Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Feb

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classsmates.com

I caught 65.197.174.82 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) adding links to classmates.com to school articles. An rDNS shows that it is nat40.classmates.com. A quick search for other classmates.com links [en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.classmates.com] shows 24 links, which I figure only four legimately meet WP:EL (counting the talk page links). Can we block that IP (or even the entire 65.197.174.0 - 65.197.174.255 IP block for classmates.com)?

This behavior suggest that the Spam WikiProject should probably take a look at all of the United Online internet properties to see if they have been spamming the Wikipedia. BlankVerse 09:56, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
If you give us a list of domains I would be glad to do a check, I will check out classmates one now. —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 16:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed all extra links to classmates. I left 3, those 3 being on the classmates.com article. ([en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALinksearch&target=*.classmates.com linksearch link]) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eagle 101 (talk • contribs) 16:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC).
I did find some links but other than a handful from the guy above, I did not see much evidence of a spam campaign. I suspect many of the rest are inappropriate but made innocently by a mix of editors (so-called "good faith/poor judgment" links).
  • www.untd.com
    • United Online Website
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.juno.com
    • Juno Website
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.mypoints.com
    • MyPoints.com Website
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.netzero.net
    • Netzero Website
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.stayfriends.de
    • StayFriends.de Website (Germany)
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.stayfriends.se
    • StayFriends.se Website (Sweden)
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.simpli.com
    • Simpli Website
      • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.photosite.com
    • Photosite Website
      • Current list of pages with these links

Corporate PR and the Web.com and Interland articles

In looking for possible United Online spam (see above) I stumbled across this AfD for a former Simpli executive's article: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Delgrosso. Looking at Pdelgrosso's edit history in turn led me to reversion wars underway at two articles about the same company, Web.com and Interland. Both are unrelated to United Online. It looks like corporate partisans are fighting to protect the image of Web.com/Interland. --A. B. (talk) 17:07, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

See the Peter Delgrosso AfD talk page for a list of related biographical articles and editors also connected to Interland a.k.a. Web.com. The other articles may also be non-notable and some of the associated editors' user names are similar to those of the articles edited (example: JonathanBWilson started Jonathan B. Wilson). Many edits have been made by anonymous IPs that traceroute to atl2prdcrrt01-vlan4.net.interland.net
--A. B. (talk) 17:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

budster.net spam

The el man (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) adds links to:

Adsense ID #: 2925204975796915

I've warned the user but have no time to clean these up today -- can the next shift handle this? Thanks! --A. B. (talk) 18:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Cleaned up for the time being. Nposs 18:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

qualitygurus.com and qualitytimes.co.in

Spammed mainly by Qualitytimes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). The website consists of a set of articles (all of which I checked are) copied and pasted from other sources.

Related, but linked only on the user page:

Both websites using adsense pub-5658945457795453

Looks like the user also started a few BIO articles using text copied directly from his copyvio website. I'll start work. Join in if you like. Nposs 19:15, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Reminder from unresolved Archived request

Could someone please take a look into resolving the item I brought up at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Jan#Second_opinion_please? Thanks. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 21:19, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion please (original request) —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 23:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[1] shows that this site has 70 links in various articles (some talk pages, of course). A few random digs shows me that the EL was added by the Site owner, a potential WP:COI. Since I have been in forum discussions with this person before, in the interests of an impartial decision-making process, it would be good if a third party were to look into this. Thanks. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 15:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Links normally to be avoided
  • 3. Links mainly intended to promote a website.
  • 5. Links to sites with objectionable amounts of advertising.
  • 13. Sites that are only indirectly related to the article's subject.

---J.S (T/C/WRE) 15:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually I was looking through these and most are (z) links to articles relevant but shallower than the article is . I think they need a work through --BozMo talk 15:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

thanks for the feedback. I guess I don't feel comfortable taking this on myself, due to my connections with the owner. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 15:01, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I have removed 30 links leaving 24 namespace links. The ones I have left are cases where there is a stub article and the link has more information than the article does. Longer term these should not survive but short term they will be useful in helping to develop the stubs. --BozMo talk 09:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
See User_talk:Ivan_Bajlo#Your_message when challenged by site owner. --BozMo talk 14:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

You know people I do have talk page so you can contact me directly instead of going behind my back? I agree many of my links become outdated since I haven't had the time to update my website while wikipedia articles have grown. IIRC most links got added by other users I updated many of them in July 2006 when I moved my website into still unfinished CMS to avoid bunch of 404 errors (I got shocked finding out on who many different language wikipedia my links got spread, like cancer ;-)). I have added a few links myself where I found them to be useful (besides links to other useful websites and DMOZ categories) since as ex-DMOZ editor I'm very well familiar what Conflict of Interest and SPAM is! --Ivan Bajlo 15:28, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Ian, To be honest, I would have started by talking to you if I had known you were the site owner. I went through the first five or six links and although you had added one there were several other people who had added them so I gave up on trying to identify the WP site of the owner and took the links out. As I said on your talk page, this was not done "blind": I did check each page linked to although in a couple of cases there may have been more relevant info under sub-links. I also noted that most of the links I took out had been added in when the articles were stubs and they were appropriate at the time. I do not think there was any bad faith at all with these links, just getting outdated. I am also aware and musing about a degree of hypocrisy on the part of WP since the articles on your site clearly are a source of a lot of the info on WP but aren't citable because of WP:RS as personal sites are generally not allowed as sources. You are right to feel a bit upset about this. I have been digging around (unsuccessfully) to try reviews to get your site past WP:RS but it is proving tricky. Anyway, thanks for being understanding we are just trying to do our job! --BozMo talk 15:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

epodunk.com

This is one that may require some evaluation of many of the links. It is similar to several other websites that consolidate information from numerous government and other sources. For the few cities that I looked at, their webpages were much less informative (but also less cluttered), because the pages were mostly links to other pages which may, or may not, have the information that you were looking for. On the other hand, their webpages on ancestries actually looked informative.

Still, many of the 225 links [2] look like they should be deleted. Also, all of the images that have been scrapped from the website (I counted six) will need to have their copyrights changed to {{AllRightsReserved}} and then deleted. BlankVerse 04:51, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I generally remove these in the Oregon articles unless for some reason there is no better information out there. I'll take care of the Oregon links in your search. Thanks for bringing it up. I think people add epodunk as an external link because it comes up on the top of many google searches and looks semi-official. Katr67 19:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Lyrics links

Howdy! Can some one check out the rest of these links... I cleaned through the obvious ones. *.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf, is the link. Thanks! —— Eagle 101 (Need help?) 17:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


Washington State University Press spam

Can someone check out the contributions by User:Wsupress? Seems to be a series of "further reading" additions, which may be useful but unfortunately this user is spamming. Thanks. Katr67 19:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Dealt with and removed. —— Eagle101 Need help? 01:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to file a minor protest here. (I note I have nothing whatsoever to do with WSU.) University presses, like the one at WSU, publish books on relatively obscure subjects of academic interest. When someone from such a press takes the time to add valid, useful references to articles, they may well be in technical violation of WP:SPAM, but they are not violating the spirit of that policy, which is to avoid degrading Wikipedia and to avoid semi-spam wars ("my commerical site is better than your commerical site"). I particularly note that there wasn't even a URL in what they added, so it wasn't like they were driving traffic to their website.
Instead of using WP:IAR as a basis for overriding the strictest possible interpretation of WP:SPAM, you not only did an automated removal of all of this user's hard work, but you didn't even have the courtesy to post something on the user's talk page to explain what you did, and why. I suggest that you rethink your approach a bit, particularly the courtesy part, since you've quite possibly irreversibly alienated an editor who could have done a lot of constructive work here, and you're probably sharply reduced the probability that whoever he/she talks to about this experience will want to help edit Wikipedia. If nothing else, you might want to reread WP:BITE. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 18:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I forgot to add the welcome template. I am sorry. Also you might want to read the user's name compare to the press company that publishes those books. All books added are to Washington State University Press. [3] [4], ect, ect. In addition that user's name was a direct reference to Wsupress, a short for Washington State University Press, and therefore I did a {{usernameblock}}, so they will have gotten an invintation to come back and contribute, just under a new name. —— Eagle101 Need help? 01:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing out the user name. May I point out that I said When someone from such a press takes the time to add valid, useful references to articles, which I believe should be read as fully understanding who the user was. And I note that a university press is not a "company", as you said -- it's part of a non-profit organization. That's why university presses generally publish books on relatively obscure topics - because, like Wikipedia, they see their mission as spreading knowledge, not making money.
My dispute - which you didn't respond to - is that I think your actions were an overly strict reading of WP:SPAM, or, if you will, involved a failure to invoke WP:IAR when appropriate, as I believe it was here. Nor do I do believe that inviting the user to return under a different name in any way, shape, or form is going to be seen as compensating for deletion of all of the (valuable) information added by the user. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 01:17, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
University Presses differ across the globe, Oxford and Cambridge University Presses are rather serious commercial organisations, Oxford in particular is renowned for their dictionaries, but just because an organization is non commercial is no reason to allow them to add links and spammy content to the project, it's a dangerous precedent and would legitimize every uni press adding links to books, which could result in large and unmanageable further reading lists. We don't know how relevant these books were to the articles they were being added to, so they really shouldn't be present, at least until someone reviews them. We wouldn't wish to gain a reputation for recommending any old books to our readers. -- Heligoland 01:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Possible spam from blamethecontrolpad.com

A user by the name of Sh3llsh0ck has been posting links in game articles to this site's articles (which are related, though nothing terribly important). Posting these links is the only thing he has done (and he corrected one link four times), so I would file that under spam and self-promotion. However, I'm still fuzzy on the standards as to what qualifies as link spam. Since the external articles are related to the Wikipedia articles and feature some extra content (pictures, soundfiles), an argument could be made that they are worthwhile. Could someone check these out and possibly remove them if deemed unfit? Check out Gargoyle's Quest and Phelios for examples. -Jacquismo 00:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Dealt with and removed. That was clear cut linkspam. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 01:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Links that have something to do with viagra according to wikiseek

I have been running a script on this one. Its about 20% done, so I went ahead and posted those results at User:Eagle_101/Spam/Viagra. Feel free to start removing some of them, if you do though, please at least update the status (on the table). Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There is now results for the following:

  1. User:Eagle_101/Spam/Viagra
  2. User:Eagle 101/Spam/Cialis
  3. User:Eagle 101/Spam/Lyrics

Feel free to sift through them. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 00:01, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Spam policy question

Hi, Eagle 101. It seems the user GreysAnatomy is going around to all the law firm pages adding links to a site called averyindex.com. GreysAnatomy might be connected with another user Dirkjavery, who assumably is connected with averyindex.com and whose edits stop about the time that GreysAnatomy's edits begin. I'm relatively new to wikipedia so don't know the spam policy very well but it looked like you warned GreysAnatomy on November 30 about his behavior so you might know best what to do. Thanks! Pygora123 20:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The following was posted to my talk page, I thought this might be bettter suited here. What do you guys think of averyindex? Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 20:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
On a google search I saw a couple of references to Averyindex that indicate it might be fairly prominent within the US legal field, at least informally (for instance a relatively big chicago law firm mention on their site that they were ranked highly by the site). It might be best to ask this question on the talk page of an article that gets significant edits from lawyers. GreysAnatomy's reasons for liking the site (it helped him/her get a job) aren't really indicative of what would make a good link generally, and I could find no provenance on the site itself (which is typical of many spam sites). But there's no advertising on it, and a site that is well respected in legal circles but doesn't have commercial interests affecting things like rankings could be a very interesting link for a number of articles. It's whether or not it's well respected and whether it's directly appropriate to the article that would sway me. -- Siobhan Hansa 03:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
It’s seems pretty spammy to me. First of all, as a practicing attorney in the U.S., I’ve never heard of the site (although I will say that I haven't had to find a new job for a very long time). Second, it does have at least some advertising. Check the hyperlink in the middle to barristerbooks.com with helpful tips like “Buy your law books online and save. Fast shipment.” and “Largest selection of law books and study aids. Best prices, fast shipment.” (Hit refresh to see the different advertising messages.) Third, the site does not qualify as a reliable source. Much of the data it provides is unsourced and unverifiable, and if we need to use the limited data that is sourced, we should obviously cite to that original source. Finally, it was added by an editor who's made few or no other contributions to the project. So, where it's listed under "External links", I say delete, and where it's provided as an inline cite, we need to find a real source and replace it. -- Satori Son 06:58, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

minor spam: worm farm links

Special:Contributions/70.118.21.205 has just had a run of external links. I'll come back to it if no one else does. --BozMo talk 22:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and reverted the one ontop link. I left a {{welcomespam}} template on the talk page. Thanks for posting :D —— Eagle101 Need help? 23:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I had a browse through these. Ferret is a horrific linkfarm. I don't have time to assess/cleanup all those links at the moment, but I'll probably come back to it tomorrow if nobody else does. CiaranG 23:16, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Ok, so much for not having time, I've removed all the mealwormfarm.com links posted by 70.118.21.205 - as well as being spammy, they appeared to be copyvios. CiaranG 23:26, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks and good job! —— Eagle101 Need help? 23:59, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Bill_Clark and cable spam

Saw this over at the village pump where the concerned editor was directed to COI. User:Bill_Clark has been a busy boy and I bet some industrious spam watchers here might be able to take some of the load. Not me, though. It's already past my bed time. Nposs 02:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm holding off on editing any more articles on cities until I've gotten more feedback on how to proceed, and am currently focusing on starting some of the missing articles on US cable companies, instead. As I mentioned at the pump and elsewhere, my interest here is in cable companies in the US in general, not any cable company in particular (I just happened to start with Northland, which made it look like I was spamming for them, but have since moved on to several others).
I'm still not entirely clear on whether the objection is to the adding of wikilinks to city pages (indicating which company or municipal department acts as the local cable utility) or just to the adding of cable-company-sponsored community website links to "External links" sections. If it's the latter, then that's easy enough to leave out of my future edits, but I want to clear things up before proceeding. --Bill Clark 17:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

NOTE: Please see the main discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(assistance)#Northland_Communications_cable_possible_spamming VP/A and post any follow-ups there. --Bill Clark 19:11, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

amazon links

there is a crap load of links to amazon from various countries.

like www.amazon.com, entries need to be cleaned for not passing WP:SPAM right? if so, could someone help me out a little too, there is a lot of em! also if someone knows a lot of popular country suffixes, that would also be good. JoeSmack Talk 16:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I've cut down this sneaky template spam [5][6][7] which should be a start. Femto 16:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Wow, thats a mean-ol spammer tactic! Does someone have the means to search stub templates for anything http:// ? External links should never be on a stubs temp. JoeSmack Talk 17:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
JS was looking at this a couple of weeks ago? --BozMo talk 19:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
This method here [8] kinda works, although not very well. JoeSmack Talk 19:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Caught another sneaky stub linkspammer: [9], and again here [10]...and again, [11] ! JoeSmack Talk 19:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I've indef blocked the two where they used accounts. The IPs may be worth a deeper check at WP:OP too, 69.108.163.144 appears in various open proxy lists. Femto 11:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
You should let the Stub-sorting WikiProject know about this spammer tactic. Since many of the stubs are not watchlisted, more of them probably should be protected or semi-protected. I can see no real reason for stubs to be edited by IPs, so maybe they should all be semi-protected. BlankVerse 13:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Last time was amazon too: see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Jan#Amazon_affiliate_spam. What happened about JS and the bot request? --BozMo talk 14:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

*.diggiloo.net

*.diggiloo.net is a lyrics website, and linked many times over. i know the stance on lyrics sites this project has gone through before, so i thought this would be the place to talk on it. JoeSmack Talk 18:03, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Screensaver Spam

Based on a posting here, I looked into links for *.myscreensavers.net and found several recent hits; notably at Computer wallpaper and Screensaver. The spammer has persisted in posting the link there and at the aforementioned Waterfall. The site is simply a 'free' screensaver site that asks you to agree to accept a program that pushes ads to your desktop before you can use the screensaver. Clearly promotional and commercial. Could use a few more eyes - or should I drop this to the blacklist? Kuru talk 22:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Google Pack

Can someone please take a look at the edit history for Google Pack and the talk page? I feel like things are out of hand and need a third party to add his/her opinion. --sigmafactor 23:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi sigmafactor. You seemed to have managed to get it under control. The page protection was a good idea, if the editor comes back we can consider seeing if meta will blacklist the site. It clearly adds no additional information. Sorry you had to put up with that situation - thanks for keeping the article in decent shape. -- Siobhan Hansa 01:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
And don't hesitate to ask for help here again. I'm a big believer in DefendEachOther, and Siobhan Hansa is right: you shouldn't have to put up with this stuff for doing what's right for the project. -- Satori Son 02:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

3 spam cases reported at WP:ANI

FYI, three different spam situations have appeared recently at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents that folks here might want to be aware of. Spam reported there does not always get acted on if there's not also other misbehavior with it.

