirvana discography would be perfectly acceptable. Anywhere else, IMHO, isn't. I've added a comment to that effect on the contributor's talkpage. Veinor (ヴエノル(talk)) 15:46, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea

Man look at that link farm disguised as citations. The whole article is spam except the Roast Magazine article sort of marginally creates some notability. I don't know what cleanup is possible but I mention this here as it's the shape of things to come (think of Rosencomet). 67.117.130.181 17:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Ugg... pressreleases. Yuck. All of those references need to be converted to reference secondary sources. I'll make a note about it on the talk page. ---J.S (T/C) 19:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

rel=nofollow WE NEED THIS

Can we mount some kind of effort to reopen that discussion and get rel=nofollow turned back on? That would solve a heck of a lot of our problems.

Have you all seen this letter from Brad Patrick? [35] It was on the WP:CSD talk page a while back but I didn't see it here. Excerpts:

The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on Wikipedia is overwhelming. At the office, we are receiving dozens of phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder. This is as it should be. However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate self-editing and vanity page creation. This is simply out of hand, and we need your help. ...
Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go. I am here to tell you it is not enough. We are losing the battle for encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia for their own memes. This scourge is a serious waste of time and energy. We must put a stop to this now.

A little different from what the spam project concentrates on, but relevant. Some several-month-old discussion is here. 67.117.130.181 20:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think nofollow would help much and it would be a heavy price to pay. We've discussed it enough times to be able to roll out the arguments again if needed. However some more aggressive policies on the vanity and fluff pages would cheer everyone up. --BozMo talk 23:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm aware of the big referendum on it a couple years ago (I don't have the link handy but I read it all the way through). It was inconclusive then but I think the climate now calls for it much more strongly. I don't think there's a heavy price and I'd favor it even if we had zero spam problems. We're supposed to be documenting things, not influencing them, and we shouldn't want our links to confer pagerank on anyone even when they're not spam links. With the spam we actually have, I can only think of the suddenly stricken expression on Obi-wan Kenobi's face when he sensed the disturbance in the Force after the death star blew up Alderaan. The minute we turn on rel=nofollow every damn SEO infesting Wikipedia will writhe in agony the exact same way that Obi-wan did. And that means we'll have done something right. 67.117.130.181 23:34, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