(If the WP:ANI links don't work, these will have likely been archived in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive74 or 75)

Gilbert Wesley Purdy

See WP:ANI#Gilbert Wesley Purdy spam + outing editors for a long list of IPs, articles spammed, long history, threats against editors last year, etc. 60 links cleaned out by an anon last week, now they're coming back still again:

  • gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • vgs-index-and-specialty.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • vgscomputerarchive.myblogsite.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.catalyzerjournal.com
    • Current list of pages with these links

--A. B. (talk) 01:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

can we get individual blogspot blogs blocked on meta? Might be the only real way to stop the Purdy spam. Thanks for the egal eyes A. B. I'll try and clear some of this up. -- Siobhan Hansa 02:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Sure -- they can block subdomains such as:
gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com
vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com
gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com
vgs-index-and-specialty.blogspot.com
vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com
vgscomputerarchive.myblogsite.com
virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com
Here are some of the users (from the WP:ANI page:
  • 209.214.14.108 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.214.14.108&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.214.14.108 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.214.14.108 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.214.14.108 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.214.14.108 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.214.14.108 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.214.14.108 search])
  • 209.214.14.130 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.214.14.130&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.214.14.130 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.214.14.130 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.214.14.130 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.214.14.130 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.214.14.130 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.214.14.130 search])
  • 209.214.14.138 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.214.14.138&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.214.14.138 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.214.14.138 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.214.14.138 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.214.14.138 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.214.14.138 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.214.14.138 search])
  • 209.214.14.15 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.214.14.15&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.214.14.15 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.214.14.15 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.214.14.15 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.214.14.15 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.214.14.15 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.214.14.15 search])
  • 209.214.14.184 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.214.14.184&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.214.14.184 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.214.14.184 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.214.14.184 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.214.14.184 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.214.14.184 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.214.14.184 search])
  • 209.214.14.89 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.214.14.89&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.214.14.89 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.214.14.89 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.214.14.89 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.214.14.89 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.214.14.89 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.214.14.89 search])
  • 209.215.55.111 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.215.55.111&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.215.55.111 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.215.55.111 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.215.55.111 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.215.55.111 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.215.55.111 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.215.55.111 search])
  • 209.215.55.47 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.215.55.47&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.215.55.47 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.215.55.47 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.215.55.47 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.215.55.47 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.215.55.47 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.215.55.47 search])
  • 209.215.55.85 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=209.215.55.85&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=209.215.55.85 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=209.215.55.85 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=209.215.55.85 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=209.215.55.85 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=209.215.55.85 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=209.215.55.85 search])
  • 216.114.80.202 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.80.202&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.80.202 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.80.202 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.80.202 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.80.202 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.80.202 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.80.202 search])
  • 216.114.80.203 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.80.203&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.80.203 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.80.203 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.80.203 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.80.203 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.80.203 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.80.203 search])
  • 216.114.80.207 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.80.207&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.80.207 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.80.207 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.80.207 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.80.207 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.80.207 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.80.207 search])
  • 216.114.80.209 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.80.209&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.80.209 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.80.209 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.80.209 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.80.209 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.80.209 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.80.209 search])
  • 216.114.80.210 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.80.210&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.80.210 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.80.210 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.80.210 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.80.210 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.80.210 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.80.210 search])
  • 216.114.81.226 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.81.226&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.81.226 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.81.226 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.81.226 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.81.226 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.81.226 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.81.226 search])
  • 216.114.81.228 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.81.228&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.81.228 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.81.228 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.81.228 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.81.228 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.81.228 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.81.228 search])
  • 216.114.82.71 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.114.82.71&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.114.82.71 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.114.82.71 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.114.82.71 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.114.82.71 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.114.82.71 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.114.82.71 search])
  • 216.76.208.49 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=216.76.208.49&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=216.76.208.49 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=216.76.208.49 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=216.76.208.49 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=216.76.208.49 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=216.76.208.49 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=216.76.208.49 search])
Here are two previous discussions from 2006:
--A. B. (talk) 03:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I think I got the rest of it. Several links to copies of poems (presumably still under copyright - although most were prefaced by sentence or two that could be seen as a "review" - but really not in the spirit of fair use). Also, several reprints of public domain material available on other websites without the advertising. Nposs 04:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Here are the two IPs in currently in use:
  • 63.3.17.129 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=63.3.17.129&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=63.3.17.129 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=63.3.17.129 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=63.3.17.129 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=63.3.17.129 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=63.3.17.129 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=63.3.17.129 search])
  • 63.3.17.1 (talk • contribs • links • [tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=63.3.17.1&site=en.wikipedia.org count] • actions • logs || [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?domain=63.3.17.1 WHOIS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ptr.ch?ip=63.3.17.1 RDNS] • [www.dnsstuff.com/tools/tracert.ch?ip=63.3.17.1 traceroute] • [completewhois.com/cgi-bin/rbl_lookup.cgi?query=63.3.17.1 RBLs] • [www.ippages.com/?ip=63.3.17.1 tor] • [www.google.com/search?q=63.3.17.1 search])
Should these domains be blacklisted now? This user has been warned and blocked (twice) before.[en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:209.214.14.138] I think they know the score by now vis-à-vis link-spam. Your thoughts? --A. B. (talk) 04:17, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Those I believe are now on the meta blacklist. Folks, A note, please don't hyperlink (http://example.com) links that have potential to get added to the meta blacklist. Instead just add "example.com" Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

"Persistent begging to be allowed to spam?' (worldpressnetwork.net, spiderednews.com)

See WP:ANI#Persistent begging to be allowed to spam?:

--A. B. (talk) 01:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Users:
--A. B. (talk) 03:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

"Suspicious spamming" (Indian soccer sites)

See WP:ANI#Suspicious spamming:

--A. B. (talk) 01:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a spam war. The 80.130.xxx.xxx editor in Germany is adding .indianfootball.com links and removing those of his competitor, soccernetindia.com. The 220.225.82.xxx editor in India is doing the reverse.
soccernetindia.com:
indianfootball.com:

--A. B. (talk) 03:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Cute, can we just remove both? :P —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I think both should be removed. There was a push on WP:ANI to blacklist as well, but I'm not sure these editors had received many warnings before. Perhaps blacklist if we get any more links. Also, be cautious about Joe jobs in these situations -- I've seen competitors do this to each other. --A. B. (talk) 19:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Another set of links from the indianfootball.com spammer today using another German IP, 80.130.214.88 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log). His competitor has been quiet. --A. B. (talk) 03:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/Riapress adds links to riapress.com

I have noticed that Special:Contributions/Riapress operates an online service and data base of public domain texts and books. It appears most, if not all of this user's contributions are to put a link on the appropriate page for a new book that riapress.com has put online. I see that User:Riapress's talk page has several warnings. On at least two article pages I saw, there already existed a link to the same online text via Project Gutenberg. Can I interest this group to check this over, and is this the right place to ask for this kind of attention? -- Yellowdesk 06:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, right place. I have given a final warning (although as a spam only account that's not really needed) and started cleaning the links at [12] —Preceding unsigned comment added by BozMo (talk • contribs)
Not such a clear cut case, if a site is offering material under public domain or another free licence, then there's a massively strong case for them to be permitted to link from Wikipedia. We're trying to create and give away free content remember, and while it's a conflict of interest for the site owner to add links themselves, we should be looking at adding a link to riapress where it's appropriate, because not only are they doing the same, but it most certainly can benefit our readers. -- Heligoland 18:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and if you take a look at the links themselves, I think you'll agree they are not really appropriate. Here's the one added to The Scarlet Letter. And here's the one at Lord Jim. Significant WP:COI concerns aside, there is no reason to keep these. -- Satori Son 19:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Satori Son, what is wrong with the links, the Scarlet Letter for example? -- Stbalbach 19:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I think all this material should be restored. Gutenberg does not produce quality printer-ready PDFs, it is a unique work and in the same spirit as Gutenberg and other free content projects. It is also notable that this site has no advertising connected with it, it's not one of those sites that just recycles gutenberg texts with banner adds. -- Stbalbach 19:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
It does look like you need to give them your email address to get access. I think we should prefer gutenberg when they have a copy just because they are a trusted source. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Looks like it but not in fact. I just downloaded a couple without email address. I've checked the source code and google's cache of the source code too. Squeaky clean. --BozMo talk 21:40, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I've rustled up a template for Riapress which should help make it clear the text is available free of charge and why it's being given away. Full usage instructions at Template:Ria

{{Ria|102|The Scarlet Letter}}

If the article matches the name of the book, you just need

{{Ria|102}}

The template will give you this.

-- Heligoland 01:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I think that's a good idea --BozMo talk 10:02, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Paceville: growing spam problem?

The article on Paceville has a very long list of venues, most of which doesn't seem to be notable. There are no external links to any of them, but it has been growing since October 7 and most of the contributors are IPs or one-edit members.

As there are no external links, I'm not sure if it does qualify as spam or not, so I would like to ask you all: shall I leave it, trim them down as per WP:CORP or kill the list entirely? ~ ► Wykebjs ◄ (userpage | talk) 18:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I took the initutive and killed the list completely. WP:NOT has something to say about such lists... wikipedia isn't the yellow pages. :) ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:21, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Paladin Systems spam

Paladin Systems (palsys.ca) owns a number of different websites and forums. The palsys.ca domain is already blacklisted.

PalSys (talk • contribs • links • count • actions • logs • status) has added links to:
http://www.thelionwar.com

  • Current list of pages with these links

http://www.before-crisis.com

  • Current list of pages with these links

http://www.bluedragonup.com

http://www.finalfantasyup.com

  • Current list of pages with these links

http://www.zeldaup.com

  • Current list of pages with these links

I warned him yesterday -- he's back again today. Can an admin here block him (for a very, very long time)? Normally meta admins won't blacklist if there's just one account.

My experience reporting spammers at WP:AIV is pretty hit or miss -- the logic of spammers ≠ the logic of the schoolkid vandals some admins are used to. A one-hour warning block or an admonition to "wait and see if he spams again in the next 60 minutes" just doesn't seem to faze most spammers. --A. B. (talk) 19:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I've blocked this one for 48 hours. Lets see if that gets his attention. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm confident he'll notice the block, but will it deter him? I suggest making the block longer. As long as links in Wikipedia make him money and get him good page rank, I think we're going to see him coming around. --A. B. (talk) 20:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I have it setup as a full hard-block (block annon, account creation and auto block any other accounts he tries to use). I'm reluctant to do much longer to a "first offender". (I'd like to give them an opportunity to reform.)
If he continues on this account, or any new one, I'll make the block stick for a lot longer. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

section blanked in January archive

Nothing like a little archive blanking to jog the memory.[13]

Thanks, 59.93.83.166 (talk • contribs • links • count • actions • logs || WHOIS • RDNS • traceroute • RBLs • tor • search). It's time to take another look at some January friends.

The section deleted covered 3 different, unrelated spammers. One was in the Philippines as is the IP above:

I don't see any articles with those links, but perhaps the guy has some new domains. --A. B. (talk) 21:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like 59.93.83.166 is at it again. e-infanta.com (linksearch) seems to be the website. I cleared out the one link (fails WP:EL anyway). ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

On which subject could we bring up the subject of re-organising these pages again? --BozMo talk 10:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean this talk-page? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 15:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
C'est exact. --BozMo talk 16:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Reorganization

Is it really needed? Thats the first question we must ask ourselves. I am a bit weary when we start speaking of adding more bureaucracy. The format we have now is very simple, post a topic to this page, and it works as so far that someone (mainly me) bothers to archive. If a new method can be come up with that does not complicate the act of reporting possible spam, I'm all for it, but lets keep this simple guys. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 20:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is indeed the archive. If we had this page as an alphabetical list of spammer sites for example linking to a page with the section on what we have done with them (several sites linking to the same page when needed) it would make it much easier to find the history etc and stop repeating mistakes. I spend ages looking for things in the archive and I only have to go back a couple of months. If you like we can still have sections at the bottom of this page for things we are looking at and working out... also stuff like going through old linked to lists by spammer and stuff becomes a piece of cake. --BozMo talk 23:10, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Depends if the execution of the idea is good. We don't want to make it more work to actually archive, even if it takes longer to find. But I guess if we did archiving by bot, and have the bot record the title of the section somewhere...
As far as finding websites in the archive, I would suggest using CTRL + F, if you are not already.
Again if we can find a decent way to do this, it is a great idea, but I also fear that it could make it a real mess as well. Lets try to balance the two. If anyone has ideas on how to actually do the re-organization, please propose something. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 22:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree there is serious cock up potential but also of gain. So we need some serious thought I guess.--BozMo talk 22:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
The system we have now works... but it dosn't make it easy to research the historical effort put into each of these cases. I've gotta jump though alot of hoops to figure out if whatever.com was ever discussed.
But it kind of occurs to me... we don't do much "general chatter." Nearly all of the talk is about cases... so if we move the cases to a subpage were just be relocating all the talk to a different page.
I haven't figured out a solution to that... maybe subpages for ongoing/major cases... like that huge multi-domain spammer we had a while back. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 05:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

The todo list

In an attempt to make the todo list easier to edit, I've changed the headings from ''' to === and I've added a link to the page. I think it helps, a bit. If you follow the link then you can edit individual sections. Otherwise, you still need to edit the whole thing. (Because of the way it gets template expanded.) Thoughts? Ben Aveling 21:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Cool! —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Amazon referrals

Unfortunately, there is no "easy" way to discover them. However, if an Amazon link looks like amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/007145506X/xxx, the xxx part is the referral code (that is, the guy who will get some money if a user buys the item through his link). Old links have ref=xxx inside the url parameters. Two things:

I think it is time to begin purging these referrals from Wikipedia, don't you think? -- ReyBrujo 03:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • In addition to referrals, is there any reason to link to amazon at all? Getting rid of all amazon links would be easier than searching for referrals.--Peta 03:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Not really, other than in Amazon-related articles. I am worried about that javascript too, because it converts valid ISBN into external links to Amazon; removing the Amazon links would remove the original valid information (in this case, ISBN). -- ReyBrujo 03:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It needs to be remembered amazon links are often used as a form of verification. They are used to check that a product such as a book exists, a track-listing is accurate, or that album artwork is properly sourced. There is however no reason to have affiliate links, ever. -- zzuuzz(talk) 13:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
As far as I can tell from here: User_talk:Niteowlneils/Archive1#Amazon_links this referrer agent is actually registered to Wikipedia. Presumably some old deal ? --BozMo talk 13:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. Nevertheless, I still think we should not allow any referral, including Wikipedia one, unless it is clarified for the casual users about this referral. I will post something at the village pump later. -- ReyBrujo 13:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
My view is "no link to a book sale URL" . --BozMo talk 14:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

"removing the Amazon links would remove the original valid information (in this case, ISBN)" ??? Simply write the ISBN in standard format and MediaWiki will convert into a link (Special:Booksources) to multiple sites which can be used to check the ISBN. For example: ISBN 3540259953. Thanks/wangi 13:53, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I notice several images are stuffed with refferal codes (example). Is this because the editor was logged in when they uploaded the picture or is something more sinister afoot? Most of the times, the links appear as text and not hypetext (or whatever it's called) making it unlikely that anyone would use that link to purchase a product. Nposs 14:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Funny, just looking at that. I spotted with amazon.com the image page invariably links to the jpg of the image which has been lifted (so no click through to a sale) but with .co.uk it is often to an affiliated sale page for the book. --BozMo talk 14:51, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, the contributors are varied. This is one: User:Wikiman who is heading for an indef block because I've just been through his last 50 edits and they are all spam or vandalism. AB has already warned him once. --BozMo talk 14:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there anyway that we can tell there is a referral code just from the link? If so I will set it up so that LinkWatcher will highlight those. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It used to be easier but now there are several forms (so tends to be a manual spot but yes from the URL). I'll try to think of an algo. --BozMo talk 22:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I suggest red listing amazon.com/.+/(ASIN|ISBN) or similar to catch some of these referrals, but many others will pass without problem due Amazon's flexibility. I will ask in their technical forum to see what kind of help they can give us. -- ReyBrujo 04:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

In the comments of the externISBN function, I've pointed out the presence of Wikipedia's Amazon Referral number, and told people how to remove it if they wish. If people want to link to a site other than Amazon, there are instructions for that in the comments as well. Lunchboxhero 01:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


Clausewitz.com

Going through the javascript history... particularly User_talk:Lunchboxhero/monobook.js#Adapt_to_make_.24wgBookstoreListEn_serve_an_Amazon.com_affiliate_bookstore where someone asked how to do the affiliate mod, this one came up: [16] This site appears to be run by one and written by Christopher Bassford who has not only written a lot of his own page (as Cbassford1) but also put in a large proportion of the links. There are a few WP:SPAs around as well which look a bit sockish. Anyone else fancy an opinion on whether there is much legitimacy here? He does look notable but I am not sure that his website qualifies aside the WP:COI? --BozMo talk 13:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The links do seem to be providing relevant information, both as links and references in the examples I looked at, though I'm not familiar with the subject matter. My only quibble was the link placement in some cases, and repeated links throughout articles where only one would have been appropriate. Probably still worth someone taking a closer look? CiaranG 00:04, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Interwiki map -- some spam on the list of interwiki links?