Count me in when it comes to supporting the re-activation of the nofollow attribute. I made a big argument in March/April here at the WP:SPAM Talk Page. The whole thing which spanned across various user talk pages as well can be found consolidated here. It addresses pretty much every argument against it and shows what you gain by enabling it and what you do not gain. Don't get over-excited. It should help (especially against the bot's), but it will not eliminate the issue. Important is to promote the fact that its on that ever back-woods spammer learns about the fact that there is less benefit for useless spamming and no benefit for spamming for SE ranking. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 23:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Btw. Google already discredited links at Article Talk pages in September, but most don't know about it and it does not go far enough IMO. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 00:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Google is not doing anything special with talk pages. We serve all Wikipedia pages except English-language article space with rel=nofollow (check the html) and that's why they get no pagerank. The French, German, etc. wikipedias all have rel=nofollow in article space so I'd be quite interested to know if they get anything like the amount of linkspam that we get. 67.117.130.181 00:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Really?! I am talking about the english Wikipedia Pages which do not have nofollow enabled for roughly 2 years now. Install the Google Toolbar and enable PageRank display. Go to an english article check the rank, go to the Talk Page, check the rank. Use an article that is well ranked and has an active talk page as well, such as Blog, IRC, Search engine optimization etc. Then check the User pages and the User talk pages. Did you read the blog post I referred to? --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 02:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I did read that article. Its main observation was that English Wikipedia's article pages generate pagerank but its talk pages do not. It conjectures that Google is giving some unique special treatment to Wikipedia talk pages. I'm saying the explanation is different, it's Wikipedia that treats talk pages differently--English Wikipedia serves rel=nofollow with talk pages but not article pages. See this link to google.com for example--view the HTML of this talk page and search for that link. The presence of rel=nofollow on talk pages is why they generate no pagerank and I'm supporting doing the same thing with article pages. Article pages on wikipedias other than English also use rel=nofollow and so if that blog guy had tried the French wikipedia (frwiki), he'd have found that frwiki's articles generate no pagerank just like English talk pages don't. 67.117.130.181 08:49, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, when did they enabled the nofollow for english article talk pages? I support that and I agree with you, that it should be extended to ALL pages at Wikipedia, including article pages --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 22:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I think at this point this website gets enough trafic that it woudln't make a diffrence. Search rank isn't the only thing they want... they want hits as well, and wikipedia can provide them. ---J.S (T/C) 00:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Some of them want hits but the pagerank is much more valuable. Did you see the spamdexing article? One thing they like to do is put somewhat useful links into the wiki and let them slowly build pagerank. Once they've gotten near the top of the search engines, they redirect the url's to their porn sites or whatever. This guy (link from here) explicitly says he doesn't care about hits, it's all about pagerank. That's what got me off on rel=nofollow today. 67.117.130.181 00:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
They are also often okay with the tiny percentage of people that click on spammy links to junk sites and even convert (buy something from the spammer). However, the benefits of the link for ranking, especially with MSN and even Yahoo who are not as good with detecting junk like Google does (and even Google slips a lot through), is still the most important thing. Keep in mind, spamming is cheap and only works if you do it in high volume. Anyhow, I think that the bigger benefit is that one motive for adding a link manually to an article will be eliminated. The RC Patrol is sometimes a bit .. mmh.. I would say overly suspicious and quick with judgement. The less "wrong" reasons for a modification of an article exist the easier will it become to see the "right" reasons. Today is it often more like "shoot first and ask later" or "you are a spammer, before you have proven that you are not". I understand why that is and are much less critical about it than I used to be. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 02:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
FWIW my view is at User_talk:Pascal.Tesson/Archive_4#Nofollow but there are a few factual errors in the above. There have been three debates on WP on nofollow. It used to never be used (there was and earlier version using a google redirect before it came out as "nofollow"). It was adopted as a default by Wikimedia because anyone who couldn't switch it off probably needed it. The proposal to adopt was discussed and rejected twice with a vote involving many editors. It was introduced outside namespace as a "compromise" March this year for the first time. --BozMo talk 15:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Andrew, I read you post at Pascal's User Talk Page. This page here is already way too big due to the number of discussions done here at the same time. I wrote a very long response at your talk page until a better place is found. There are a lot of things to consider and a lot of different opinions. --roy<sac> Talk! .oOo. 11:21, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind also that Wikipedia has around 5 million articles and roughly 70% are not in English and are served with rel=nofollow. Only around 30% of Wikipedia articles (i.e. the ones in English) are served without nofollow. They just happen to be the ones that we deal with as enwiki editors. I'd sure like to know if the linkspam patterns are different in the non-english wikis than they are here. 67.117.130.181 22:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