See this project; its charter:

"This is a copy of m:interwiki map. These prefixes can be used to create external links. However, the list of prefixes is very long and contains many items that either are hardly ever used, or are inappropriate as external links. The purpose of this page is to analyze that list to see if parts of it can be pruned. The actual pruning will have to be done by a Meta admin. Please discuss on the talk page, and update the "status" column as needed."

In a nutshell, if you look at some of the stuff on the list, some looks pretty spammy. So if you have a spammy wiki and you set up an interwiki link shortcut, you get a sort of "we're another wiki" halo. Not only that, but many editors will mistakenly assume these are Foundation projects. --A. B. (talk) 16:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Mmm yeah, we should see about weeding out a few of those. —— Eagle101 Need help? 16:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Not to mention the proposed ones (see below) --BozMo talk 17:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
HEY, the en.wikipedia.org list is way longer than the meta one, has loads of extra entries like MySpace, isn't write protected and bypasses nofollow. Oops. --BozMo talk 17:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
The 'live' list at meta wasn't protected for a long time either... Femto 18:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Have to go: someone needs a good look at this. Am confused --BozMo talk 17:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry no panic. They were imported from an old meta list which seems to have been cleaned but isn't active yet. --BozMo talk 17:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Interwiki map was created as an effort to cleanup the meta list. It is not a real interwiki-list... just a list setup to as a way to evaluate the links. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 10:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep, eventually the mud settled and I worked that out. But someone did some big changes to the list at Meta after the export. That was what threw me. BTW any chance we could get you to be an admin at Meta? It might make things quicker if not easier--BozMo talk 11:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Jan#External link formatting question and Wikipedia talk:External links/Archive 14#Wikipedia talk:External links#Meta "custom namespaces" on the history. I still say burn the whole damn thing down and see if anybody complains. Femto 18:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Do you mean burn Meta or just the interwiki links ;) ? Personally I want to keep the facility for these because it is the easiest greenlist patch to write. --BozMo talk 18:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Well if a meta admin is needed, I might be getting the bit come Sunday. But best to just post proposed removals on the talk page, and the admins will deal with it from there. —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Cool. Just added my vote (different name on meta). --BozMo talk 19:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Centiare/MyWikiBiz update

Remember the now-banned User:MyWikiBiz?


Then we had User:JossBuckle Swami picking a variety of fights:

... and spamming user pages with pitches for Centiare.com, a new Wikipedia alternative:

... which led to the insight that Centiare was probably MyWikiBiz's newest enterprise.

Eventually User:JossBuckle Swami was blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppet or meatpuppet of User:MyWikiBiz.

Apparently the Centiare crowd are having about as much luck in the spamdexing community as they did in ours. This SEO forum exchange is worth reading. It starts with a discussion (which you can skip) of Wikipedia's new nofollow implementation for external links. On page 2, post #13, a brand-new forum member chimes in with a post titled "Centiare to the rescue!" By the end of page 4 he's thoroughly unimpressed his potential customers. One of them dryly points out he doesn't even realize his new Wikipedia alternative, running on Wikia software, still has its own links coded "nofollow", making it useless for the SEO (search engine optimization) people he's marketing it to. Uninhibited by WP:CIVIL, the other forum members' responses to his pitch for Centiare make interesting reading, especially for those here that had to deal with some of the MyWikiBiz and JossBuckle Swami disputes here. --A. B. (talk) 16:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Did you notice [17] that Centiare has been proposed to add to the interwiki list (hence bypassing nofollow)????? The proposal is quite entertaining to read too.--BozMo talk 17:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Compare:
and
I sent a note to answers.com.
--A. B. (talk) 00:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

.topuniversities.com and .topgraduate.com

Maybe someone can help figure this out. I noticed Davidnelkin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) add some links to (and promotional material about) *.topuniversities.com. The additions seemed to be mainly in relationship to the The_Times_Higher_Education_Supplement ranking of universities (note the link at the bottom of the article to the apparently related *.topgraduate.com). From what I can tell, the website is reproducing the results from the official website (http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings/) which requires a subscription to access. Is this a copyvio? Is topuniversities or topgraduate a reliable website? Furthermore, links to these websites have been added in places to make them appear like "official" websites (example). Can anyone else tell what is going on? Nposs 17:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Similar to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Jan#4icu.org?--BozMo talk 19:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

After much digging, there appears to be a collaborative relationship between THES and the other website. I'll restore the links. Nposs 14:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

MyWikiBiz... Again

“ Well, I guess I'm really behind the curve here, (a complete "noob", lol) as it looks like this problem has been delt with.. but I thought I'd mention another list here of wikibiz articles: User:Moondyne/mwb taken from his website, which no longer exists, for anyone still interested. Danski14 21:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC) ”

was posted to the archive page at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Oct. I think this needs to be investigated. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:39, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Some were deleted, some were fixed. Many were for notable companies, so they were fixed up; Wikipedia has poor coverage of corporations; not even the Fortune 500 was fully covered as of a few months ago. Here's that list:

A few additional AfDs come up on the Special:Whatlinkshere/User:MyWikiBiz page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by A. B. (talk • contribs) 23:48, 7 February 2007 (UTC).

  • Thats wierd... Bill_Knapp's_Restaurant has been out of busness for a few years now. But what a POV article... I wonder who would have the modivation to buy an article about a bankrupt busness? Does anyone have a database of the origional articles from the site? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 04:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

roadrules spam

this guy Special:Contributions/64.89.250.90 has some fansite and booking agent spam going on, needs some digging, he sometimes contributes the official link along with his links. JoeSmack Talk 04:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

you mean [18] &[19]? --BozMo talk 08:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
heh, you're right, not so hard. cleaning it now... JoeSmack Talk 04:58, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
cleaned. JoeSmack Talk 05:19, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting dispute about Cable TV external links

[[User:Bill Clark]] was a highly experienced user (dating back to 2002 under another name), who reappeared under this Bill Clark name in Fall 2006. After making a number of legitimate edits for several months, he undertook quietly to post external links directly to commercial cable websites on dozens of small city articles, with the apparent intent of posting these external links to cable TV websites in as many city articles as he could.

When he was confronted, he agreed to stop, but then he began a series of increasingly elaborate arguments and offers - each one of his proposals always ended with his being able to post links to commercial cable TV websites, as he put it, where "appropriate."

The editors at WikiProject City disagreed with each of his increasingly elaborate proposals, and "opposed" or "strongly opposed" each of his plans. One of his plans included for example, an offer to list the name of every public utility in every city in a new section he would create. This new section would, of course, contain the name of the cable TV provider, with a helpful direct link to the cable TV provider's website, where "appropriate." He kept insisting that he "didn't understand" the objections to his plans.

When this user saw that the consensus had formed against his plan, he said he was "leaving Wikipedia," vandalized dozens of articles on his way out, and launched vituperative personal attacks naming me, and other editors who had not agreed with him.

He has blanked out his user page and his talk page, but, of course, the edit history still contains his post that he had been an editor since 2002 ("under another account"), had "started over 100 'good' articles," and made "thousands of edits." At least of couple of editors were under the impression that this user was newcomer, and felt that he had not been treated with enough patience.

The body of discussions relating to his actions (before they were blanked by this user), as well as the log of his actions, is archived here for review and use by any editor. Spamreporter1 06:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yikes... I hate to see someone leave like this, but what can we do? He just didn't get WP:NOT. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 10:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, interestingly, he says in one of his (archived) posts that he quit once before, apparently also because of perceived "hostility" towards him. Spamreporter1 17:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I left both times because of people who incorrectly (and unfairly) prejudged me. Spamreporter1, you're going to honestly claim that you didn't have me "figured out" as a spammer from the get-go? Sure, you never wrote "Bill is a spammer" but rather that I "exhibited the qualities one might associate with a spammer" or other such twisting of words, but the implication was clear. You just knew I was a spammer – but some kind of clever, extra-sneaky one. You intended to flush me out.

The label was different the last time, but things played out pretty much the same otherwise. What irks me more than the holier-than-thou crusader attitude of somebody who's dead wrong is the fact that Wikipedia allows it to happen. Not just to me, but all the time. You seem to think it's somehow significant that I'm not a newbie, as if that gives you the right to bite me. And there are a lot of people like you.

You "caught" me just after I'd spent a good chunk of time cutting and pasting html from various webpages and doing regular expression substitutions in my editor to generate the monstrous list of cities at Mediacom. Whether or not you think a list of service areas belongs on the article page for a cable company, you have to acknowledge the amount of work it represents. I was in the process of writing some scripts to help me generate the wikicode to add to the list of cities, and was planning to categorize them according to whether they already had an "Economy" section and/or "Public tilities" section, already had a "References" section or not, already had some or all utilities listed, etc. That is also an appreciable amount of work, that I had already begun. I wasn't about to let all that go because of some prejudice of yours, and an unfounded one at that. Although that didn't stop me from trying to meet you at some sort of reasonable compromise at every step of the way, and maybe that was a mistake too because you just took it as further evidence of me trying to hide my tracks or whatever you think I was doing.

There was a post I missed the first time (you asked for help in putting a stop to my spamming in like a million different places) that mentioned COI. I don't think I saw it the first time (or don't remember if I did -- I didn't know until just recently what it stood for in Wikipedia's acronym soup) but I wish I had and had taken notice. I think calling my work on cable companies a conflict of interest is probably more on mark than calling me a spammer. I wasn't adding links to cable websites to try to drum up business for them in any way, but I was generating the listings of service areas as part of a project at work. Contrary to what some people seem to think it's not that easy to track down that information sometimes, particularly for smaller rural cable companies like the ones I was researching (although of course if the list is small enough then often they'll just name them in the intro on their website, but usually you need to find some kind of "Do you sell cable in my area?" page or community portal website sponsored by the cable company... assuming they have one.. or even have a website at all).

I used Wikipedia as a resource in my searches, and sometimes I'd find listings, but usually not. So I figured that since I had to generate these lists anyway, I'd incorporate all of the information into Wikipedia as well, and do it in both directions since the same reference citation works both ways (Cable company -> City, City -> Cable company).

Maybe I'm wrong about this being encyclopedic information, and maybe I'm the only person in the whole world that really needs to generate lists of cities serviced by various cable providers, but frankly I just see the name of the utility companies in a given city as being a fact like the geographic area or whether or not it's a dry town or how many liquor licenses it has (which not enough articles tell you!). In any event, something is seriously broken with this community and this software when the only way to put together some sort of community debate on a topic is to act more like someone who's trying to put organize a lynch squad than a consensus. Take a look at whose talk pages I posted to (in this debate and others) and you'll see that I tend to engage the people who oppose me in an attempt to sway their position (or their vote, if it's AfD or something). Spamreporter1, you sought out people who also opposed my position and rallied them to your side – regardless of whether their reasons for opposing me had anything at all to do with your anti-spam quest. I'd rather have discussed the issues with them, but instead let myself be drawn into your craziness and let it get to me. You'd think I'd have learned not to debate the zealots after my millionth flame war on usenet in college (and yes, sadly, even after) – or even the last time I just finally lost it on Wikipedia because of some irrational holy crusader that I couldn't let go away thinking they'd put a stop to my evil ways, and thinking I was a spammer or anything else I've been painted as – but apparently I haven't learned my lesson yet. I swear I'll really try this time.

I'm sorry to the rest of you for lumping you in with Spamreporter1, and for being childish (no scare quotes) on at least one person's talk page.

Admins, there should be no need to block this account for this personal attack (or whatever it'll get snagged for) as I won't be back... but do what you will.

--Bill Clark 01:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Archive List

Ok, I created an archive list. Currently it contains a link to each archive and a bulleted list of each section on that page. I thought it would be useful...

There are a few things that I'd like to see at some point...

  1. Links to each section
  2. List of domains/users mentioned in each section (in a third column).

Is this going to be useful to anyone? It will take a little effort to maintain each time an archive is created. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 10:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Where is it?--BozMo talk 13:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It's here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/Archive List - also linked from the archive box at the top of this page. I think it would be very useful if the third column was added and maintained. CiaranG 13:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
That could be useful, if we can get a bot to do that even better. —— Eagle101 Need help? 17:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I linked to it in this section. :) my bad.
Yeah, the third column would be the ultimate in usefulness... I'm just not sure how to easily grab that information. Maybe you can help with that Eagle? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Or get people to put more informative section titles eg www.spam.com not "another spammer"? --BozMo talk 22:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

quick q

Someone produced a list of the most linked to sites from Wikipedia a little while back and now I cannot find it. Anyone got a bookmark?--BozMo talk 13:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

User:ReyBrujo/Dumps - rey and his abundant user-subpage-resources strikes again! JoeSmack Talk 13:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Just in case I have started drawing up a greenlist here: User:BozMo/whitelist. Anyone who really doesn't have anything better to do could help but I am not expecting it. It will be a while before it is plausible --BozMo talk 14:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Heh, is it a green list or a white list? ;) Anyways, you might ask Eagle 101 about the whitelist from his LinkWatcher IRC Bot. JoeSmack Talk 17:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay I'll move the page sometime. In WP the whitelist is an exclude from the blacklist whereas the greenlist is intended to be an exclude from nofollow... --BozMo talk 18:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Exclude from no-follow... this could be fun! Just wait for the spammers to be on the doorstep :P —— Eagle101 Need help? 19:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Did you notice them leave? At least we will see them if they have to knock on the door of a greenlist... well I reckon. I did spot them queueing up and asking for inclusion in interwiki which is excluded from nofollow though. Anyway, what's this whitelist thingy you have? --BozMo talk 19:35, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Archives

Going through the archives checking past spammers I found this guy Special:Contributions/68.3.28.140 had just returned after a long break to add a test link. I have indef blocked his account. --BozMo talk 14:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Careful with the terminology, it's not an account but an IP, and those should usually not get indef blocked unless in extreme cases. Though this one has a consistent pattern and no other edits since Nov 2005 you may want to reduce to 1 year. Femto 18:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the steer. Changed to 6 months. I've done a couple of these recently so I'll go back over when I have a few minutes. In general I thought the old blocks get revisited so indef did not mean forever but I agree no point making a job, --BozMo talk 18:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

elliotgann.com (the link updater)

Links added

  • en.elliottgann.com
    • Current list of pages with this link on the English Wikipedia
  • elliottgann.com
    • Current list of pages with this link on the French Wikipedia

Frequently uses "updating links" or something similar in edit summaries

Partial list of English Wikipedia articles spammed:

Accounts adding this link (partial list):

I wonder if this user should be blocked because of the disruptive user name?
--A. B. (talk) 20:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Blacklisting requested. --A. B. (talk) 21:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Now blacklisted. --A. B. (talk) 13:53, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
no explanations about deletion —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fillmnnight (talk • contribs) 14:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Response to Fillmnnight

First of all, in response to your comment on my talk page that elliottgann.com is not a commercial site: It is a commercial site since it is monetized with Google Adsense ads. Given Wikipedia's high "search engine trust factor" and page ranking, a link from one of these articles to another site would tend to give it higher page rank, more visitors and more ad revenue.

Putting "en.elliottgann.com/forex-trading/Main_Page" in the search box for the Site-Related function of Google Adwords' Keyword Tool reveals that Google's price to get the leading ad positions for many of the keywords associated with your site will cost several dollars per click. Google's latest financial filing indicates that Adsense site owners nowadays get about 75% of the revenue per click.

As for other inappropriate links on these pages, by all mean, delete any that fail to meet the External LInks Guideline.

In May 2006, 82.226.255.227 added elliottgann.com links to:

This IP traceroutes to ath91-1-82-226-255-227.fbx.proxad.net. (France)

In November 2006, Paris75 added elliottgann.com links to:

8 January 2007, Inflector deleted an elliottgann.com link from the Richard Dennis article, leaving the explanation on the article talk page noting that that elliottgann.com was infringing someone else's copyright.[24][25]

10 January 2007, 212.180.5.46 "updated" the elliottgann.com links in all 4 articles.[26][27][28][29] This IP traceroutes to sextan7258-nat.clients.easynet.fr. (France)

11 January,Filmnight deleted your links with these comments:

12 January, you created the account Fillmnnight

  • Note that Wikipedia:Username proscribes using creating a user name confusingly similar to that of another editor and goes on to discuss abusive user names.
  • Wikipedia:Sock puppetry rules out using multiple accounts except in certain unusual situations

Using this new account you immediately added back two of the links again; 82.226.255.22 reinserted a third link 4 minutes later. [34][35][36]

2 February 2007, User:217.207.99.252 deleted these links.[37][38][39] The edit summaries each read: "removed spam link."

Later that day, using the Filmnight account, you again added the links back.[40][41][42]

At the same time, you also deleted the complaint about elliottgann.com copyright infringements from Talk:Richard Dennis.[43] Pleclech subsequently reverted your edit with the comment: "Best not to remove material from talk pages unless libellous, nonsense ..."

  • Deleting others' article talk page comments is considered vandalism -- see Wikipedia:Vandalism.

8 February 2007, I deleted the elliottgann.com links from the Candlestick chart, Trader (finance) and Technical analysis articles with the edit summary for each: "delete elliottgann.com spam" I put {{Uw-spam4}} notices on each of the 4 user pages warning that any more spam might result in editing privileges being blocked; these notices gave links to the following policies:

In light of:

  • The user name issue
  • The use of multiple accounts
  • The copyright concerns
  • The talk page vandalism
  • The indication that these links may have been added to other language versions of Wikipedia

I then requested the elliottgann.com link be blacklisted. I did not request any of the multiple accounts be blocked.

9 February 2007, 212.180.5.46 responded by replacing the warning with "just bullshit...". I restored the warning, then he deleted it again, 6 minutes before your post above.
--A. B. (talk) 19:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


response from fillmnnight

  • The user name is just an ironical answer. Nobody give me a good reason about the deletion of elliottgann links. Why elliottgann links ? Why not the other pure commercial links ?
  • The use of multiple account : Only 2 registered, the others are just IP addresses.
  • The copyright concern : The original PDF of turtle trading system is free.
  • The talk page : who is really Inflector ? Is he really Curtis Faith ? Is it not a fake ? Are you sure of that ?
  • There is no link in other language version of wikipedia.

ElliottGann is certainly not a commercial wiki. Adsense is just here to give me back the money I spent in a dedicated server. Wikipedia is based on donations. Have you seen all money that Wikipedia earn by month ??? Do you really consider that Wikipedia is not more a commercial website than ElliottGann ??? Have you seen Porn section in wikipedia ? Don't you think that it's just a keyword spamming in Google. In french wikipedia many articles are just copy and paste of ElliottGann, just see Munehisa Homma basically an article stolen from ElliottGann and rewritten to consider the copyright.

The metatag value rel=nofollow is not really useful for pagerank.

I think that ElliottGann was just the most useful external Link in Candlestick chart and I don't really understand why ElliottGann links are deleted and not the others.

ElliottGann wiki is really a big project that I try to keep alive. Wikipedia links were just here to give a very little help since the project are similar. --Fillmnnight 20:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Total user contributions (besides this week's spam discussion)
  • 82.226.255.227 (talk • contribs) -- 3 edits (link additions only)
  • Paris75 (talk • contribs) -- 2 edits (link additions only)
  • Fillmnnight (talk • contribs) --5 link additions, 1 article talk page deletion
  • 212.180.5.46 (talk • contribs) -- 4 edits (link additions only)
Do any other editors have any opinions on this case?
--A. B. (talk) 21:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Since it is the person who maintains the site who apparently added the links, at the very least we have a WP:COI situation. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 21:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree that link addition can be considered like spam. In Richard Dennis Talk Page sincerely is it useful to let the Inflector remarks ? I'm in doubt about the real ID of Inflector and I began a rewriting of all articles about Turtle Trading System in ElliottGann. I think that is a pity that ElliottGann is blacklisted just because many readers of ElliottGann are just happy to have free financial contents. Wikipedia is just 50 visitors per day but considering the time they stay I thought that ElliottGann link was most useful than all other links in Candlestick chart article.Maybe the manner I reverted all spam deletion was bad but the deletion of only my links just surprised me. I thought of a personnal COI not COI with wikipedia --Fillmnnight 08:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

unitedfutures.com (the tidy guy)

Links added:

  • unitedfutures.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • brightcommoditybroker.com
    • Current list of pages with this link

Partial list of accounts adding these links

Articles spammed:

Spam articles created:

Often describes his edits as "tidying up". --A. B. (talk) 21:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Eww, list that on meta please. —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Blacklisting requested. --A. B. (talk) 21:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Now blacklisted. --A. B. (talk) 14:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

URL tracking givaways

Came accross this one today hxxp://www.consultant-news.com/?Wiki note the /?Wiki on the end of the url. Any thing after the ? is for back tracking hits or visitors, not a functional part of the address. Good chance its a webmaster or owner in violation WP:COI and Advertising and conflicts of interest. I think MSN's bot does read it as a part of the URL, so it may have SEO weight as a keyword. A little more subtle than affiliate spam, but spam it is.--Hu12 11:53, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


One month block

I have just given this guy a one month block : Special:Contributions/216.70.148.253. He is redirecting links to his own site, and has been warned. There are about 30 of his links left [47] and I don't have more wiki time before tomorrow. Be good if someone could pick them up but it isn't just a delete job since I think they are all diverts from legit links which might need restoring? --BozMo talk 20:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Special:Contributions/Studentofknowledge was also a source of some of the links remaining if it helps to find if they were drop in or redirect. --BozMo talk 20:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Another studentofknowledge.com spam IP 198.160.190.11 (talk · contribs). Interestingly, this one is registered to a company, Life Technologies, Inc. Femto 16:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Remember EinsteinEdits (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log)? I seem to recall he edited for a while under the name "Professor of Life" -- any chance they're the same? --A. B. (talk) 17:32, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Portland neighborhood links

Per WikiProject Spam guidelines, I set up a "do not add undiscussed links" note on Portland, Oregon, and a discussion section on the talk page. There is consensus that portlandneighborhood.com doesn't belong in the Portland article proper, but as I said, there are about 50 PDX neighborhoods with the link, I think these are a legit use of the link, but I'd like to get all y'all's opinion. Please don't do anything drastic, like mass deletion, before I consult with my WikiProject Oregon pals. Now, along comes a user who wants to put her neighborhood link in, and she mentions portlandneighborhood.com. Now aside from her photo being the first thing you see when you click on the link, anyone else care to explain to her why her link is inappropriate? She's using the usual strawmen. I've already sent her {{spam}} and I just replied to her post. Thanks bunches. Katr67 07:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me this is exactly the reason why we have WP:COI. No one can see objectively about their own link so they shouldn't be in on the argument. --BozMo talk 07:11, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. And BTW, it looks like portlandneighborhood.com *is* adding their own links. They even attempted to add it to a category page, which is a sin in my book. Katr67 07:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
She is an established user. Established users get very upset when EL/Spam/COI policies get applied to them just like every other IP and new user. My advice is to talk it out before removing the 50 inappropriate links to avoid needlessly high temperatures. JoeSmack Talk 16:58, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist backlog -- calling all admins

This came up in the dsicussion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Hu12:

See the MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist administrator backlog: there are requests dating back to October. Probably 1/3 are legit, 1/3 are spammers with new accounts making disingenuous appeals and the other 1/3 -- who knows?

Note that I am not suggesting anyone go through them, making snap decisions just to clear the list. It takes some time to go through each of these.

Most cases will be documented either in the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam or m:Talk:Spam blacklist archives. Occasionally stuff goes straight to the blacklist without documentation except on the m:Spam blacklist itself. If all else fails, just Google "wikipedia.org OR wikimedia.org + spamdomain.com" (Google search is better for this than our own). A few requests I've already annotated with comments if that's any help, but only an admin is allowed to make a final decision. --A. B. (talk) 17:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

An admin at meta, yeah? (as in not an .en admin) /wangi 17:33, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Meta administers the blacklist, which is Foundation-wide. Each project then has a whitelist where they can make exceptions (whitelisting) for individual domains. That is done by admins on those projects.--A. B. (talk) 18:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Mice nibbling away at our archives

The following was deleted today from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Jan#.in spam by Northlake (talk • contribs • links • count • actions • logs • status)[48]:

More .in spam for the record (pub-5012027703930414):
*Other domains involved:
Nposs 18:40, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the deletion. It was thoughtful of Northlake to remind us of this.

This was only a portion of that section; it may be worth also looking at the rest that was not deleted. --A. B. (talk) 19:01, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Two other, unrelateds earlier raids, both reverted

  1. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Jan & Feb#everything2.com -- this section was deleted last May by 213.179.39.85 (talk • contribs • links • count • actions • logs || WHOIS • RDNS • traceroute • RBLs • tor • search)
  2. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Oct#eyeorbit.org --this section was deleted in November by 66.67.15.16 (talk • contribs • links • count • actions • logs || WHOIS • RDNS • traceroute • RBLs • tor • search)

It may be worth going back and checking the associated domains out again -- clearly these spammers were not willing to go away.

As noted a few days ago, we had still another raid[49] a few days ago by 59.93.83.166, also reverted and spam cleaned up.

I've added all the archives to my watchlist.
--A. B. (talk) 19:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Went through it all. There were two links that needed to be removed, and they were removed. Thanks for lettings us know. JoeSmack Talk 19:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Just to log

15 minute block on Special:Contributions/62.117.94.124 because he wouldn't stop when warned mid link campaign. A couple of the links were arguable but I am getting fed up with "only link only to one site" users and some were far fetched. I am about to go to bed so someone in a different time zone could just have a look in an hour or so.--BozMo talk 22:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This IP Special:Contributions/195.128.58.78 did the same thing for the same site a bit early. I left one which was vaguely arguable but I think we need to watch the site since they are switching IPs. --BozMo talk 22:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

insureme.com and vsisystems.com spam

Links added by one or more of the related accounts below (or affiliated with the same domains):

  • AutoInsuranceCarInsurance.net
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • auto-insurance-rate.biz
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • badcredit-mortgagerefinance.info
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • car-insurance-comparison.net
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • CheapCarInsuranceQuote.biz
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • clipboardgenie.com
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • FreewareCity.com
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • freewaretown.com
    • Previously blacklisted -- I could find no record of when or why
  • insureme.com
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • lynxtrack.com
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • sharewareisland.com
    • Previously blacklisted -- I could find no record of when or why
  • uiopq.com
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • vsisoftware.com
    • Current list of articles with this link
  • vsisystems.com
    • Current list of articles with this link

Articles spammed by these accounts

Accounts adding one or more of these links

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Jan# Additional insurance spammers -- help needed

Time to blacklist. --A. B. (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I have done the blacklisting on meta for these. —— Eagle101 Need help? 00:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! --A. B. (talk) 14:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Spam fake customer sockpuppeteering to become criminal offence in Europe in 2008

The Men from the Ministère will be requiring that commercial spammers toe the line and refrain from posing as a consumer in sockpuppetry and fake bloggery stunts http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2007/02/11/eu_makes_sock_p....html#comments

Bwithh Join Up! See the World! 21:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Back again: ragnarev.com and Rayvan, LLC linkspam

Ignores warnings and requests to stop spamming links.