A drastic suggestion

What do you all think of the notion of changing the edit page to notice whenever there are any external links that aren't on a whitelist and don't come from an established user ("established" means "can edit semi-protected articles", say). If there are any, it goes to a dialog saying "You've listed the following links, are those your own site?" If they say yes it records that in a table so they can't try again with a different answer, and then refuses to save and suggests proposing the link addition on the article's talk page instead. There could also be a velocity limit for link insertion, like no more than 3 per day to the same site for new users. 67.117.130.181 20:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, once people start getting wise and saying 'no, this isn't my site', the whole thing becomes useless. Also, adding your own link can be allowed if there is talkpage discussion first... finally, all these ideas would involve a good deal of load on the database. Veinor (ヴエノル(talk)) 21:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not keen on requiring action from the editor. Hard core spammers are just going to lie about it being their site, so this only gets the naive - it might get a few first timers and stop some of the hobbyists who don't realize they shouldn't, but it's not going to stop the hard core stuff. More importantly we have to remember that verifiability is a key pillar of Wikipedia. Anything that adds complexity to the process of providing sources should be strongly avoided. Spam is bad, but lack of sources is a bigger issue (at least so I think). Maybe just a notice reminding users they should not add links to sites they are connected with whenever there's a URL in the edit? I think that's the sort of thing we'd want to test to see if it actually has the desired impact on behavior though, and doesn't just annoy editors. --Siobhan Hansa 21:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I think there are a lot of sensible things that could be done to take out the spammers, stopping anyone posting a link to the same site in more than a couple articles would stop a lot of bother, as would forcing the Semi-protected policy on the external links section. Overall though WP is very much moving to a 1.0 finality. The immediately viewable page is a stable revision and the immediately editable page is not the first to be seen and is viewed as the unstable page. That is the end game that WP is moving towards, not least because it holds a pretty high place at the www table at the moment, and the more controversies there are the more the "1.0" solution rises to the top of the pile as the way forward for WP. In short, WP is no longer a little internet backwater plaything and when the consequences of something going wrong are Jimmy Wales being asked questions in the national and international media then it ain't going to stay that way for too much longer (and frankly I will be happy with that - all too often I revert a bit off vandalism that has existed for hours, days or even weeks without being noticed). SFC9394 21:26, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm convinced, this was a dumb idea. Veinor's, Siobhan's and SFC9394's posts all make good sense, and I wasn't thinking of how 1.0 would work. Sometimes techno fixes can save a lot of trouble but this isn't one of them. Thanks. 67.117.130.181 21:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Shadowbot's Christmas list

Hi. I have gathered a list of about 125 spam domains I've been involved with in the last 3 to 4 weeks, either by warning the spammer or reverting the link. I don't yet have an IRC client -- would somebody mind feeding these to Shadowbot? Please delete the names as you add them. Thanks! --A. B. (talk) 21:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Looks like Shadow1 has taken care of this quickly and efficiently, as always. Nice work, A. B.. -- Satori Son 14:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of it. --A. B. (talk) 16:19, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Template and Link Spamming?

I came across this template Template:Datasheet, created on 1 November 2006 by new User:Mhinner. It links to a website of technical datasheets, anonymous, with Google Adsense ads. Saw at least one other editor caught this on Xilinx and removed them on the same day. I removed them from PIC microcontroller today. I'd like another opinion and then put up a WP:TFD to remove the template. Appears to be a little more sophisticated link spamming technique. Any other opinions? Calltech 15:25, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

All of the datasheetsite.com links should be reviewed. It merely hosts a collection of links to the official site(s). If the external link is necessary for the article, it should go directly to that site. JonHarder talk 15:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
That's how I see it as well. Nothing in the form of content itself, simply lots of links back to official sites, with ads on top. Template used by the creator and at least one other anonymous user during the first weeks of November, 2006. This appeared to fly under the radar because of the "official" looking template IMO. Calltech 16:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Agree 100%--BozMo talk 16:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Have put TFD on page. Not sure how TFD works: do we just post a discussion paragraph on the page? --BozMo talk 16:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I went ahead and completed the WP:TFD per the instructions on that page. It should now be open for discussion and recommendations can be added (see today's date). I placed a notice on user page and also put spamming notices on a number of the anonymous IP talk pages as well. Thanks for helping on the cleanup. Calltech 17:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Birds of North America

This is a hard one and its easy just to ignore. Website hosted on Cornell edu site and appears to promote an online information resource for birds of North America, but requires viewers to pay $40 to register. Lacks notability. If this post gets no response, I understand :-). Calltech 15:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