Links added:

  • rayvan.net
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • warspawn.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • ragnarev.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • wefotyou.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • arrowhead.lees-estate.com (building owned by Raynet/Ragnarev?)
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • ameritech-elevator.com (client)
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • esbanquethallga.com (client)
    • Current list of pages with this link

Accounts used (that we know of):

Articles spammed:

Uploaded:

217 Arrowhead Suite A-3
Jonesboro, GA 30236
(678) 982-8854 (Office)
(678) 325-7354 (Fax)
Adsense ID# 6036828931960075

See also:


--A. B. (talk) 23:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If it is current, and across multiple IPs, I would suggest that it be blacklisted. Just drop a request by meta (with the diffs and whatever other proof), and I or another meta admin will see to it :D. —— Eagle101 Need help? 00:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I requested all but the two client sites be blacklisted and Eagle101 has done this.
I am reluctant to blacklist the two client domains unless we see more of their links, in which case, I'm inclined to first send their owners e-mails. They're paying Rayvan to take care of them and they probably have no idea of what's going on. I'm mindful of two things:
  1. The rumor that the big search engines sometimes consult our blacklist when compiling their blacklists.
  2. Non-Wikimedia Foundation wikis that run on MediaWiki software default to using our Wikimedia blacklist. There are about 1500 to 2000 wikis that use this software.
--A. B. (talk) 01:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Please take a look at the Elevator consultant and Office complex articles. The first is almost 2 years old and has been spam-bait on and off. I wonder if it should be merged into some elevator-related article. The second article, now just a stub, was started by Ragnarev and, guess what -- had one of his links. I'm not sure if this should be merged into something else as well.
Does Wikipedia have a "what do we do with this article?" tag? I'm reluctant to just throw them at AfD; that seems like a misuse of the AfD process although AfD is the only forum I know of for discussing articles. --A. B. (talk) 02:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Radio station spam - radiotime.com

*.radiotime.com

Just adding it here for the record (I have a feeling it will return - although it appears to be quiet for the time being.) Systematically added by multiple IPs - usually inserted in front the link to the station's own website. Seems like an ad-free "service" to listen to streaming radio, but the site is actually pushing new technologies that use their service (and other related tie-ins). Nposs 06:04, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Added one more.--Hu12 08:24, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Old Fashioned spammer

See Special:Contributions/193.239.211.134 . There are squillions of links to hometown.aol.com see [50] . Should there be any at all? --BozMo talk 13:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

microstockgroup.com

  • 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

targets;
Microstock photography
Stock photography
and any related articles
Link Searchmicrostockgroup.com

Spam accounts

Wikileaf (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
85.166.47.103 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
85.166.6.85 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
Sybille Yates (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
This ones been around for some time, first time logging it.--Hu12 11:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW they seemed linked to 12 other sites, many with WP links. First is fotolia.com which is shockingly listed here: Social_Marketplace ... don't you love this article's examples tables?--BozMo talk 12:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Also [51]
Also links put in were by the person who wrote most of Black Capitalism which has amazon affiliate linkspame...
Ok so User:Bwoodsonii has been putting amazon affiliate spam all over the place. Is there a specific warning for affiliate spamming? Seems a contributer otherwise--BozMo talk 12:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Might be time to create some "specialized" templates for just such situations. Seems the project is comming up with alot of situations where "standard" warnings won't properly inform.--Hu12 12:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I am not sure why all this information is under Microstockgroup.com. I wikileaf added links to microstockgroup.com inside the stock photography pages just as admins from other microstock forums did. I felt it was a valuable link for people looking for information on microstock photography. I didn't realize I was doing anything wrong - and that it would be considered spam. I am also not sure what microstockgroup has to do with all these other posts? Wikileaf 18:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)wikileaf

Trailer (book)

Removed External link directory (including the Foreign-language links) on Trailer (book) per WP:NOT and Links normally to be avoided, explained kindly to this user why. doesn't seem to care and replace them all. might also need to be reminded of WP:OWN. Someone want to have a second look at the article? --Hu12 22:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a bit harsh to remove them all, since a few are actually required to reference the article. An explanation of how to do that properly might be an idea. I removed some as a starting point, but between us, we seem to have managed to look like the heavy mob. ;) CiaranG 22:32, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, fair point, although they are a bit deaf. I was puzzled that I didn't get an edit conflict as I thought we were simultaneous. The article only has one author so I was wondering about AfDing it aswell but decided not to. The guardian and a couple of others could go back. --BozMo talk 22:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I thought WP:OR at first, until I looked at some of the better links. I'll stick and appropriate one back as a properly formatted reference and see what happens if nobody else gets there first. CiaranG 22:37, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I reverted some I had deleted back in already. I really am going to bed now goodnight. --BozMo talk 22:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Doh. A hot potato. CiaranG 23:03, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Looks like a good-faith effort in creating a decent new article, he just jumped off the external link cliff. Like you were saying, most of the articles he linked to need to be converted to inline references. The blogs and "examples" don't really seem to be needed and will set off the spam radar every time. He's responding through the talk page now, so it should work out. Kuru talk 23:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
(from bed). This article is his only contribution. At least of the links are his. www.vidlit.com for example looks linked to a user called vidlit, doesn't it? He started ten days ago with a short article on this [[52]], with his website in it and since has evolved. Also please bear in mind that although book trailers exist a lot of the text is hype. Try googling for "booker trailer genre" http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=RNFA%2CRNFA%3A1970--2%2CRNFA%3Aen&q=%22book+trailer+genre%22&btnG=Search I strongly suspect advertising and linkbait thinly disguised as art? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BozMo (talk • contribs) 23:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC).
Good points. However, go to sleep now, and try not to dream of linkspam. CiaranG 23:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
'Wiking' from bed is a danger sign.  :) I agree - while I'd love to AGF and just assume this is something he is passionate about, I do so hate it when the username is the same as one of the link domains. The text of the article has quite a bit of WP:OR in it, and will need to have anything he can't reference removed (especially the first person sentence) . I'm fine with waiting a day to see how it develops, if an irrational attachment to the links develops it would be fairly telling. Kuru talk 00:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Hooooookay. He's just responded; please ignore my above message. Kuru talk 02:49, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
This article seems to be attracting pov and spam in the same way that a tin of rotting spam attracts flies. (I assume it would anyway, I've not tried it myself). If it goes on much longer, I'm just going to replace the whole thing with a well-referenced stub. CiaranG 22:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Geocities

I apologize if this has been mentioned before, but are geocities.com links allowed? Cheers. Yuser31415 23:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Just make sure they are reliable sources, and meet external link criteria. Cheers! ---- Eagle101 Need help? 03:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
As a general rule, I tend to remove links to them. However, if they quote their sources (and quote them right!) and are actually valuable, I let them. Veinor (talk to me) 23:30, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I won't remove every single link as I was going to :). Yuser31415 00:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

incendiarymag.com

Just noticed this little campaign, which I don't have time to investigate right now, but it looks a bit spammy to me.

  • List of links to this domain here

I'll come back to it later if nobody else gets to it first. CiaranG 10:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Spam sock accounts

Lancashire Fusileer (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

done, the remaining two seem to be good faith additions ;) --Hu12 11:18, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Lancashire Fusileer here. Not spamming, but in all honesty, we have a lot of articles that might have good info on areas you dont have covered, eg obscure releases etc etc (Walter Wegmuller is a case in point, also the Julian Cope Krautrocksampler review) So where can I put them? In citations? Im NOT looking to cause trouble btw... Take stuff off if you feel it is not in the spirit. Not looking to cause trouble, just feeling my way around at the mo. Regards

The correct behaviour is to propose the links on the talk pages of the articles and the regular editors will pick up and include them (or not) from there --BozMo talk 15:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

okay, will do, thanks! In addition is Citations a good way toput stuff up? And how do you use Citations if there is no citations section on an article

Again you should not add citations: propose them on the talk page. Somewhere there will know what to do. --BozMo talk 15:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again. Will do some research! LF.

data

Here is a full list of additions of this site up to 2 days old.

  • en:Girls Aloud diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=&name=News&new_cat=6&file=article&sid=108
  • en:David Gray (musician) diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=features&name=News&new_cat=12&file=article&am
  • en:Queen (band) diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=&name=News&file=article&sid=414
  • en:Robyn Hitchcock diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=features&name=News&new_cat=10&file=article&am
  • en:David Gray (musician) diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=features&name=News&new_cat=12&file=article&am
  • en:Tunng diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?story_id=1101&menu_tab=reviews&backissue=1&name=News&a
  • en:The Shins diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=&name=News&file=article&sid=1100
  • en:Girls Aloud diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=&name=News&new_cat=6&file=article&sid=108
  • en:CocoRosie diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=&name=News&new_cat=1&file=article&sid=560
  • en:Scritti Politti diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=957
  • en:Edwyn Collins diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=244
  • en:Duke Special diff en:Lancashire Fusileer www.incendiarymag.com/modules.php?menu_tab=&name=News&new_cat=1&file=article&sid=109

Hope this list helps. —— Eagle101 Need help? 20:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

chartexample.com spammer

search current chartexample.com

Known sock accounts

Chartex (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Icemt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Leesly (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Maryyyy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Economist332 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Fdraymon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Mahjong33 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Daazzyy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Aticles targeted

seems these sock accounts are used once then disgarded. Each revision this user creates a new sock.--Hu12 19:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Minor note
There are no additional en socks, buy you may want to note the gernam addition. —— Eagle101 Need help? 20:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I've blocked all the accounts. Not much else we can do other then keep an eye on it the situation. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Interactive Brokers

Marked this an an Advert. Reads like a PR piece. The last revision by a single purpose account added a consideral ammount of POV, and spammy information. Someone want to take a look at the article Interactive Brokers, before its re writen back to stub status..LOL--Hu12 20:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

One of the early editors is 206.106.137.105 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS).
Ummm yeah. Shocking, 'eh? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Photo essay spammer

Sadly, I feel it is my duty to report that this person (www.efn.org/~hkrieger and www.efn.org/~fotozone) is a spammer. I have already removed all but one of his links from the wiki--the one that remains is, I think, relevant to the article. User name and IPs include:

  • User:Hkrieger
  • User:63.224.200.79
  • User:71.32.127.109 (most recently used)
  • User:71.34.247.189

This is a gentleman with a bit of local notability (he appeared on a public TV program about arts in the state) as a photographer and a penchant for self-promotion. He was warned for spamming under his Hkrieger username. Feel free to edit the links in this post to make it more useful for the anti-spam squad. Thanks! Katr67 21:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

efn.org/~fotozone
efn.org/~hkrieger

Hkrieger (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
63.224.200.79 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
71.32.127.109 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
71.34.247.189 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
--Hu12 21:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment FYI, efn.org is a Eugene, Oregon ISP (it's a freenet in fact)--this is much like the geocities links above--some are links to organizations, some are personal webpages, relevance and reliability of links may vary. Katr67 22:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Fixed the linksearch above to reflect /~fotozone and /~hkrieger's particular url's presence. Good job on cleanup!--Hu12 00:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Cross-wiki spam:

--A. B. (talk) 21:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Additional IPs (1-3 contribs):

Katr67 16:08, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Articles that are transformed into spam

I would like to see a List of articles that are easily converted into spam inside this WikiProject. In example, Pet sitting degenerated into this in only one month. It would also allow participants to have a watchlist of only those articles. -- ReyBrujo 05:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I started to create a page titled Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/High-risk articles but I can't figure out what the inclusion criteria would be. How do we limit the list? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 13:25, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Why have external links in the body?

This is probably a newbie question, but could wiki not limit all external links to the end of the article?-Vynbos 08:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Generally, editorial concerns take precedence over spam fighting. References are needed in the text but one of the several agreed style of doing this does put the external link at the end. In practice it makes controlling them no easier. --BozMo talk 08:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Make sense, but I still can't help feeling that if the wikibot simply overrules any external links in the body, it would make it harder for spamsters to sneak them in. And I wouldn't have that unpleasant experience of clicking on a link and suddenly finding myself on a rubbish site or worse, a fake-wiki environment that fools me for a while. Vynbos 20:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer using the <ref> or {{tl:cite}} methods, but that's just me. Veinor (talk to me) 23:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed (with all the above). I don't like to see anything other than the <ref> or {{tl:cite}} style of referencing either, but I suppose consensus says otherwise. Rather the embedded link style than none at all though! CiaranG 23:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Could all external citations not remain under "References" linked to the body? Vynbos 22:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

NewsMax & Victoria2007

Can someone please look into Victoria2007's contributions? Nearly all of them seem to be additions of material from NewsMax.com. I'm certain that some, many, or perhaps all of these additions are good but it might raise some eyebrows and some questions (perhaps conflict of interest?) as this person does seem to be adding only material from one source. If one were suspicious one might even suspect that such additions are being done to promote this one source. There is also an issue where Associated Press stories are not given credit for the news items republished by NewsMax. --ElKevbo 16:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Further: it seems that most of the edits performed by this person as insertions of material from the news wire (Associated Press or Reuters). The information is inserted with the phrase "According to NewsMax.com, ..." and no attribution is given to the appropriate news wire from which the information really came. Further, it seems that this person doesn't pay too much attention to his or her edits as I am finding errors that one could easily catch if one were to glance at the article after editing it. I know we all make mistakes when editing but taken as a part of the whole I am very suspicious of this editor's activities and motives. --ElKevbo 17:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I've examined all of this editor's contributions from February 9 until today and made substantial edits to most of them. I'd appreciate some help if others have time and energy - I've got to get back to (real) work. --ElKevbo 17:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I have had a look and agree most of these are rubbishy and need to come out. Won't be me today but perhaps tomorrow.,--BozMo talk 22:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
For the record my take on newsmax is they are mainly an aggregator (so quote source not them) but have some ultra-right editorials (all subscription only AFAICT). I cannot see much sign of editing themselves. So to my mind links to them should be rare and specific. There are currently about 600 of them. --BozMo talk 20:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Maximus System Solutions spam on Wikipedia

Domains

These domains are known to have been spammed to Wikipedia. Some are owned by Maximus and some seem to be Maximus SEO clients. (35 domains):

  • www.asiairas.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.berjayahotels-resorts.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.chinese.net.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.directb2b.biz
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.e-my.net.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.eplace21.com.sg
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.furnituremanufacturer.biz
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.howtofrenchkiss.net
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.kopitiammalaysia.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.ksuria.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.lycosasia.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.magicwin.com.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.malaysiaseo.net
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.malaysia-supplier.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.malaysia-webdesign.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.manufacturer-supplier.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.maximus.com.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.micci.com.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.mipe.com.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.modularfurn.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.mydotmobi.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.myhydro1.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.newmalaysia.com.my
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.nstpi.com.my/ client
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.onlinefloristmalaysia.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.personalimagegrooming.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.pestcontrol-malaysia.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.plasticproductmanufacturer.net
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.sgbroadband.com.sg
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.stainlesssteelblh.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.supplier-manufacturer.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.travelhotelmalaysia.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.webhosting-malaysia.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.welfordmedical.com
    • Current list of pages with this link
  • www.worldsites.net.my
    • Current list of pages with this link

Additional known sites owned by Maximus but not seen currently on Wikipedia (6 more domains):

Articles

Articles spammed (61 identified so far):

Accounts

Accounts used (60 identified so far):


--A. B. (talk) 02:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Other domains to watch for

Maximus promotes other clients' sites elsewhere on the web but I have not listed them above. Some of them are likely to show up in the future, but I am reluctant to blacklist now them given the potential off-Wikipedia ramifications of blacklisting for their sites. Here are the domains to watch for:

These sites are probably owned by Maximus but I cannot be sure. I haven't seen them spammed here (yet) -- 2 domains:

These sites appear to be Maximus SEO clients but I haven't seen their links on Wikipedia (13 domains):

--A. B. (talk) 14:18, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Wow... good job finding that AB. They sure are persistant! ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 13:28, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this was about my 7,500th edit. It took about 8 hours to track down and figure out. The other 7,499 edits were easier. --A. B. (talk) 13:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Most of these IP addresses have been used for only one session and only a handful were used for two consecutive days so it seems pointless to waste time giving warnings that will never be read. The two named accounts appear to be real people from their user pages but those accounts haven't been used since last summer. It would be impossible to block these IP ranges without blocking much of Malaysia's access to editing Wikipedia. I don't think it's appropriate to semi-protect 60 or so articles. I don't like to blacklisting without warning, but I'm not sure there's much choice. I intend to request blacklisting unless someone here suggests something better (I'm open to suggestions). --A. B. (talk) 13:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I spot-checked about a dozen of those websites and I don't really see any redeeming value in any of them. I don't think we lose anything if we blacklist the site. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 13:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Blacklisting requested ... (permanent link). --A. B. (talk) 15:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
All cleaned up. I did not bother giving warnings except to the two named user accounts and today's IP account; nobody would ever see the other 57 warnings. They're probably dynamically assigned, shared addresses anyway. --A. B. (talk) 15:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I have blacklisted the domains that were actually used on wikipedia. —— Eagle101 Need help? 16:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Werdnabot

I'm going to get someone to set up this bot on this page, I've mentioned it before, and there have been no objections. The bot will archive stuff older then 3 days. This page is just too fast moving for me or anyone to try to keep up by hand. ;) The bot will do a far better job (as far as not archiving current discussion) then I ever could. —— Eagle101 Need help? 16:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your work archiving and thanks for setting this up.
Question -- what if Wednabot tries to save stuff to the archive and a link there has been blacklisted in the meantime? Will it stop trying or just keep hammering away? And does it copy then delete -- or cut and paste? If it cuts and pastes, it might lose something in this process. This scenario will likely come up soon, especially since the archiving interval is so short (3 days). We've had blacklisting backlogs on Meta of 1 to 2 weeks in the past. (That's pre-Eagle101, but what if you get run over or shot down, Eagle?) --A. B. (talk)
Question 2: can we still create some sort of permanent listing of checklink URLs for spammers we have discussed so far? I keep worrying they are creeping in the back door as soon as shoved out the front
--BozMo talk 20:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Great idea, BozMo! --A. B. (talk) 21:03, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Eagle, can the bot maintain Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/Archive_List and even expand on it' usefullness with BozMo's idea? ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 22:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Alternatives as I see it in order of desirability:
  1. Have another bot automatically go around Wikipedia breaking all blacklisted links as soon as they're blacklisted on Meta.
    Wouldn't this save us all a bunch of drudgery! There'd be less frustration among other editors, too -- "Why can't I edit the Anime page?"
    Sidebar comment: I wish the blacklist warning editors get when they try to save a page with a blacklisted link could be reformatted to put the offending link in bold with better instructions on what do do.
  2. Editors here beak the links themselves as soon as they request blacklisting on Meta.
    1. I think requesters should be responsible for either breaking the links themselves (or at least asking for help here if they don't have time). I think this should include breaking all the links around Wikipedia (except on the offending users' talk pages -- they can do it for themselves).
    2. To the extent that others here see blacklist requests on Meta that still have live links here, they can note this at the request and blacklisting deferred until links on en:Wikipedia are broken.
  3. Modify Werdnabot to:
    1. Break the link itself if it gets the notice, or
    2. Check material it's saving against the blacklist and use that to break links
    3. Easiest for now: just stop and write a note to some talk page (here or perhaps its own) about the problem. A human editor can intervene a few hours later to clear the problem.
  4. Don't put "live" links on this page with the full "http://"
    I hate this -- see my comments in the section below
  5. Allow live links here but don't let live links in the archive:
    1. Werdnabot could be modified to strip out links during archiving
    2. Editors cruise the archive every day or so and do this manually
      I hate this one the worst of all -- it's the archives where we really need live links (see my comments in the section below)
--A. B. (talk) 21:01, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, as there are multiple questions by multiple users, let me keep this simple and address each in turn. The first question was by A. B. about possible problems with the bot. It will be unable to do so, but we just have to learn to NOT link to links. Don't do http://blah.com , instead do blah.com. Then we have no problems. Thats how the meta blacklist is organized. Otherwise the bot will simply skip archiving this page (as far as I know, we will just have to wait and see here). As far as some sort of checklink url, thats doable, just a ton of work, if we got into the habit of talking about links in a particular way, say putting main links in the header, (again, see how the meta blacklist is organized) we could possibly program a bot to simply parse whats in the headers and spit out a nice formatted list. Again I must emphasize, we should do as meta does, and not link to external sites on this page, I highly suggest someone write up a little warning header to slap up at the top of this page. I don't think we want a bot breaking links, then we humans can't find them to remove them through special linksearch. I will say that once the bot starts archiving it will be archive from the date of the last signed post, so if anyone wants to delay archiving, just post a message in that section. I hope I have addressed everything, folks. —— Eagle101 Need help? 03:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I respectfully disagree about not posting live links here. Meta does it their way because a very high percentage of links there get blacklisted. It's the opposite here. So if there's a discussion here about spam from http://google.nz and we truncate the link to google.nz, then a linksearch next year will turn up nothing. As for the idea of putting the truncated link in the header, well that works if you have just one link you're tracking but it gets trickier if there are 3 or 30. Finally, I'll note that why meta has to do things the way they do them there, it's a real hassle to find old discussions of many links there. I've been involved with probably whitelist requests and sometimes I've been reduced to just going archive page by archive page. And that's when I know that sooner or later I'm going to find what I'm looking for. In the case where you're just asking "I wonder if" as you're warning a spammer, you'd just throw your hands up and not bother looking to the WT:WPSPAM archives for an answer. I don't think archiving should be the tail wagging the dog.
I've slowly been trying to rebuild some of the links in the January archive that got broken.
Instead, as I suggested below, the key is for the person making the blacklisting request to first break the links here and everywhere else (except spammer talk pages) before asking for blacklisting. Once links are blacklisted, looking for them becomes much less critical because you shouldn't expect to see them again. --A. B. (talk) 03:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
The linksearch is handy, but is there any reason that Google "site:wikipedia.org spam.com" type search won't find the truncated links in the archives? Nposs 04:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Not always from my experience. Also, you'll want to specify en.wikipedia.org or else you'll get stuff from all the other languages to wade through.--A. B. (talk) 04:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
A.B. that makes sense, break them when you make the request, that way you get special:Linksearch as your ally ;). That might actually solve most of our archiving concerns. After something is put on the meta blacklist, it is logged, or at least should be logged (see this), so it does not matter if we are missing local copies of those links. plus with the http:// thing in front, we can use that for a bot to simply generate a list of url's found on each archive, and list them on a main page, with a header for each archive. You want to find a link, you just CTRL + F on that page, and then click the title (in the header) to go to the archive. If you guys want, I can set that up this weekend. Cheers —— Eagle101 Need help? 05:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Why it's good to leave "live" links here and on talk pages

{{linksearch}} is one of the most powerful tracking tools we have if we put copies of the live spam links on talk pages when warning spammers. That and/or links back to a discussion on this page with those links. So often a spammer works across a wide range of articles with many "disposable" shared IPs or sockpuppet accounts. Wikipedia has such weak tribal memory and routine spam-removal is so dispersed that spammers can beaver away like the Maximus Business Solutions spammer (see above ... permanent link) or Gilbert Wesley Purdy (discussed here a year ago and warned -- then forgotten until he was "re-discovered" by an editor this month).

By "live" links, I mean with the "http://" included.

If editors leave live copies of spam links on user talk pages (or here on these pages) I can learn that my one-time, one-link spammer is really a persistent spammer coming around with a new account or IP by running a {{linksearch}}. (For an example, try this linksearch.) Otherwise, he just gets a {{Uw-spam1}} note (and moves to another account).

When I request blacklisting, I've gotten in the habit of first breaking links here and removing links elsewhere within Wikipedia (including notifying innocent users[59] that might have them on one of their pages). I used to break them on the spammers' talk pages, too, but I'm busy, so I'm starting to leave this for them to figure out. If blacklisting is declined, I just add the http:// back.
--A. B. (talk) 20:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks AB I hadn't thought of that. Makes me more motivated to mention things on the talk page too (which is no bad thing :) -- Siobhan Hansa
I agree that the live links can be really helpful in tracking down the history. Can you expalin the "permanent link" thing? It seems like I've seen more of that lately. Nposs 02:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Definatly helps, Every one should do this, can be a great time saver. I usualy place the hypelink in the header such as this [60] if you do a link search for gooya.co.uk, you see everything.LOL--Hu12 02:59, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Suite 101

Suite 101 links are creeping back in as references [61], [62]. Should we delete these as unreliable? -- Siobhan Hansa 23:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Something odd's going on.
First of all, there's some very recent history on the Liberty Arsenal link. See m:Talk:Spam blacklist#Sandbox (permanent link) and User talk:Americasroof#Your St. Louis Arsenal draft and the blacklisted link. This is a good faith addition and it's interesting the editor was unable to save the link yesterday, 12 January 2007, but could today.
I notice that the Dave Lombardo article has been edited multiple times since the link was added several days ago.
I searched en:Wikipedia's whitelist (MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist) for "suite101" and found nothing. The last change was made 9 February.
I searched m:Spam blacklist for "suite101" and found suite101\.com which looks like the correct format. I stepped through the recent changes and found no accidental deletion of the link.
Just now, I tried to add the exact same link -- http:// www.suite101.com/article.cfm/civil_war/104507/3 -- to the Sandbox and was blocked. I tried to add a couple of missing periods to the Liberty Arsenal and I was unable to save my edit. Likewise, I tried to make a minor grammar fix to the Dave Lombardo and was also unable to save it. --A. B. (talk) 00:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I just left a note for Americasroof asking for his help in sorting this out. He created the new Liberty Arsenal article. (He's also a 7600-edit contributor and not a spammer). --A. B. (talk) 01:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Very wierd... very wierd. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
At the request of A. B. I was asked to give some technical details about how I posted an article that somehow let suite101 slip through. I of course had no idea there was so much drama about 101. I just discovered the 101 article yesterday while doing some web searches on Civil War General Nathaniel Lyon and the two arsenals in the state of Missouri that were sites of war incidents. The 101 article had information which I checked against other sites and print.google and it was actually very good and accurate and shows that some other Missouri civil war articles need significant changes. The short end is that I wrote the article in notetab and then posted it putting the 101 reference within reference tags. I use Time Warner and Firefox 1.5.0.9. I dropped back from Firefox 2.0 after keyboard responses in forms (e.g., wikipedia) became VERY sluggish and unresponsible (a problems others have experienced -- here's my link when I reported it to Mozilla after finding a site recommending this correction. After posting the Liberty article I copy and pasted the St. Louis Arsenal article into my sandbox to work on it since it needed extensive revisions in light of the Liberty article and other significant changes. Somewhere in the editing of the St. Louis article in my sandbox, I got blocked. I reported it to blacklist link and that's when AB kindly fixed the problem and told me about the 101 drama. Considering the drama I'm also afraid to try and edit the Liberty article now for fear it will screw things up again. If somebody else wants to take the 101 reference off I'm o.k. with that. The information is available in multiple locations and I had kept it there so I could go back to it for some other articles. P.S. by the "7600" reference I assume that means Wikipedia edits. Boy, I have to to get a life! ;-) Americasroof 02:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
That is curious. seems to be an intermittent, probably browser based issue. It would probably be wise to either replace the references with others or break the actual link (so people can read it but not click on it) so that others don't have problems saving the page in the future. -- Siobhan Hansa 09:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

spiderbiteinfo.com links

Pown89 just deleted the spam3 warning I left him a while back. That's his prerogative, but I'd like to make sure we don't lose track of his previous efforts, so I'm making a note for the record here:

Affliated site (not known to have been linked to Wikipedia yet):

Adsense #:2764541479400875

Accounts adding these links:


--A. B. (talk) 00:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Gave the user a warning about the removal.--Hu12 00:58, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Just a note guys, try not to leave hyperlinks on this page to sites that have any potential to be blacklisted. —— Eagle101 Need help? 03:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  1. Hu12 is right, you should warn the user about the removal and restore the warnings, they do NOT have the perogative of removing warnings in circumstances like this since the talk page is to communicate with other users and not just with them.
  2. You wrote "I have reverted seven articles to which you added a link to your site. I have left a few where your link actually has some relevance" but that probably was overnice to the spammer (I didn't examine the links to be absolutely sure). Per WP:EL, the standard for leaving an extlink is that it provides a unique resource beyond what a hypothetical featured article on the subject would have, not merely that it "has some relevance". So all the links probably should have been removed. We're trying to write a free encyclopedia, not a link directory to the unfree web, so if there's relevant content that we're missing, we are supposed to write it ourselves, not link to it.
  3. I'm not trying to be overcritical--thanks for intervening with that person, however I wanted to let you know that it's fine (and desirable) to go somewhat further than you did.

    67.117.130.181 08:06, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Movie trailer spam - http://www.slashfilm.com

Some are potentially good faith edits. More are links to the blog-like entries that feature trailers, photos, and news which is available from more reliable primary/official sources. The site is so crammed with ads and scripts that it makes my Firefox want to curl up and die. Removing them will take some time because they should probably be replaced by the official sites from which the content emanated (example). Nposs 07:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

*.slashfilm.com

Adsense pub-8329788691483836

Added by:

Participation

Sorry if my participation has been lacking, my WP:POP went haywire after Lupin's update yesterday and have been tied up with Requests for adminship this past week. I expect to get back in the swing shortly.--Hu12 21:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

No worries! We are volunteers after all. —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:31, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

How long...

...should things remain on the "to do" list after they've been moved to "Recently cleaned" or users that have been blocked? 68.39.174.238 01:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Dunno. Just use your judgement. —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Help needed: 154 now-blacklisted langmaker.com links need cleanup ASAP so pages can be edited

I was going through recent blacklist additions checking to see if any freshly blacklisted domains needed links removed on Wikipedia, deleting 3 here, 5 there, etc.

Then I hit langmaker.com:

It was spammed on the French Wikipedia but many of the links here don't look spammed.

I'd expect some whitelist requests.

I have to sign off for now, but can someone start breaking or deleting these links so these pages can get edited? Alternately, temporarily whitelist it on en:wikipedia until we figure out what we've got.

WP:EL allows linking to wikis if they're sufficiently active and big. This one gets about 80 edits/day: www.langmaker.com/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&limit=500

I don't know if this site fully meets WP:RS, but it sure looks more useful than many non-spam links. It also doesn't seem very commercial. --A. B. (talk) 03:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It is in 45 articles, if it needs to be whitelisted, someone please list on the WP:WHITELIST. Thanks. —— Eagle101 Need help? 15:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Any admin on en.wikipedia can add this to the whitelist -- I suggest just adding the whole domain until we know what we've got and proceed more judiciously. --A. B. (talk) 17:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and did that ([63])_ though I will note one thing, looks like someone deleted the article on Langmaker. Thoughts on notability are welcome. —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. Langmaker.com is a tremendously useful resource for constructed languages, and should NOT be blacklisted. It's one of the largest, oldest, and best known conlang sites. I'm also very surprised that Langmaker was speedy deleted. With the number of links out there I'd think it at least deserves an AfD. PubliusFL 06:33, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The Christmas child support spammer: child-support-laws-state-by-state.com

Links added:

Accounts known to have added these links:

  1. te-8-1-ur01.arlington.tx.dallas.comcast.net.
  2. unknown.comcast.net
  3. Unknown - Firewall did not respond
  1. te-8-1-ur01.arlington.tx.dallas.comcast.net.
  2. unknown.comcast.net
  3. cpe-76-186-98-31.tx.res.rr.com.
  1. te-8-1-ur01.arlington.tx.dallas.comcast.net.
  2. unknown.comcast.net
  3. cpe-76-186-104-189.tx.res.rr.com.

Busy even on Christmas Day

Accounts known to have been spammed:

Adsense ID#: 2041108528225718

See also:

--A. B. (talk) 18:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Can some admin also block the most recent IP, 76.186.80.218? Thanks. --A. B. (talk) 18:31, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I've blocked the whole range, 76.190.0.0/16 ... he switched... gah! —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I've corrected the range block to 76.186.0.0/16 (see here). Sorry. :D —— Eagle101 Need help? 18:39, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Comcast is the biggest (or 2nd biggest) broadband provider in the United States. This blocks 65,000+ IPs -- probably all Comcast in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metropolitan area and maybe much of the rest of Texas. I suggest you may want to at least raise this question on WP:ANI first. We don't want our user names on Slashdot or Fark today. See Slashdot:
Qatar: 866,000 people Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex: 5.8 million
--A. B. (talk) 19:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
It is now a soft-block. It is for 48 hours, and hopefully will stop the spam. —— Eagle101 Need help? 19:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I have now unblocked the range, for now... (lets hope that was able to stop the spam). —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Link added to Shadowbot's spam blacklist. Shadow1 (talk) 13:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

one more for the archives

alternative-energy-news.info
peak-oil-news.info
Adsense pub-0572508637482056

Spam sock accounts

Alex Ramon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
204.239.160.65 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
24.80.180.87 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
204.239.160.66 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
204.239.160.67 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
--Hu12 02:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Both links added to Shadowbot's spam blacklist. Shadow1 (talk) 13:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

coanews.org

coanews.org

Spam sock accounts

Ryaninfo (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
24.156.222.18 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
72.141.60.77 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
24.80.115.48 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
24.215.146.229 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
206.186.126.226 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
Zizob (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
--Hu12 13:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

is this a legit news site at all? For now I've added to shadowbot, so that will take care of any ongoing spam problems for the time being. We can always take it off if it is legit. —— Eagle101 Need help? 17:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Second opinion on Travelblog.org

I've been reverting a mass addition of tavelblog.org links from 74.97.29.63 (talk • contribs • info • WHOIS). Checking on Linksearch, there are actually quite a few of these and I was wondering what others thought of these links. Pascal.Tesson 22:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Citation / reference spam

looks to be in the early stage of spamming. Take a look at this users contribs, only adds references from science.enotes.com, hmmm...
Adsense pub-3828571351104846
Papaya07 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

Linksearch science.enotes.com
--Hu12 23:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

As of this post, there have been no other additions of that website (in the last 1 1/2 days). —— Eagle101 Need help? 02:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

publicroutes.com & User:Publicroutes

Publicroutes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) did a spam run for publicroutes.com last night. Most of links have been deleted, but not all. BlankVerse 13:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

There were 18 links added in the last 2 days, so I think we got all of this. ;) —— Eagle101 Need help? 16:59, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
As a spam-only account that was already warned once for a previous spam run in December, I think the account needs to be permanently banned, or, at least, given a long-term block (six months), instead of just given another warning. BlankVerse 08:14, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
He's been given a warning... to block now would be inconsistant with that warning. (Blocking after a user stops a behavor is very unwikilike). However, the moment he spams again, I'll block him myself. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 09:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Just a pro forma warning, hadn't given any further thought to it. Reconsidered and blocked as spam-only account. Femto 11:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

pornonewsnetwork.com spaming references

pornonewsnetwork.com

Spam sock accounts

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

All have been removed, ony spammed from this one account. targets adult porn star articles--Hu12 20:24, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah seems like it is this account only (minus about a 6 hour gap). —— Eagle101 Need help? 01:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

More insureme.com spam on Wikipedia: instant-car-insurance-quote.net

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Feb#insureme.com and vsisystems.com spam.