The article is about a significant printed work. The external link could be moved down to a regular "External links" section and labeled "official site". Hopefully the article will be expanded and its notability sourced. JonHarder talk 15:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with JonHarder. As it stands the article is a particularly offensive WP:ADVERT, but it seems to be a notable subject and can probably be saved. -- Satori Son 15:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Please see my expansion of this page with some of the refs and sources. (I must admit it was prompted by this comment). This is a major online resource, the continuation of what was, as you recognize, a major printed reference work. Publisher is the leading American university lab & department of ornithology. Cornell doesn't just host the site, it's an official Cornell site.
I am a little surprised at "particularly offensive." (I dont think I would use that language about anything on a WP talk page.) I wrote a straightforward description,as I would for a professional journal or a library electronic resources page, and mentioned availability because it is often a problem with such sources & this has a much lower personal rate than usual. (there are some inferior commercial competitors at much higher prices) If there were negative criticism I'd include it, but I don't know of any. I'd be curious to see how you would have worded it.
But take a look at it as it now stands first. (They have a trial subscription, but it is available only to institutions. I've written to them from my university address suggesting they start doing one.) I have no connection with the project, btw, other than that I know about it, as do all biology research librarians. DGG 16:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for updating the article with additional info and citations. BONA is certainly notable as was mentioned above and by your citations and I believe the context for Satori Son's comment (IMHO) was that the advertisement tone was offensive to WP guidelines. At least that's the way I took it. Any promotional content such as pricing and availability sounds like advertising and as such is discouraged, particularly since that represented about 2/3 of the original content. BTW, I made some changes to your citations and would appreciate your checking them for accuracy. Calltech 18:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, my remark was intended to refer to an offense of policy, not something I would be personally insulted by. But I apologize to DGG for being somewhat overzealous in my anti-spam rhetoric, and I greatly appreciate the work they have put into the article. -- Satori Son 18:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

mongabay

There are a lot (236) of links to [36]. The content on this website is duplicated across a lot of other websites and I cannot work out if it is ever the original source. Quite a lot seems to be copied off government sites. Haven't gone through when they were all put in. But the links from every city page in Iran for example looks a bit extreme. Thoughts?

Good example by the way of wp clone sites giving link value to our links. Answers.com and algebra.com are straight WP clones. See [37] One culprit is Special:Contributions/American2 is it fair to ask him not to add external links under minor edit commenting "citing sources"?

--BozMo talk 15:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

New tool concept

Hi yall. I'm working on writing a new spam-fighting tool. I'm trying to learn Python to build it too. The basic concept is fairly simple, but I think it would help investigations.

If the program works as intended then it should be able to find the first version of the page to contain a particular spam-link, helping to tack down who actually added it. It should make searching pages with thousands of edits alot quicker.

It occurs to me that this might be helpful with tracking down certain types of subtle vandalism and copyvio.

Ok, here is my current working...err.. process list.

User input variables
  1. “Article”
  2. “Test string”
  3. “Diff limit”
Diff list function A.
  1. Get diff data from query.php
  2. Convert diff data into useable list/array
Diff list function B. (primary)
  1. Copy array from “stable array” to “working array”
  2. Count amount of diffs in “working array”
  3. find “middle” diff (Rounded(total*0.5))
  4. retrieve article text
  5. test text for “test string”
  6. If test sting is present in article, remove last half of “working array,” if not, remove first half.
  7. Test if 1 diff is left, if so End function, return oldid.
  8. Return to 2.
Diff-list function B. (alternate)
  1. Copy array from “stable array” to “working array”
  2. Count amount of diffs in “working array”
  3. find “1/5th” diff (Rounded(total*0.2))
  4. retrieve article text
  5. test text for “test string”
  6. If test sting is present in article, remove last half of “working array,” if not, remove first half.
  7. Test if 25 or less diffs are left, if so send last diffs to Diff-list function B (primary).
  8. Return to 2.
Results.
  1. oldid/link
  2. User/link
  3. edit summary
  4. date

Any sugustions or other comments? ---J.S (T/C) 17:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I cannot read the Python. Watch out for catching the wrong person: e.g. someone who reverts a whole page vandal deletion with the spam link in.

--BozMo talk 19:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Thats a good point. When the link is inserted/removed a bunch of times it will be more difficult to track down the very first time it was added. The alternative check -should- be more likely to catch the first edit the link was added... but to be 100% accurate would end up having the program check every single version of the page. That might be viable if it can be narrowed down I guess.---J.S (T/C) 20:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Or do a manual check on what the suspect edit was. I think maybe we need to bother the tech people to do something better with the links searching rather than build our own tools though. You'd be pulling a lot of data down when the analysis could work on the database? --BozMo talk 20:14, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
How about looking for the link from the article's first edit? Actually, it might be nice to have the option to choose either direction. While I'm throwing out suggestions for someone else's project, a start date parameter and a number of hits parameter (keep looking for the URL until you find it x times) would be nice. ScottW 20:22, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
The mediawiki people have been very resistant about implimenting any technical solution to any problem that could be handled by a bot.
It is posible to do a 1by1 search of every edit from the very first edit, and sometimes that might be viable... but if the article has 12000 edits, then it might take hours.
This tool might not be helpfull in all situations... like if the link was added/removed a bunch of times in the past. But if it was added 2 months ago and noone caught it untill now it should be able to narrow it down to the exact edit.
The "alternate" method should have a much better shot at finding it the very first time the link was added... since it's checking at the 20% mark each time and not the 50% mark.
Anouther alternitive is to check every N edits (5, 10 or 20... whatever) and alert the user to the first time it finds the link. But your sacrafising effeciancy for acuracy... ---J.S (T/C) 21:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Method testing

Doing some simple spread sheeting I'm able to determine how many checks (checking an old version of the page) a particular method might take. I'm going to assume the page has had 12000 edits... (Yeah, I know, that might be the extreme, but it's useful for a though-experiment).

  • Method 1: Check every edit starting with earliest
  • Results: Would take anywhere between 1 to 11999 checks to find the edit. Some trial and error and pre-checking could signifigantly lower this to perhaps 1000 checks?
  • Method 2: Check every N edits.
  • Results: If N = 25 then a max of 480 checks would be needed with additional manual checking to narrow it down. Higher values of N make for more manual checking, but less automatic checking.
  • Method 3: Check the 20% marks.
  • Explanation - Check the 20% edit, (edit num2400). If the link was added before, then you just eliminated 80% of the possibilities... if it was added after, you eliminated 20%.
  • Results - Worse case scenario, find it in 43 checks. Best case you find it in 7. 20-30 is most likely.
  • Drawbacks - Might zero-in on a re-addition or a vandalism-revert.
  • Method 4:
  • Results - Would take reliably 15 or so checks each time.
  • Drawbacks - Even more likely to find a false positive...

That's my basic analysis. Each method has it's pros/cons. If the link was added once and never removed, or removed very recently (sneaky spam) then method 4 would find it the quickest and their would be no chance of error. I think that's the major scenario we deal with when a detailed investigation is called for, right? If the link was added/removed a few times but with long intervals between then method 3 would be more likely to find the very first time it was inserted, but still might hit on the wrong one. The "check every edit" or the "check every Nth edit" are the most reliable, but both can take hours to process. ---J.S (T/C) 21:12, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you should use use the toolserver (m:toolserver) so you can run SQL queries directly, instead of using the query interface which is necessarily a lot slower and which loads down the public servers. See also the RFE that I mentioned above if you haven't [38]. I'll read your post more carefully later, I'm in the middle of other stuff right now. 67.117.130.181 22:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware the toolserver isn't replicating the database... The word is it might be fixed soon, but thats what people have been saying for nearly 6 months. ---J.S (T/C) 22:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't know about the non-replication. For the query interface method, I'd start with a simple binary search, using manual inspection to tell spam insertion from vandal reversion. I've thought of another approach but it has some evil aspects so I'll consider whether to describe it here. 67.117.130.181 23:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Basicly, this would be for when the user knows what the link is beforhand. Ie, (s)he saw the spam in the EL list and wondered who did the dirty deed. As for reconiseing spam as it's entered... we got shadowbot and IRC for that I guess. ---J.S (T/C) 23:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I understand that. I wonder whether shadowbot could be extended to log the first occurrence of every new link it sees, including those not on its blacklist. Then someone trying to find the source of some spam could check the shadowbot log to find the first insertion. I would have thought this could more naturally be recorded in the wiki server (same place that maintains the extlink table right now) but the developers answered describing some problems with that approach, that I didn't fully understand. 67.117.130.181 23:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
If you can assume that the link was added once and never removed then a binary search algorithm suffices, with log2N comparisons (i.e. at most 14 comparisons for 12000 edits).
—Red Thrush 23:20, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Thats what I was thinking.... but life is often more complex then that, so I wanted some alternitive methods. ---J.S (T/C) 23:47, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Then the only guaranteed way to find the author who added the link is to analyze every revision. Any other heuristic could fail in one or another scenario. The most sensible one would likely be when the link is added and removed in edit wars and eventually somebody forgets to remove it (even the method of checking every N revisions would have a high probability of missing the right revision).
Implementing a mechanism in wikipedia to track down who added every link for the first time would put a big load on the servers. Perhaps a more economic approach would be to add the new links to a per user page whenever she adds them to an article. Or make the entire history of an article available as a single download (to scan the revisions locally). But that depends on the internal implementation of wikipedia to store revisions. The ideal situation would be to have the history already compressed in a single blob record.
—Red Thrush 11:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


Spammer note

Special:Contributions/Herbdreyer. I reverted them all and left him a template, but he might be back, who knows. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 00:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, actually I didn't. Undo button doesn't actually work, eh? I'll leave that to someone with rollback rather than doing the whole thing again.--SB_Johnny|talk|books 00:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
Done. Hmmmm, now I'm oddly hungry. Kuru talk 00:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

dailycelebsearch.com

I found this site (dailycelebsearch.com) linked to seven articles this morning. Three articles were linked in the last 12 hours or so by an IP with no other edits. I didn't take time to track when and by whom the others were added. I cleaned the links out, but I suspect we will be seeing more links in the near future. -- Donald Albury 13:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Just reverted some back out. Here's the link to check again later. -- Satori Son 19:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
ding! [39] 67.117.130.181 21:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Four more today. We need to stay on top of this one. -- Satori Son 05:17, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Two more. Same articles --PTSE 17:47, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Time to blacklist? I don't see how this site can ever be acceptable; it seems to be designed to let users upload rumors and gossip. -- Donald Albury 18:48, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
dailycelebsearch.com is now blacklisted after more links were added. --A. B. (talk) 14:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Is this spam?

User:GabrielF/ConspiracyNoticeboard Don't know if this fits within the defintion of this section, which is mostly sales, but this article, in the opinion of User:Striver, is a "vote soliciting board". As Jimbo Wales himself opined : "Using userpages to attack people or campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea." What can I not have on my userpage

User:Derex wrote:

"The Conspiracy Noticeboard ... strikes me as quite counter to the ideal collaborative and neutral spirit of AFD. I doubt, for example, that we would permit a WP:AFD noticeboard on topic X. Isn't that what AFD itself is for? So, I personally take issue with a user-space page which is serving the same role of co-ordinating editors with a particular outlook. There seems to be quite a lot of pre-discussion among editors watching that page, almost all of it off the relevant article talk pages. An unwiki lack of transparency, in my opinion."

There was an AfD over this page, which was incorrectly closed snowball keep one day after a vote of 18-5. I brought up this here: Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#Snowball_keep.3F, and three editors thought this speedy closing of this AfD was dubious. Best wishes, Travb (talk) 15:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Not sure if this qualifies as "Spam", per se, but for those interested, its deletion is being debated at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:GabrielF/ConspiracyNoticeboard (2nd mfd). -- Satori Son 19:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)