This account:

just added a link to:

  • instant-car-insurance-quote.net
    • Current list of pages with these links

The web page prominently displays "Insureme.com", blacklisted several days ago.

Traceroutes to rback13-g1-0.sndgca.sbcglobal.net. Much of the earlier spam came from San Diego, too. Vsi Systems is based there.

Blacklisting requested. --A. B. (talk) 18:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Its done, but at this rate, we will be blacklisting forever, any ideas on how we can nab a few of these? Can someone perhaps hunt down all domains affiliated with this company? (just so that we know what to look for. ;).). I sorta feel like we are playing whack a mole vandal domain. :D —— Eagle101 Need help? 20:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I spent hours digging up as many domains as I could when I first reported this so I think we've found the low-hanging fruit. Just put the vehicle insurance article and the articles that link to it on your watchlist. --A. B. (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
A. B. You have done good work here. :D I'm just worried that this guy has a crap load of domains, but duly watchlisted. —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
This guy's nothing -- a handful of IPs, 5 to 10 domains. We see much worse if you think about it. Blacklisting them's nothing -- it's tracking them down and finding all their domains that's time-consuming. Our friend the Maximus spammer 2 days ago was much trickier and more time consuming. We'll see him again, too.
Adsense spamming is getting to be a tougher business in the first world. Having prerused the black hat sites, I see some of these guys bragging about clearing $1000 to $2000/month running multiple sites and thinking they're really on to something. It takes a ton of clicks to make a living that way and sooner or later some of these will figure that out. Developing Adsense scraper sites makes more sense for someone smart and aggressive in Malaysia or India where the cost of living is so much lower. It's a slow long-term trend and it will take a while to play out. Even if every bit of Adsense spam someday comes only from Burkina Faso, we'll still see other spam out of Europe and North America from people trying to sell something rather than host ads -- the potential value of a page visit is just so much higher. --A. B. (talk) 22:24, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah I know, I meant to comment on the general feeling, we are all playing whack a domain :D. —— Eagle101 Need help? 23:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Still more spam on Wikipedia from VsiSoftware.com, Inc. and Insureme.com

The latest domain to get spammed:

  • autoinsurancequoteonline.us

It's so cheesy you'd think they'd get embarrassed after a while.

autoinsurancequoteonline.us turns out to be another insureme.com site spammed from the same San Diego SBC/AT&T IP ranges that have so persistently spammed both VsiSoftware.com, Inc. and Insureme.com links in the past. (VsiSoftware.com, Inc. is in the San Diego area). These other links have been blacklisted as we've identified them.

Accounts spamming the latest links:

See also:

--A. B. (talk) 21:45, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Time to shine a light on Plastic Pressure Pipe Systems

Earlier this week I deleted a link on the Plastic Pressure Pipe Systems from our Malaysian spammer, Maximus Business Solutions, to a Malaysian plastic piping site, plasticproductmanufacturer.net. This was one of 35 commercial domains spammed across 61 articles. I saw some other commercial links on the page but had many more Maximus links to cleanup elsewhere, so I just left a {{cleanup-spam}} tag and moved on. My edit summary read:

Today, the entry here for Plastic Pressure Pipe Systems in the list of 61 spammed articles was deleted without comment by:[64]

JoeSmack quickly reverted the edit,[65] observing:

  • "rvt - Plastic Pressure Pipe Systems was removed without summary; editors, please examine this article. 'EL link consensus' on talk page may be sockpuppets."

I think it's time to look at this page. For starters, the talk page sure is a lot smaller than you'd expect from such a long talk page history. Ironically, I think the deletion and the talk page behavior have nothing to do with the Maximus spammer -- you'd think someone would think twice about deleting stuff from this page -- it's sort of like waving a red flag or flipping off a cop.

Can some others also look at this and/or put it on your watchlist? Thanks. --A. B. (talk) 20:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

It looks like big chunks of Talk:Plastic Pressure Pipe Systems were deleted without comment by two accounts over the last two weeks by:
(Has a linkspam history of contribs). JoeSmack Talk 21:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
The deleted comments were those by a long-time Wikipedia editor, Notinasnaid, repeatedly expressing concerns about whether the other editors were following appropriate Wikipedia guidelines. His comments were deleted after he noted at another editor's page that he was tossing in the towel on this article. See:
It's unusual that the only other active editors did not comment on the talk page deletions. --A. B. (talk) 20:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. 85.189.110.191 just blanked the page twice.[68][69] 4 minutes later, Davedge added back the links I deleted.[70]
--A. B. (talk) 21:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe WP:RFCU time? JoeSmack Talk 21:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Davidacarr (talk · contribs) - should also be examined for this. JoeSmack Talk 21:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Help I'm shocked, look guys there is nothing going on here except a group of guys who all know each other in a very small industry. We are trying to build a great article but keep running into editors that have no interest in quality of content and how that content can be best understood by all who visit wikipedia. They are more interested in making a name for themselves with Wikipedia and getting extra power, with big egos. There are only 4 books that have been written about the subject 2 of which are by European authors and 2 US. We are trying to recruit a US editor to add to the article. The external links are valid based upon the wiki info I have read. Mike Greig works for Effast so has therefore not been an editor as he is connected. However he has been a great source of information, I work for a competitor of Effast and I'm due to retire next year but will probably still working the industry.

So I'm asking you please assume good faith, in what I and others are doing. Comments please on the article discussion page. --Davedge 17:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Just a note from an uninvolved WikiProject Spam member. I think you would do well to assume good faith also. Looking over the edits to the article in question, I see editors who *are* interested in the quality of content. That is precisely why they questioned the various additions to that article--power and egos and making a name for oneself have nothing to do with it. All the concerns raised about that article by the editors are legitimate concerns based on wikipedia policy and guidelines. So when the involved editors go around blanking talk page content without comment, it raises red flags for us. I also noticed that the good faith comments by other editors were sometimes answered with snarky comments. Meanwhile, the editor in question was nothing but civil throughout. Thus it seems odd to me that you are pleading for us to assume good faith after such behavior. Hopefully now that it is clear what is going on, everybody can take a deep breath and start the discussion over. Katr67 17:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Ccknowles (talk • contribs • count) has restored the disputed links I deleted and requested this discussion of the links continue at Talk:Plastic Pressure Pipe Systems. I am on the road and have limited access -- can some others follow up? Thanks very much. --A. B. (talk) 16:08, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Ummm I don't see the problem with the first two links in the EL section. They seem to be the kinds of things recommended for people to link to. I changed 'em to deep-links and NPOVed the comments... but other then that they seemed fine. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry

Been a "bit ill" in hospital with Pulmonary Emboli so not really around at present. Just rolled back an SEO comp link by Special:Contributions/212.178.97.99 so perhaps someone could check the target URL and blacklist if needed. --BozMo talk 08:38, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

http://www.focuslighting.com/

Giztips (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has been visiting all of the lighting projects this company has done and inserted promotional material including external links to the website *.focuslighting.com. I gave the user a couple of warnings but the editing has continued unabated. Is this promotional spam or am I overreacting? Nposs 16:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Promotional, you did the right thing. I've removed the links that are leftover; it he continues remind him of WP:EL, WP:NOT and WP:SPAM, as well as WP:COI if it seems like he is an owner/designer for the company. JoeSmack Talk 17:43, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

VC essay

I'm doing an essay on spam here for the next Virtual Classroom assignment. I thought it would be better off as a community project, so anyone who feels like contributing is welcome to. Now, off to find some spam ... Yuser31415 19:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

eMailman, LLC

Atstarr (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
eMailman, LLC http://www.atstarr.com atstarr.com

figureskating.net

newsreaders.com

emailman.com
--Hu12 10:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


car-catalog.com military-today.com

Adsense pub-3246365195631840

car-catalog.com

military-today.com

Spam sock accounts

193.219.88.200 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
193.219.14.242 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
88.222.202.10 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
--Hu12 12:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

squidoo.com

squidoo.com
Wasn't this on the black list a while back??--Hu12 16:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

This indeed was on the blacklist a while back, see this. I'm looking for why it was removed. —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Have a look at what turned up in one of the archives. Looks like the original blacklisting may have been in error. Check this out. Regards —— Eagle101 Need help? 21:17, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Spam cleanup article

I'd just like to suggest that folks take a look at Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup. There are about 300 articles listed there. I've worked on a few today and will get to some more soon. I know everyone is busy fighting spam, but these are articles that other editors have identified as being likely to have a significant amount of spam links. It would probably be best for this project to try to keep down the number of articles in this category. Thanks all. Deli nk 19:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Actually, a good many {{cleanup-spam}} tags were added by me. When I am cleaning up after a particular spammer, I'm going after all 30 of his spam links spread across many articles. (See my next entry below). I don't stop to investigate every other link in each of these articles or else I'd have no life at all. So if I see other spammy looking links, I slap a tag on the article, delete my targetted link and move on to the next. I figure the regular editors of some of these articles understand what's useful better than I do. --A. B. (talk) 22:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Interesting. I kind of thought it would be more the other way around - "regular editors" adding the tag so that people more familiar with Wikipedia's external links policy could take a look. From my perspective it seems that most spammy links tend to be added by editors that have a particular interest in the topic; and an "outsider" is more likely to look at the link more objectively in terms of WP:EL. Anyway, thanks for the explanation. Deli nk 14:10, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

premierbiosoft.com

203.129.192.23 (talk · contribs) has had four last warning for adding premierbiosoft.com links. The user returns about once a week to reinsert them into various articles, which is too slow to interest the blocking admins at AIV. This is the only activity from this IP. What now? ✤ JonHarder talk 01:23, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Blocked her/him for a month. Seems to be single user IP.--Hu12 01:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
JH, if you notice this spammer repearing under new socks, repost here.thanks--Hu12 02:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! ✤ JonHarder talk 02:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

888.com

888.com

Spam sock accounts

Hellenthemelon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
80.230.245.60 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
Natasian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Wikilover78780 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
--Hu12 14:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

PRISM Business Media Inc.

User:Requestion called attention to magazine-related spam for PRISM Business Media Inc. (owned by Penton Media).

Suspected accounts and IPs:

I've scanned for other contribs from the IP ranges 199.0.65.0/24, 65.166.218.0/23, 65.242.19.64/26, looks like we've got them all listed above. Femto 11:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

A list of domains owned by PRISM Business Media, according to http://www.prismb2b.com/:

Femto 13:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

This is tricky since many of these are reputable industry publications so we don't want to blacklist except at gunpoint. Maybe send an e-mail to one of the publisher's top executives. Definitely remove any COI-spammed links, though. --A. B. (talk) 18:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello fellow spam fighters, I've added a couple Prism spam agents to the above list. I've also been keeping a list over at Talk:Penton_Media that has spam counts, warning counts, and such, it seems like a lot of duplication of effort. I believe that Penton Media stopped being a "reputable industry publication" after they passed the 100 external spam link mark. They have been warned multiple times by multiple Wikipedians since August 2006 (see User_talk:65.166.218.250 for reference). The situation has escalated to the point that they are using temporary usernames so that they can fly their link spam in under the radar. I think they should be black listed now. Yes, Penton Media happens to be a billion dollar corporation but at what point is enough enough? 1000 link spams? 10000 link spams? (Requestion 02:58, 18 February 2007 (UTC))
This calls for tough action. Someone needs to contact their IS department and inform them of the situation. They stop or we blacklist and send a friendly note to wikipedia's press-release department. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 04:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
On second thought, lets drop a range-block on the IP address and see if that stops it. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 04:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think an IP block will work. Penton Media has received 16 spam warnings and that didn't stop them. Instead they went into a stealth mode and began a campaign of using temporary user names with only a few edits. Unfortunately, all that an IP block will do is make them harder to detect. (Requestion 22:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC))
The Institute of Physics' publishing arm had a staffer who took it upon himself to spam a ton of links across Wikipedia. Warnings were issued and ignored. At the same time, their journals were used as references in dozens of articles by dozens of editors editing in good faith. Blacklisting one of the world's key scientific publishing houses would have been bad for everyone. A note was sent informally by an editor acting on his own initiative (and not representing the Foundation in any official capacity) to the head of the organization. An appalled reply came back within 24 hours and the problem stopped then and there other than the Wikipedia editor subsequently got a long apology from the staffer involved and the head of the organization also followed up a second time. Wikipedia got to keep all those useful references.
I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing here.
If you decide to blacklist all those sites, be sure to disable the links before blacklisting, otherwise you'll have perhaps a hundred articles locked up with frustrated editors everywhere wanting to know why. Also stand by for a lot of white-list requests. --A. B. (talk) 02:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Lets try that first, as I don't know much about it I will leave calling up the company to someone else. Lets try this before you all request this on meta. —— Eagle101 Need help? 03:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I will work on this over the next week. --A. B. (talk) 15:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

As a somewhat tengential aside, can someone take a look at an editorial question involving the Penton article and give us your advice on the article talk page:

I'm not keen to get in an edit war over interpretations of WP:SELF but I do want to make sure we're not headed down the wrong path. Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 15:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Stepping through all the edits of each account listed above, this may be the biggest and ugliest spamming problem we've had in many months. If we get spam from a big publisher, it's usually just from one or two misguided, gung-ho staffers, but that's not so in this case, where it looks like many people were involved. That this company's publications are valuable, reliable sources further complicates matters (I read a couple of their magazines myself).
Whether we blacklist all these sites or contact senior Penton management, there may be considerable discussion both inside Wikipedia (if blacklisted, lots of whitelist requests) and outside. I expect the Foundation will get some contacts triggering the OTRS process. I wonder if it would be constructive to give someone there a heads up? If so, who and how? If nothing else, should someone at least post something at WP:AN or WP:ANI? Not many Wikipedians track discussions here. --A. B. (talk) 03:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I found Femto's list of Prism Media domains with linksearch to be a valuable tool that allowed me to uncover a couple of throw-a-way Prism accounts. So in a variation of the same theme I did some collecting and created a list of Penton Media domains. Most of these domains came directly from the Penton home page but some came from other sources. The following domains are all owned by "Penton Media, Inc.":

Note that Prism Media and Penton Media are the same company. So far most of the Wikipedia link spamming is coming from the Prism side but I've only just begun investigating the Penton domains. All the low hanging fruit has been picked but I believe some deeply hidden Penton link spam is waiting to be found. This is a monster of a task that will take time, I'll keep you posted. (Requestion 00:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC))

39 domains, 80 accounts, 68 articles

Partial list of links spammed (39):

  • 40weekspregnancystages.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • aboutbodybuilding.net
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • about-credit-card.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Domain inactive?
  • about-credit-report.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • acneskincareinfo.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 5358351038710773
  • air-purifier-and-filter.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • all-soccer-info.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • asbestos-mesothelioma-cancer-info.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • atkindietplan.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • atkins-diet.cc
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7505437796731158
  • the-atkins-diet.info
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0540338099227977
  • benefit-green-tea.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0024659945364026
  • breast-augmentation-and-enlargement.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 5358351038710773
  • breast-augmentation-implants.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • cabbage-soup-diet-plan.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • carpetsearch.org
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • cell-phone-blog.net
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 5358351038710773
  • credit-cards-n-debt.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7505437796731158 -- no ads displaying now but this site is referenced by atkins-diet.cc[71]
  • diabetes-diabetic-diet.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • dietpills-information.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0540338099227977
  • digital-camera-technology.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • dsl-broadband-isp.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 5358351038710773
  • dsl-link.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • edi-guide.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • fitness-health-plan.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • grapefruit-diet.org
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0540338099227977
  • hdtv-lcd-plasma.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 5358351038710773
  • lasiklasereyesurgeries.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • lasik-surgery-info.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 5358351038710773
  • lowcarb.ca
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 4035311058407784
  • satellite-service-providers.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0540338099227977
  • skincaresinformation.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • south-beach-diet-information.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0540338099227977
  • southbeachdietprogram.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • tech-guide.org
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • teleconferencing-technology.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • the-atkins-diet.info
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 0540338099227977
  • vpn-info.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993
  • zonedietinformation.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense: 7439893174659993

Who knows how many additional domains are out there that we don't know about.

Partial list of accounts spamming one or more of these links (80):

Almost all of these IP addresses were used for one session only and are dynamically assigned addresses in Malaysia.

Partial list of articles spammed with one or more of these links (68):

--A. B. (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Updated with additional data. --A. B. (talk) 19:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Adsense pub-7439893174659993--Hu12 00:15, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
If at any time you guys feel this mess needs blacklisted, put up a short descriptive summary of this on the meta blacklist. Cheers! —— Eagle101 Need help? 00:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I will request blacklisting. --A. B. (talk) 20:04, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

flgnews.com

Kosharitv (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) – This user has been continually adding links to his own webcast/blog site, flgnews.com, to the Media section of the Flagstaff, Arizona article. He has been warned once on his talk page by Nebular110, and twice by myself. I expect further reverts by him as he continues to use Wikipedia to promote his site. Dr. Cash 20:09, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


On the basis of one edit per several weeks only an indef block would do much good. I guess we could do this but it may be simpler to leave the account so you can see these edits easily. --BozMo talk 21:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

indianfootball.com spam is back

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2007 Archive Feb#"Suspicious spamming" (Indian soccer sites)

So much for last warnings; another German IP just added another indianfootball.com link to India national football team:[72]

  • www.indianfootball.com
    • Current list of pages with these links

His competitor, soccernetindia.com, has not added any more links:

This site needs blacklisting but I don't have time today for that plus cleanup. --A. B. (talk) 21:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Two other sites www.iloveindia.com and www.indiaenews.com might need a quick look. I am leaving this note to remind myself if no one else does it. --BozMo talk 21:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

illuminatiarchives.org

Adsense pub-7802864225094823
illuminatiarchives.org

Adsense pub-7802864225094823
opioq.com

Adsense pub-7802864225094823
manlyphall.org

Spam sock accounts

Aeqea (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Opioq (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
70.59.95.214 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
--Hu12 01:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

http://www.enotes.com/

I'm just confused by this one - not really sure if it is spam or not. Papaya07 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) appears to be alphabetically going through articles, copying and pasting text from the *.enotes.com site into articles. The user adds links to the site as a reference and the links do check out (in terms of providing seemingly reliable information without a lot of ads) - although users are encouraged to buy a pass so they can see even more content. Maybe this is better posted in the external links forum, but I was hoping for a second opinion here. The additions are substantive (although at the moment, most are copyvios - this could be remedied with an easy rewrite) but the linkspam aspect gives me the willies. Nposs 02:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Tricky one isn't it. I agree with you copyvio needs fixing. I have tried several content checks and am pretty sure enotes is an original content site. It is corporate/educational, but does not seem to give references for its own content. The ones I know about (science) are reasonable quality but simplistic aimed at say a 12 year old. My gut feel is that if the additions are worthwhile just about counts as a secondary source. So, not quite spam but COI and EL needs to be thought through I guess. --BozMo talk 09:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
A little digging uncovers a little weirdness. All of the links to enotes.com point to the /how-products.../ subdomain. The material from this section of the website is actually all derived from "How products are made" by the Gale Group. This material has been published online in other versions ([73] and [74]), but it remains for sale on the company website. So the content isn't original to enotes (although you have to click the citation button to get the reference to Gale), but the content does appear to be reputable. The user did copy-and-paste content into WP in every article edited, but some are just EL. There 300+ entries in the "How products ..." source - it could be that the user is going to try to link every one. Nposs 14:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

writing-business-letters.com

Adsense pub-0474092677826427
writing-business-letters.com

Spam sock accounts

Daxcheng (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
199.40.204.246 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
--Hu12 03:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Adfunk spam on Wikipedia

Accounts known to have added these links (6):

The IP addresses are dynamically assigned and were only used for one session. I came across the Adfunk spam while researching other spam received from this very large IP range (see the section above, "39 domains, 80 accounts, 68 articles").

Link added to one or more articles (10):

  • adfunk.blog-city.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • f1rezone.tblog.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • fiucer.blogsome.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.wtslink.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • mylink.tblog.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • tech2.blogsome.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • yellowpages1.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • health1011.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense ID# 0812458323009305
  • ekhye.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • internumber.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links

Affiliated sites (11):

From http:// tech.shoutpost.com/525/pr6-article-posting-for-sale-on-high-pr-traffic-blog:

"Sales representative:"
"Mas Dini Bin Muzammal"
"YM:Abg_hensem1 at yahoo.com"
"Gtalk: Adfunk"
"MSN: reckno6 at hotmail.com"
"Email: adfunk at gmail.com"
"Phone: 60136679137"
"URL: http:// www.prdeal.com"

Except as noted, if a site carries Google ads, the Adsense ID is 1379315801959297

Articles known to have been spammed with one or more of these links (47):

--A. B. (talk) 14:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Y Done - I blacklisted the sites that have been actively spammed. —— Eagle101 Need help? 17:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


Heres two

Tom Hillstrom (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
K. Korotkov (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Unrelated, don't have the time @ the moment--Hu12 16:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Cleaned up most of Korotkov's links and left various messages for him. He has started an article about himself. I cannot really work out what a proper para-thingy is and therefore whether he counts, so I am just watching it for now. --BozMo talk 19:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Netbizsolutions.com spam on Wikipedia using punctuation

The non-sequiturial punctuater.

Found while tracking down the unrelated "39 domains, 80 accounts, 68 articles" batch (see the section above).

Domains known to have been spammed to Wikipedia (6):

  • www.affiliatedirectorysite.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.furniture-asian.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.netbizasia.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.netbizsolutions.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • sixco.ws (similar to tinyurl.com)
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.templatesnew.com
    • Current list of pages with these links

Affiliated domains (5):

Frequently, links were added as punctuation. Example:

  • Frequently [http://www.netbizasia.com ,] they were added as punctuation[http://www.netbizsolutions.com .]

Sneaky, huhh?

The links added had absolutely nothing to do with the article topic in many cases -- total non-sequiturs.

Adsense ID# 2007465121373386

Somewhat out of character, the same spammer added what appears to be a relevant link to this domain within a minute of adding spam to the same Tim Kent dab page:[75][76]

  • http://www.timkent.co.uk
    • Current list of pages with this link
      • I wonder what his angle was since the link doesn't appear spammy (even if added in the wrong place).

Accounts known to have spammed one or more of these links (15):

Articles known to have been spammed with one or more of these links (38):

--A. B. (talk) 16:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This guy is like our amazon.de spammer who dropped the link onto periods in stub templates. Cheeky move it is! JoeSmack Talk 16:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
And now its on the blacklist. (only those that were actively spammed) —— Eagle101 Need help? 17:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

SEO to watch

Papakonstantinou (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
User page states he's a search engine optimizer and web directory consultant. already created Shipping directory. Previous history bellow.

Spam sock accounts

Papakonstantinou (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Strengwood42 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Marhor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
89.210.8.5 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
89.210.56.140 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • &submit=Resolve RDNS • trace • .html RBLs • / http • block user • block log)
associated with the following.

dailymaritime.com

daily-maritime.com

livemaritime.com

live-maritime.com

maritimenewsletter.com

maritime-newsletter.com

shippingnewsletter.com

shipping-newsletter.com
--Hu12 12:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

This is continuing from the earlier sockfest Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Dec#Spam only accounts. Both dailymaritime.com and the previous virtualmaritime.com are registered to Tassos Papakonstantinou. [82][83] With the exception of the master account User:Papakonstantinou, I fully endorse blocking any accounts on sight (don't hesitate checking account creation blocked, and IP autoblock enabled if the edits are recent). Femto 13:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

squidoo.com (2nd)

squidoo.com

Spam sock accounts

216.59.226.21 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
59.100.20.95 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
216.59.254.218 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
67.173.75.59 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
124.187.189.76 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
216.59.255.160 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
216.59.231.214 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
216.59.253.160 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
H3athrow (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Meganjcasey (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
--Hu12 00:24, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

mmm, I thought I saw that somewhere... Needless to say, someone needs to take this to the meta blacklist (m:Spam blacklist). —— Eagle101 Need help? 02:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh! thats why, it was just up in another section... for ease of navigating I'm changing the title to squidoo.com (2nd), so that any links, will go to this section. —— Eagle101 Need help? 02:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

aussiephonebrokers.com.au bandwidthseek.net

[84]

Spam sock accounts

Sudsymate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Worldcreator1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
11.28.75.25 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
Articles created; Aussie Phone Brokers [85] aussiephonebrokers.com.au

Spam sock accounts

Local_host1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
BandwidthSeek.Net (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
T1agent (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
--Hu12 03:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

catholic-hierarchy.org

Apologies if this has been raised previously, but could some give an opinion on 1300 odd links to catholic-hierarchy.org (has Google advertising). —Moondyne 07:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Anyone? —Moondyne 00:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I looked over various of these links and I guess I don't have a big problem with them with respect to spam. They are on-topic with respect to the article from which they are linked. (Contrast this with chabad.org discussed here earlier, which has been linked to numerous articles of tangential relationship to the topic.) From an WP:EL standpoint, there is some room for improvement. It would be better to have something like "X at Catholic hierarchy" rather than just "Catholic hierarchy" as the link text, so as not to highlight the site itself so much. It would be better if the site listed its sources on each page, rather than one or two clicks away and then leaving us guessing which source was used. It is clearly the project of one individual, which raises a reliability question (but the work appears solid and indication of the sources is a plus). The information is typically brief and in the long run the same material could easily be incorporated into the Wikipedia article, leaving no reason for the link. So, even though I have some minor issues with the site, my advice is that it is more helpful than harmful and I wouldn't make an issue of it. I didn't check to see who is adding the links, but in this case I would not be concerned even if it was the site owner. My two cents. ✤ JonHarder talk 01:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Jon. —Moondyne 14:10, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Adfunk spam on Wikipedia

Accounts known to have added these links (6):

The IP addresses are dynamically assigned and were only used for one session. I came across the Adfunk spam while researching other spam received from this very large IP range (see the section above, "39 domains, 80 accounts, 68 articles").

Link added to one or more articles (10):

  • adfunk.blog-city.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • f1rezone.tblog.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • fiucer.blogsome.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.wtslink.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • mylink.tblog.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • tech2.blogsome.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • yellowpages1.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • health1011.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
      • Adsense ID# 0812458323009305
  • ekhye.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • internumber.blogspot.com
    • Current list of pages with these links

Affiliated sites (11):

From http:// tech.shoutpost.com/525/pr6-article-posting-for-sale-on-high-pr-traffic-blog:

"Sales representative:"
"Mas Dini Bin Muzammal"
"YM:Abg_hensem1 at yahoo.com"
"Gtalk: Adfunk"
"MSN: reckno6 at hotmail.com"
"Email: adfunk at gmail.com"
"Phone: 60136679137"
"URL: http:// www.prdeal.com"

Except as noted, if a site carries Google ads, the Adsense ID is 1379315801959297

Articles known to have been spammed with one or more of these links (47):

--A. B. (talk) 14:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Y Done - I blacklisted the sites that have been actively spammed. —— Eagle101 Need help? 17:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


Heres two

Tom Hillstrom (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
K. Korotkov (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Unrelated, don't have the time @ the moment--Hu12 16:05, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Cleaned up most of Korotkov's links and left various messages for him. He has started an article about himself. I cannot really work out what a proper para-thingy is and therefore whether he counts, so I am just watching it for now. --BozMo talk 19:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Netbizsolutions.com spam on Wikipedia using punctuation

The non-sequiturial punctuater.

Found while tracking down the unrelated "39 domains, 80 accounts, 68 articles" batch (see the section above).

Domains known to have been spammed to Wikipedia (6):

  • www.affiliatedirectorysite.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.furniture-asian.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.netbizasia.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.netbizsolutions.com
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • sixco.ws (similar to tinyurl.com)
    • Current list of pages with these links
  • www.templatesnew.com
    • Current list of pages with these links

Affiliated domains (5):

Frequently, links were added as punctuation. Example:

  • Frequently [http://www.netbizasia.com ,] they were added as punctuation[http://www.netbizsolutions.com .]

Sneaky, huhh?

The links added had absolutely nothing to do with the article topic in many cases -- total non-sequiturs.

Adsense ID# 2007465121373386

Somewhat out of character, the same spammer added what appears to be a relevant link to this domain within a minute of adding spam to the same Tim Kent dab page:[86][87]

  • http://www.timkent.co.uk
    • Current list of pages with this link
      • I wonder what his angle was since the link doesn't appear spammy (even if added in the wrong place).

Accounts known to have spammed one or more of these links (15):

Articles known to have been spammed with one or more of these links (38):

--A. B. (talk) 16:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This guy is like our amazon.de spammer who dropped the link onto periods in stub templates. Cheeky move it is! JoeSmack Talk 16:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
And now its on the blacklist. (only those that were actively spammed) —— Eagle101 Need help? 17:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

SEO to watch

Papakonstantinou (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
User page states he's a search engine optimizer and web directory consultant. already created Shipping directory. Previous history bellow.

Spam sock accounts

Papakonstantinou (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Strengwood42 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Marhor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
89.210.8.5 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
89.210.56.140 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • &submit=Resolve RDNS • trace • .html RBLs • / http • block user • block log)
associated with the following.

dailymaritime.com

daily-maritime.com

livemaritime.com

live-maritime.com

maritimenewsletter.com

maritime-newsletter.com

shippingnewsletter.com

shipping-newsletter.com
--Hu12 12:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

This is continuing from the earlier sockfest Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Dec#Spam only accounts. Both dailymaritime.com and the previous virtualmaritime.com are registered to Tassos Papakonstantinou. [93][94] With the exception of the master account User:Papakonstantinou, I fully endorse blocking any accounts on sight (don't hesitate checking account creation blocked, and IP autoblock enabled if the edits are recent). Femto 13:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


aussiephonebrokers.com.au bandwidthseek.net

[95]

Spam sock accounts

Sudsymate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
Worldcreator1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
11.28.75.25 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • WHOIS • RDNS • trace • RBLs • http • block user • block log)
Articles created; Aussie Phone Brokers [96] aussiephonebrokers.com.au

Spam sock accounts

Local_host1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
BandwidthSeek.Net (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
T1agent (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)
--Hu12 03:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Slobot

On the Spartanburg, South Carolina page, User:Friday identified a link to "Slobot" as a vanity link and I concur. Furthermore, though the link is clever, I don't see it as encyclopedic. However, it's been reinserted several times by User:Darklight1138, and a couple of anon editors, and by User:Uterinefury - one of only two edits by the latter user, so I suspect a sockpuppet.

Darklight1138 has placed some strong comments on my own page and also on his/her own talk page. Rather than take any action myself (which could get personal), I'd rather have some other admins look at it. Thanks Pollinator 02:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC)