Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Oct

topege.com spam[edit]

Someone's spamming blocks of text into random articles, as shown here and here. This looks like a good candidate site for blacklisting. Thoughts? — Saxifrage ✎ 21:03, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

84.10.253.138 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) is a cello.pl IP (Poland), and 24.255.110.156 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) looks like a residental Cox Cable address. Both additions look like the work of bots. I'd say it's a good candidate for blacklisting. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's about as un-subtle as it gets. The domain itself is hosted on bulk servers and the contact is the 'set corp' in Russia; it's also only a few days old. Destined for the black hole. Kuru ^talk 22:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm actually unfamiliar about how sites get into the blacklist, which was the second reason I brought this up here. Can anyone enlighten me? — Saxifrage ✎ 22:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Propose its inclusion at the sitewide blacklist talk page. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've come across the "unknown" spambot a fair few times this last week - it switches IPs regularly and the links it's spamming... /wangi 22:34, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive138#New spambot. Thanks/wangi 22:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, its part of a large network of zombie computers which, among other things, spam wikis. I bet in their spare time the zombies also spam in general, and are probably on some IRC network somewhere waiting for their next instruction. Kevin_b_er 04:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

eyeorbit.org[edit]

Can someone look at the contributions of William charles caccamise sr, md (talk · contribs)? He is a new incarnation of Wccaccamise (talk · contribs). The only contributions of both are the addition of external links to his own writings at eyeorbit.org. The content appears to me to be more informational and commercial, but I don't know enough about the subject to determine whether they are actually useful or not. Either way it certainly violates Wikipedia:External links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided #3. Deli nk 15:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reeks of spam. He's even attributing each link with his name. If I were to guess at motives, I'd say the purpose is to increase name-recognition as well as drive traffic. — Saxifrage ✎ 16:57, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of the eyeorbit external links was to provide pertinent photographs concerning certain eye diseases - diseases that due to improved public health conditions are now extant primarily in developing countries. Unfortunately, the URLs all too often downloaded an eye atlas search form rather than the photographs themselves. This created the unintended and undesirable need to complete the search form in order to download each photograph. As a result, no additional photographs will be submitted. Thank you for the availability of Wikipedia - and for its keenly analytical editorial remarks. November 22, 2006 (WCC)

Rating external links[edit]

Since it's not always easy to decide which links to remove, I was wondering if some sort of rating system might help. Wikia is going to introduce an article rating system, which could be adapted to rate specific parts of a page (such as an external link). There's a non-working demo at Scratchpad:Economics. Do you think this could be useful either in Wikipedia itself, or on a separate site as a resource for Wikipedians? I know voting is evil, but if the spam situation gets out of hand, it may be a more scalable solution than making judgements about each link yourself. Angela . 13:27, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't actually think that the spam problem is anywhere near getting out of hand—the automated spammers get caught by bot and blacklist, and the personal ones have the disadvantage, not us, in terms of numbers and time spent at Wikipedia. Apart from that, a rating system would probably encourage us to pay less attention to the content of external links rather than more. My intuition says it wouldn't be effective and might even be detrimental. — Saxifrage ✎ 16:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I take a somewhat grimmer view of spam (I think it's only likely to get worse), but a rating system might encourage efforts to "game the system". This is a pretty well known problem with moderation systems on web forums; given an incentive, people will find a way to manipulate the system using multiple accounts and "give me a good rating and I'll return the favor" type schemes. Even honest, trusted users are susceptible to groupthink, since it's a lot easier to mindlessly rate something than to give a coherent argument for or against it. Those are just my initial impressions; I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, and it might be useful in some circumstances. ―Wmahan . 17:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

G11 discussions[edit]

There's a new speedy deletion criteria out there. Its called G11, and as of right now its worded as "Blatant advertising. Pages which only promote a company, product, group or service and which would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic." See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-10-02/More_CSD. We should chime in on this. After all, we're about dealing with spam. There's some arguements on the talk page of WP:CSD about the wording and usage of it. Many admins have deleted pages as 'spam' in the past, so this is pretty much a formalization of it. It does have some conflicts in terms of wording though. Hopefully if this is your first exposure to this new speedy deletion category, I haven't tainted your opinion to my particular POV. :) Try to keep in mind that if you're a member of our nice little project, you are likely to be biased in favor of this criteria in some form or another. --Kevin_b_er 20:20, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When useful sites spam Wikipedia[edit]

I'd be interested in opinions on what to do when useful sites admit to spamming Wikipedia. Do you leave the links in because they're actually useful to readers or remove them as spam? The author of "Developing link-bait using Wikipedia" added two links to his site in Cascading Style Sheets. I was tempted to remove them, but they may be relevant there. Angela . 05:18, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A link should only be left in if there is consensus from independent editors. (That a spamlink managed to remain for some time without being removed doesn't automatically validate it). Otherwise WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided point 3 still applies. Femto 10:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spam needs to be removed whenever and wherever it is found. See the recent call-to-arms here: [1]. I've removed the link mentioned above, and also tracked a couple other links from related articles and comments made to those articles, and removed the links from those admitting to spamming WP. --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 13:16, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have to disagree firmly with you here. Many, many, many people have found this site useful. The fact that the owner added it himself should not be a reason for removing it. The fact that others call it spam shouldn't be either. The link should be judged by it's merits, and the site that it went through is one of the best online resources on CSS3.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.174.116.232 (talk • contribs)

It should be noted that the author of "Developing link bait 2: using Wikipedia" has updated the blog article to note that "The guys over at Wikipedia seem to have read this blogpost and are discussing it here" (the "here" being a link to this page and section). We're likely to get a non-zero number of people coming here through that to defend him, whether he wants them to or not. I suggest that we ignore IPs and single purpose accounts that suddenly pipe up here. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:55, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't need others to defend me, i can perfectly do that myself :). The point still stands, allthough i have to admit that you could get the wrong feeling from the quote in my article, that this link is VERY valid on this page. jdevalk

Granted that you don't, but if we see a bunch of IPs and new accounts join the discussion, it's good to know where they're coming from. Since Wikipedia's based on consensus and note "votes", we try to illuminate unbalancing or uninformed elements in the discussion.

The point is that Wikipedia is a public resource that should not be exploited by a few tech-savvy content creators. As Wikipedia grows and becomes even higher-profile than it already is, people will try to exploit it more. That you're writing a tutorial on how to do this is not very appreciated since it contributes to the lessening of Wikipedia's quality in the long run. You're making our job harder for personal gain. If you have to engineer your link into the article, that's actually an indication that it does not belong: if it needs help, it's not nearly so valuable as it's being made out to be, is it? — Saxifrage ✎ 20:45, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry that i'm making your job harder, that was never the intention of my article. And i honestly suggest that you check out my site, which was removed from the external links / demonstrations part of the page, and compare it to some of the other sites that are still there. I'm not just getting punished for talking about it, you're punishing the users by not showing them this great resource for CSS Level 3. I honestly feel that you should review the other links, and review my site, and consider if it should be there. If you then think it would mae a nice addition, add it, if you think it doesn't fit in, leave it out. But be fair, and judge the other sites in that list by the same rules. jdevalk

Having links at all is actually a pretty low priority at Wikipedia, since (non-reference) links don't really have anything to do with having a quality encyclopedia. Wikipedia is also not a Google replacement, so the argument that it should be there for the users holds no water. A link, ideally, is only included when it offers something that could never be in the encyclopedia itself, and really, the features of CSS3 will be in the encyclopedia one day, when the spec is stable. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Though i appreciate the point you are trying to make, you're avoiding my question of judging my site by the same rules as the other external links on that page. And you're also giving the perfect reason for including the link: one day, Wikipedia will have all this content, and once you do, i expect you to remove the link. At this point in time however, it does not include that info, so a link to a site that does, could be considered a quality improvement of the page. jdevalk

If any article contains any inappropriate links, those need to be removed as well. Just because one inappropriate link exists doesn't provide justification for keeping/adding other inappropriate links. Note that when I removed the link on Cascading Style Sheets, I also added the {{cleanup-spam}} tag. The article needs its other links trimmed down quite a bit as well.

The guidelines are quite clear on the addition of websites that you own or maintain: do not add them, plain and simple. --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 13:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you provide me a link to those guidelines? I won't add the site again, i just want to write a blogpost about this whole experience, telling people what can and what can't and shouldn't be done. I honestly didn't feel like i was spamming when i added my own page. jdevalk

Sure: WP:EL and WP:SPAM (particularly the section titled "How not to be a spammer"). Not to belabor the point, but if you didn't feel like you were spamming, why did you refer to the quote from Graywolf, who said "You could sit around pondering the woes of being called a spammer, while all of the other bleeding edge marketers are out there adding links and building pages. No one ever becomes a leader worrying about what others think of them ;-)."? --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 13:03, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because i think that adding a link to your own site, if appropriate, isn't spamming, no matter what other people call you. --Jdevalk 14:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Think what you want. If someone ignores the neutrality policy and unilaterally decides their own site is appropriate to add, they're spamming. Femto 18:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've found out that that is your understanding yeah :). Nevermind, I won't add it back, it's been a cute learning experience :) --Jdevalk 04:52, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a link to an article specifically to drive up their search engine rank, even if they think it's a good and relevant link, is the very definition of spamming. If someone is deliberately spamming, I would argue that such underhanded tactics undermines the reliablility of their content and we should be very leery of it. Deliberate abuse of Wikipedia like this deserves to be smacked down with prejudice, possibly blacklisted. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:08, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chabad.org[edit]

Unless the links being added are to Chabad.org. They can have hundreds and hundreds of links, and can revert war to keep them. They're special. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.163.101.12 (talk • contribs) .

Since this sub-topic has blown into a full-fledged Chabad discussion, I have broken it off as a subsection for clarity; it started with the comment above which was was part of the master thread --A. B. 17:11, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chabad.org has been discussed numerous times on the spam blacklist and on the admin noticeboards and consensus in all cases was that there is no problem with having the links to that site. Please do not disrupt wikipedia to make a point. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 02:40, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can you point us toward those discussions with some links? It looks like we're getting into reinventing the wheel here; if this topic has already been seriously examined, probed, discussed and flogged, we should probably look at that material. --A. B. 17:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Orginally posted on the spam blacklist by an anon who was upset that his fisheaters site was blacklisted. [2]. The Second time it came up, [3] (Also see [4]), the third time it came up was [5]. In further email discussion with JzG, it was agreed that a compromise would be to have the chabad.org linked to the wiki article and that they be marked as coming from chabad.org in additon to the description just saying the general Jewish. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 17:21, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chabad.org presently has 762 outward links to it from Wikipedia —The preceding unsigned comment was added by A. B. (talk • contribs) .

I did not mean to start a battle over chabad.org. While I am a regular participant on this page, this time I actually came to the chabad.org issue while stepping through 152.163.101.12's "contributions" one-by-one, reversing vandalism. Given that user's track record, his/her edit above immediately flagged me to check out chabad.org's links. I was startled to see 762 links, but I did not necessarily see them as spammy -- just worthy of someone more knowledgeable of the topic (and with more time than I have) spot-checking a few of them. --A. B. 17:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to the current Wikipedia:External links, those Chabad.org links that point to search results (those links that have search/keyword in their URL can be removed. Whenever I have time I will begin purging them, as they are obviously spamming Wikipedia. External links that point to a determined article should either become references or be removed. -- ReyBrujo 03:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They are not spamming Wikipedia, and those that have search/keyword in their url is due to the way they list collections of articles related to a subject in the Jewish Knowledge base, and they are not search results. You can verify this by navigating to them main page from their homepage and then going to any subject and looking at the url. I have added most of the links and they all fit the policies of WP:EL. If he is the same anon that complained about the links the first few times, he is just upset that his links to fisheaters wer banned from wikipedia under the spam blacklist and is using this site to disrupt wikipedia to make a point.

If you have any problems with a particular article or link please let me know and I will be glad to help you understand how it belongs there, as this has been discussed numerous times, and consensus was each time that they should remain. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 13:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, when searching for consensus, you usually need to give up something in order to obtain something else. Giving up the search/keyword links would be a good way of demonstrating you are not holding a unmodifiable position, and that are willing to work towards consensus by giving up something in order to keep others happy. I picked one of the search/keyword links, www.chabad.org/search/keyword.asp?kid=1284. It is a link to a search result about The Golden Calf which is being linked from Golden calf. Why you are linking to the search result instead of linking to www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=246635, which is an article about The Golden Calf? Again, hopefully you will at least agree in either pointing to a more exact reference instead of the search results (or "subcategories", as they are called in the site), or removing them. By the way, I will be replacing all the generic www.chabad.org links to Chabad.org; when you add an external link, it is custom to use the format * [http://www.site.com/dir/page Page] at [[Site]], however, when there is no article about Site, you just put it italiced, not add another external link to Site as in * [http://www.site.com/dir/page Page] at [http://www.site.com Site], because that only increases the link count which becomes misleading. -- ReyBrujo 16:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The link to the category of Golden Calf on chabad.org contains a collection of articles on the golden calf. Linking to just one of the articles would be less helpfull than linking to the collection of articles on the same site. In regards to the generic at chabad.org links, they should probably be unlinked or linked to the chabad.org wikipedia article. In regards to keeping others happy, the anon that wa s posting above, won't be happy until his site fisheaters is removed from the blacklist. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 16:43, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, everyone needs to give up something. The anonymous should understand that, if there is consensus by the community, the links can stay. Hopefully, you will be open to consider removing them if, someday, consensus determines they should be removed. -- ReyBrujo 16:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have cleaned some of the generic chabad.org links. Now there are 712 ones. I also did some minor fixes to articles layout, and added a bunch of external links warnings. Currently Category:Wikipedia external links cleanup holds 181 articles, so I suggest to begin cleaning external links from them. I only tag the articles I whose topic I don't know in detail (and thus would not be able to accurately judge external links), but if the backlog continues to grow, I will begin cleaning them all with my own judgement (which, I assure you, will be controversial :-)). -- ReyBrujo 17:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help in clearing the generic links, I had been meaning to do this for a while, and I had also agreed to do it in the past when this subject had come up, however I just never got around to it...But now that it's done, it's good. A side point, many of the links are just linking from the 301 redirect page as chabad.org seems to use 301 redirects. Not counting those links would reduce it by over 100. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 18:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You kind of were lucky, as I have been cleaning these generic external links since yesterday (already cleaned neshq.com, insomnia.ac and arcade-history.com, now going for meanmachinesmag.co.uk and anime-games.co.uk). I have a lot of stuff to do today (editor reviews, fixing articles in Category:Needs album infobox conversion, etc), otherwise I would check those redirects as well. -- ReyBrujo 18:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pinchas's idea of a link. One is not enough, and on an irrelevant page at that: Waldorf Salad Chabad=spammers.

I normally view contributions from anonymous, 1-edit users with skepticism, but I see that, in fact, Pinchas really did add a link from the Waldorf salad article to a Chabad recipe page. At the time, this was the only external link from that article. Not only that, but the link was written as: "Kosher Waldorf salad recipe at chabad.org" -- why the "at chabad.org"? The fact that it's a kosher recipe seems an insufficient reason.

I was sympathetic to Pinchas' arguments, but now I'm not so sure about his motives or about the necessity for all these chabad.org links. This linking looks like ~~very spammy~~ overreaching to me. --A. B. 16:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The extra link waas added before wikipedia had a page for chabad.org. I agree with you that it was a mistake and it looks spammy and I fully support the purge of them by ReyBrujo before and I was going to do it myself, however I just never got around to it. I was less atune to what was considered spammy at that time. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 21:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone through the list of other Chabad-linked articles and removed links from Sago Mine disaster (??), Psychoanalysis, Jesica Santillan, Time,and Prayer in Christianity. The other Wikipedia articles with chabad.org links all appear related to Israel, Judaism or general theology (oh, and rhubarb pie -- a recipe link added by the original author). --A. B. 22:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sago Mine disaster [6]

The link I added was commentary on what happened. However based on the current links there, it does not fit it. Maybe there should be a religious commentary subsection.

Psychoanalysis [7]

As there are multiple points of view on Psychoanalysis, a Jewish perspective should be included.

Jesica Santillan [8]

Jesica Santillan died and this made her notable as she died from receiving the wrong blood type. The article I added discusses the ethical dimensions of what happened.

Time [9]

Time is a philosophical concept and the link I added was to a view from Menachem Mendel Schneerson who's a major modern Jewish philosopher.

Prayer in Christianity added by someone else

Agree with removal. Not relevant as it is referring to Prayer in another religion other than Judaism.

--PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 22:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting list but don't you see a problem with your arguments? Essentially, you are saying: a link to the Jewish perspective is a plus for this subject and chabad.org has the Jewish perspective. I think both assertions are questionnable: first of all, unless there is a specific importance to the Jewish perspective on a given subject then this is not a point of view of general interest. The second issue I have is that there's no indication that chabad.org represents the Jewish perspective. Actually even the term "Jewish perspective" is misleading since in most cases this is not uniquely defined: we're really talking about "a perspective by a Jewish person". Pascal.Tesson 22:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While no Jewish view can really claim to be the Jewish perspecive as there are multiple perspecives in Judaism, the chabad perspective given its size nowdays is a notable perspective. And a perspective by Menachem Mendel Schneerson would fairly reresent chabad. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 22:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think many people would see a link between the death of a Mexican immigrant in the U.S. and a Hasidic religious leader. There's no indication that Ms. Santillan, her family or her doctors ever had anything to do with Hasidism. Ditto the Sago Mine Disaster.

I am sure that many of the world's religions have views on psychoanalysis; for instance, here's a link to a New York Times article about Pope John Paul II, the Roman Catholic Church and psychoanalysis. Yet we don't link our psychoanalysis article to the Vatican's site; furthermore, if we wanted to make some Catholicism-psychoanalysis connection, we'd probably prefer to link to an article in a third party, NPOV publication such as the NY Times. I could make a similar argument about Time.

No offense, but to me, these links are just inappropriate, genially POV-pushing and way off-topic even if they have been made in good (even the very best) faith.

I may be wrong, however (I so often am). So I suggest that you raise the question of each of these links on the articles' talk pages and see what the other editors think. --A. B. 00:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts exactly: it should be said again that chabad.org is inherently militant. While their database certainly contains a number of quality articles which may be of value as sources on specific topics, the overall volume of links indicates a willingness to establish a strong web presence and it should be regarded with some skepticism, especially in articles that have nothing to do with Judaism. Let's remember about due weight and neutral point of view here. Pascal.Tesson 02:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A. B. brings some good points above that the psychoanalysis and time articles do not have any religous views and therefore should not just have a Jewish view. I have raised the question on the time page Talk:Time#Religous_views_on_time and on the psychoanalysis page Talk:Psychoanalysis#Views_of_religions_on_Psychoanalysis. I will leave it off the discussion page and article of Sago Mine Disaster and Jesica Santillan for now until I receive more feedback from the time and psychoanalysis pages.

Regarding the comments by Pascal.Tesson above, I am wondering why Pascal.Tesson thinks that chabad.org is militant, unless there is something I did not see when going to the site, there is nothing militant about that site. During the latest crisis in Israel chabad.org was anything but that, instead it was encouraging people to do good deeds as a spirtual way to help solve it.

I am also very puzzled by the removal of a group of links on the Hanukkah page by Pascal.Tesson [10] as there has and always been very strong consensus for links to chabad.org on Jewish topics. However I did bring it up on the talk page there at Talk:Hanukkah#Removal_of_links and everyone including 3 admins are just as puzzeled by his remove and edit summary, with the editors describing the sites which included chabad.org as "relevant", "major internet resources for Jewish topics", "popular Jewish sites" "major ones", and "highly authoritative outlets of information on Judaism". --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 23:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is about disputing some specific links rather than discussing the overall profusion of links to chabad.org at Wikipedia, this particular change in direction of the conversation is outside the bounds of the spam project and is a matter of content dispute. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we have this Wikiproject? I don't think it's so much about content decisions within an article and its little informal community but rather this particular project deals particularly with widespread extraneous intrusions from outside Wikipedia. I can feel very comfortable removing chabad.org from some obvious places (like the Sago Mine Disaster) but I really believe that when it comes to more relevant articles (for instance on Judaism), it's up to their editors to decide. (If they come and complain about widespread spamming of Jewish-related articles, then maybe we should reconsider, but I'm just not seeing those complaints.) Live long and prosper, --A. B. 23:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It'd be nice if traditionalist Catholics were afforded the same courtesy.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.188.117.70 (talk • contribs) 07:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, removing links to rhubarb pie recipes at Chabad.org is a "violation of WP:EL" according to Pinchas: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rhubarb_pie&diff=prev&oldid=83705249 Fascinating.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.188.117.70 (talk • contribs) 04:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if removing the links violated WP:EL -- that assertion sounds like PinchasC's overreaching a little bit to me. However, I think he was quite correct to put that link back in. I started to delete the link as an off-topic chabad.org link but saw that it had been there almost from the start along with other external recipe links. So I left the link in. That recipe link was one of several inserted by one of Wikipedia's most prolific editors just after the article's creation. Throughout the edit wars (I'm not kidding) over whether rhubarb pies should or should not include strawberries when every word in this article was parsed by strawberry advocates and their rhubarb-only foes, this link was left in. I took that to represent implicit community consensus to keep the recipe. That's why I reverted my initial deletion of the link.

Besides, it's a rhubarb-only recipe and I'm a rhubarb-only partisan living with a strawberry-rhubarb pie-baker. If traditionalist Catholics have a good rhubarb pie recipe, send it to me. I can only imagine (hope) traditionalists would be rhubarb-only partisans. Some things are common to all the world's great cultures and religions after all. --A. B. 00:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well I'm the one who deleted the link and really I see no reason why it should remain. Wikipedia is not Google. If you want a good rhubarb pie recipe then Google rhubarb pie. If you want one without strawberries then add -strawberry to your search. If you want a Kosher recipe then add "kosher" to your search. Links to recipes are deleted almost always on grounds that they're of dubious interest and because we either have no links to any recipe or we have a hundred links to a hundred recipes. That should be the standard, whether or not we like stawberries. Pascal.Tesson 03:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that I saw myself deleting chabad links where they show up inappropriate and unwelcome intrusions into unrelated articles, not enforcing WP:EL everywhere and at all times. My goal as someone from this Wikiproject is to fight systematic link-spamming campaigns, not purify the pie articles. This link did not result from a spam campaign. As I see it, notwithstanding WP:OWN, each article has its own little community of editors and its own internal consensus (most of the time). I count 17 editors (besides ourselves and a vandal) that have contributed to the pie article. If they want to keep or get rid of the pie link, that's great. I did not feel it was my place, strawberries or not, to do so. If it really bothered me, I'd probably start by raising the point on the talk page first. --A. B. 04:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I've always been wary of WP:IAR. I've thought it a frequently misused crutch for a certain fuzzy thinking about policies and guidelines. I reckon I just used it myself by not expunging that pie link. --A. B. 04:03, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stephen Colbert[edit]

I'm a bit uneasy with editors adding back external links to fan sites on this page which were removed by other editors... Why? Well it's clear that those adding the links back (Nofactzone (talk · contribs), Snarkivist (talk · contribs)) are the folk who run the sites. While there has been previous discussion on the article talk page it seems rather minimal... Might be worth taking a look if somebody has a spare moment. Thanks/wangi 20:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Google and Wikipedia share a common interest in combatting link-spam[edit]

Google hates link-spammers trying to game their rankings and may go so far as to just drop spamming sites out of their rankings altogether. I think one way to chill link-spamming might be to identify our link-spammers to Google.

As an organization (if you can even call it that), Wikipedia is not set up to "work with" other organizations such as Google. However, there has to be some way to develop a page Google and others can use that will list offending links. The Foundation's blacklist might be a start.

Consider the spam-chilling power of a warning template that says, in bold:

"In addition to being banned, if you continue to add spam links to Wikipedia, your links may be published on our list of repeat offender spam links. This list is publicly accessible to search engines and is sometimes used by search engine operators to identify search engine spammers for deletion from their rankings. Wikipedia is not responsible for search engine actions; contact the search engine operator directly if you have any questions"

Listing links on such a list would have to be reserved for repeat offenders since much of our spam is done by semi-innocent folks that quit as soon as they first learn they've broken the rules.

If such a list is developed, only admins should be allowed to add to it.

Just a thought. --A. B. 20:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea a lot. Even if coordination with Google isn't achieved, publishing a repeat-offenders list would be a useful resource. Heck, if we maintain such a list and search engine managers come to see is as being reliable, they might adopt it as a blacklist source without even needing to explicitly coordinate with them from the beginning. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It may be that SpamAssassin might adopt it as well. The trick would be reliability; falsely blocking sites is not good. And if our list is automatically used by anybody for enforcement, then we reduce incentives for people to spam their own sites but increase incentive for people to spam sites of their enemies (see Joe job for more). William Pietri 21:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's very true, and I don't see a good way around that problem. Alas. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:25, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

William, you make a very good point about Joe jobs; I had not thought of that. However, I think this is still worth considering -- we just need to consider how to better screen for such things. One possibility is sending e-mails to the point of contact listed on the domain registration page starting with the second or third offense, warning of the possibility. Perhaps that combined with a 30-day delay in posting the name. At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if Google and Yahoo are already encountering some link-spammer Joe jobs; ultimately we're not responsible for preventing or stopping Joe jobs. We're responsible for protecting Wikipedia in a reasonably responsible manner. Joe, in turn, is ultimately responsible for protecting himself from Joe jobs. Also, we would just publish the list -- the search engines could decide for themselves what to do with the information. If they pull the plug, that's their decision, not ours. —the preceding comment is by A. B. - 23:20, 9 October 2006 UTC: Please sign your posts!

I recently had dinner with Larry Page. He introduced me to Matt Cutts, who is the guy in charge of all this stuff at Google. Believe me, they take this stuff very seriously and are very open to ideas in this area. They are smart, and they know what they are doing. I will mention this concept to Matt and Larry. I am quite sure they will be very happy to take advantage of the intelligence of the Wikipedia community to protect both Google and Wikipedia (and the rest of the net). --Jimbo Wales 00:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of publishing a list of URLs that have been deleted from Wikipedia articles because they constitute Web Spam. I think that list should be public (and not only shared with a specific company). IANAL but I also think it is legally safe to publish such list, given that the spammer, having contributed to the Wikipedia, agrees that his "contributions" (the spam URLs) are licensed under the GFDL --ChaTo 09:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Such a list wouldn't make any sense, since the first thing any blackhat SEO would do is add all his competitors in an overly spammy fashion, to make sure they are deleted and added to the list, to get them banned by whoever uses that list. --Jdevalk 15:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, the same could be said for any blacklist system, there are ways to deal with it. -- Stbalbach 15:44, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Such as? :) --Jdevalk 15:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What a fantastic way of increasing your page rating in Google! Why, all I would need to do was to spam all competitors onto Wikipedia, get them onto our blacklist and hey-presto, my corporate website appears at the top of the Google list. Good idea, but needs some thinking over I think. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. A lot. --Jdevalk 18:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I'm a little late to the party. I'm just finishing up a three-month struggle, ostensibly over a single link in a single article. It's obvious now that the link is going to ultimately be included in the article, but it's been a fight that's turned ugly at times, and has included a blacklisting of the website. I was on the "link belongs" side! Such an incident should never be allowed to spill over into Google, and cause a site's PageRank to reflect a huge "bad credit rating" from Wikipedia, just because there's a bitter editorial dispute going on. When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. And of course there's the obvious problem of inviting anti-link-spamming. I do think that Wikipedia is influential enough, with enough smart and dedicated volunteers that some totally new contribution to quality search is possible. This idea is a step in the right direction. I'm going to keep mulling on it. A few hours ago, I had four new ideas. They were high quality, but they turned out not to be so new. One of them was this actual idea. I'm glad I found the right spot, and will continue mulling on the possibilities. --Loqi T. 08:47, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It occurs to me that one way to address the major criticism of this idea is to encourage everyone on the Internet to maintain a similar "hall of shame" list of their own. So long as most of those little lists around the Internet are not sourced from the same place, the right search engine algorithm could reliably figure out the difference between anti-link-spam to Wikipedia, and pro-link-spam to everybody else. Once the idea takes off, it'd be next to impossible to get away with gaming it by spamming your competitors websites to a few big targets. Then there's the problem of spammers keeping a private baddies list of their competitors, but that's a problem for Matt Cutts and the other smarties at Google. --Loqi T. 13:43, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another thought is that other forms of spam (i.e. email) have long ago stopped using phone number and email addresses in their spam. They get their prey through web links in the spam messages. Personally, if I had a meaningful way to fight back on all the email spam I've been getting, by adding their web links to my personal baddies list, I'd almost welcome spam in my inbox. (Bring it on!) And there'd be at least two new branches of the industry created: "places to probably avoid spamming" for the black hats, and "websites that are probably tying to rip you off" for the white hats. Email client software could make the process convenient, by scanning my manually-filled junk mail bin for URLs, and adding them to my personal hall of shame, without any additional intervention from me. And then, a web browser can give somone else's grandma a bold warning when she starts to reply to the note from "her bank" that says they forgot her credit card number.

This idea is really fab! Google needs to recognize 'no votes' as well as 'yes votes'. And if their users get, not just the most likely finds at the top, but a seperate trustworthiness-type rating, the search would be more helpful. --Loqi T. 14:29, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Template Sharing[edit]

What is our policy of sharing our spam templates with other Wikis?

Not sure what you mean but since all content here is under WP:GFDL, nothing prevents anyone from copying the templates to other wikis with that license. Pascal.Tesson 18:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please Help!![edit]

Over at Talk:Flow cytometry I attempted to enter into a discussion about the content of the article, (after tagging it as Spam and an advert) this was a mistake. I am sure you guys can offer some non-biased opinions. Thanks!!--DO11.10 18:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did comment on the talk page but I have to say I have no definite opinion in this type of case. I do feel there is some value to keeping those links. I don't think the current guidelines really adress this kind of case. There is a distinct possibility that these ELs were added in good faith. Pascal.Tesson 18:59, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, entering these discussions always feels like a big mistake, at first. :) Looks like you've done some good and solid cleanup work. Femto 11:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know where to put this...[edit]

...but one of the most notorious accumulators of SPAMs are country pages, EG Hungary, Spain, Indonesia, etc etc. I don't know where this would be best noted on the "pages to watch" section, so I'll ask here. 68.39.174.238 05:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To the best of my knowledge, we don't currently have a "watchlist" of articles that are spammed frequently. Maybe we should start one. Any thoughts, folks? --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 18:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like a good idea. --A. B. 20:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

antoher i don't knwo where to report this search for "antiaging"and the external links. for Joseph_Knoll are full of spam? where should i report? :Leuk he 11:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

bindiirwin.com heads-up[edit]

moved from wp:spam

It appears that blocked sockpuppeteer and listspam vandal user:Universe Daily has handed over the bindiirwin.com domain to the Irwins [11]. The name has now been removed from the meta blacklist. -- I@n 03:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, there is some cosmic justice afterall. Thanks for the info --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 18:32, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

DudleyDoWrite & Blue Coat[edit]

Can someone take a look at the edits of DudleyDoWrite (talk · contribs), which seems to be a single purpose account for promoting Blue Coat Systems? I'd link a second opinion and suggestions on how to proceed to clean up the edits. JonHarder 21:38, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for spotting this. Dudley's been pretty busy and there's a lot to go through. I made a start, deleting a few links and leaving him a message -- see User talk:DudleyDoWrite. I've asked him to fix the problem himself. He's made some non-single purpose edits. Let's see if he'll fix the problem. Can you watch and follow up in a few days -- I'm tied down. Hopefully he's been operating in good faith mode.

--A. B. 22:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:AudioVideo, User:All electronics, User:Az movies, and User:All Electronics[edit]

I was just cruising through Special:Whatlinkshere for Template:User friendly when I stumbled on these two users, User:AudioVideo and User:All electronics. They have similar pages which both look like ads, and they have virtually no edits. I added the {{advert}} template to their pages, but I have a vague feeling that that won't do anything, and so am posting here. As I write this, I noticed that User:All electronics had no edits at all - even to the user page - so another user to check out is the sneakier (blank user page) User:All Electronics. If only I were an admin; I think these are of a kind that should be blocked on sight. No idea what process to follow, so I hope you of the WikiProject Spam can help me out. Thanks... Nihiltres 03:30, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another one as I continued my crawl of Special:Whatlinkshere: User:Az movies.

Sent the spam to mfd. Kevin_b_er 22:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Users Consumer-electronics (talk · contribs), E-tronics (talk · contribs), Notebooks (talk · contribs), Fashion7 (talk · contribs), Fe7 (talk · contribs), Hf7 (talk · contribs) and Vg7 (talk · contribs) are related to this activity (link spamming to same sites). I've noticed that these users plus some Canada-based anon IPs place the same links into info boxes where they aren't easily noticed or embed the external link in a section of copyvio text pasted from another website. JonHarder 23:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How'd you find User:Notebooks, I'm rather curious? The only thing was adding a link to the website some of them are spamming way back in may. Was a page deleted somewhere from when you found them? Kevin_b_er 02:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I found almost all of these by seeing who entered links to fineelectronics.net. This is that partcular edit. JonHarder 02:17, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh man my spam finding skills are going downhill here. Gotta step it up :) Kevin_b_er 02:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Summary of activity[edit]

After tracing all of the edits I could find that were related to this spam campaign, this is the modus operandi uncovered:

Create multiple user accounts within the span of a few weeks.
Use the accounts to edit one article; in some cases two.
Edit obscure articles that not many editors watch or readers visit.
Add a legitmate looking Template:Infobox Company and place the spam link in the "products" place
or find a website with company information, such as a timeline, and paste that into the article with an embedded spam link.
abandon the user account.

The only thing tying all of these together is the similar pattern and the use of a small set of external links which can be traced with the link search tool. Their success was quite good, with less than half of their spam being discovered by other editors. It is possible there are still similar links out there that were added by other accounts that they were careful not to associate with the above users. Can someone come up with a way to search infoboxes that contain external links, other than the "official website"? JonHarder 13:16, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I tried just using the Wikipedia search function for "Infobox Company" and came up with zillions of hits. I did not find any of the subtle spam you're descibing, but I did find a ton of vanity articles on non-notable companies that needed deletion.

Linkspam Database[edit]

I was thinking, why not form a database of known spam links that was constantly updated? Would it not help us to fight spam better and identify it quicker and easier. I do not if this was the right venue to post this idea or if someone has come up with the same idea before, if so then I am sorry. I just wanted to know peoples' thoughts on the matter Cpuwhiz11 00:58, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is a Spam blacklist which prevents those URLs being save on any Wikimedia (and some non-Wikimedia) wikis. Angela . 02:54, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But the blacklist is the end of all spamfighting, when all is said and done. What I assume is proposed here is some means of organizing information about suspicious new links. The problem is, while this talk page serves as a short-term alert page, once some spamlinks are removed, there remains no long-term record of their history. Spamlinks might get removed by several people who neither know of each other nor have a reason to do a deeper search for similar spam from different accounts. As a whole, those links successfully remain below our radar.

Suppose we create a template message similar to {{spam-n}} but with a parameter to include a direct link in the warning (as I understand it, this link shouldn't improve any search engine rankings due to the rel="nofollow" attribute on talkpages, right?)

"Thanks for adding links to (http://somespamlink.com | search), BUT...".

This way, a permanent record about removed linkspam remains on the user talk pages, connected through the linksearch feature and easy to check for earlier spam activity.

Pros: Little extra effort in addition to a warning message that is used anyway. Spammy links become retraceable right from their first use, not only after someone gets suspicious and adds them to a spam database. The linksearch gives spam-socks the message that their activities haven't gone unnoticed, and it provides evidence which may get them killed faster.
Cons: Copy&pasting the links is a little extra effort nevertheless which may not always be worth it. Not immune to permanent-link-archival or talkpage-blanking (though better than nothing and removed warnings usually get reverted anyway). Harder to get an overview than with a centralized approach.

? - Femto 11:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Femto, see my comments below, I've also come the conclusion we need better processes for dealing with link spam. Your proposal sounds like an interesting start. Linkspam almost has to be dealt with in the same way banned users are, with warnings, history, appeals -- the current spam blacklist is great, but misses the earlier steps and only catches the clear cut abuse cases being tracked by a single user. -- Stbalbach 12:38, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Forums, online petitions and other sites[edit]

Although I am not a member of this WikiProject, I always remove external links that do not seem suitable for articles. Since forums, online petitions and some sites are bound to be included in Wikipedia, I built some small tables with the information I recompiled. Feel free to drop by User:ReyBrujo/Base/Tasks and review the current situation there. -- ReyBrujo 04:15, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't care who's a member :) and added your page to the to-do on the project page anyway. Femto 11:14, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could I get a little extra help on Herbalife?[edit]

Hi! I just noticed that some Herbalife distributors aim to improve our Herbalife article, and that they are concerned I am biased [12]. I don't think I am, and certainly not for the reasons they mention, but in the interests of fairness, I'd like a few other people to keep an eye on the article in my stead. And I'm asking here because I'd like those people to have an awareness of the problems typically caused by single-purpose accounts and people with conflist-of-interest issues. Thanks, William Pietri 05:35, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh lovely, Herbalife is recruiting supporters through their blog to edit the article. They pay lip service to the policies and guidelines, but seem to be unaware of WP:MEATPUPPET. — Saxifrage ✎ 07:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

probable spammer[edit]

An IP user (contribs) added a link to Carrot this morning to a nutrition website, but the info ws already contained in the article. Link search seems to line up with this IP's contribs. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 09:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Need help with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.[edit]

There seems to be concerted effort to add external links to the the website of Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. There is much more than I have time to handle right now. I have cleaned up the edits of users Aetkin (talk · contribs) and Tmulak (talk · contribs). I discovered liebert's own IP, 198.65.193.67 (talk · contribs) has been adding material, so those contribs would be a place to start. See articles with liebert links for other problems. JonHarder 18:48, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I left a pointed message backing up your own; I don't know if it will help. --A. B. 20:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note that Tmulak may be Tom Mulak, an officer at this company; see

http://www.liebertpub dot com/media/content/serialsreview.pdf

I am reluctant to delete many of the remaining links since many appear to have been place by regular contributors to these articles. --A. B. 23:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I restored the interview link because I believe that it provides valuable insight into the background of the company. I am not an employee of MAL and have no special interest in the company other than that I like the scientific journals it publishes and I want the Wikipedia article to be informative. Anti-commerical fanaticism has the danger of censoring valuable information, which I think may be what is happening in this case. And I am not a person with much patience for spam-link advertising! --Ben Best 00:33, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With other corporations' articles, I have seen editors prune links to the corporate web site back to just one link to the company's web site. That was the precedent I was following here, however I am not aware of any policy that mandates this

If you can, please take a look at the contributions of the following and see which other deleted links you think should be restored:

Note that most of the older link additions have been deleted previously by regular contributors to those articles. I have been operating on the principle that if they're added by others they should stay and but they should not be added by the publishers per WP:AUTO, WP:EL and WP:COI -- is that a correct interpretation of those guidelines?

Thanks, --A. B. 11:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Your characterization of my editing as "Anti-commerical fanaticism" and "censoring" .... all I can say is "Ouch!"

Well, it wasn't quite that bad -- I said "has the danger of censoring". And I was warning of the danger of "anti-commerical fanaticism" without saying that your edit was definitely an example (although I did say I thought it "may be happening"). Sorry if I caused any pain by my remark. Whatever the general guidelines, I think that the personal interview with MAL is a valuable addition to the article and the background of the subject which a general reader might not find by going to the corporate website, even though the interview can be found on the corporate website. I believe general guidelines should be viewed with the awareness that the specifics of life are often best accommodated with specific responses --Ben Best 15:45, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK,thanks for your clarification; based on your general reputation, I figured you weren't trying to be mean. My main interest, however, was not in my PS above but with all the links we reversed and the overall pattern of contributions by this company's people. Can you look at these and see which additions by them and/or deletions by us are inappropriate? If we've reversed dozens of valid edits (I don't think we have), we need to fix it ASAP. Thanks. --A. B. 17:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad there are no hard feelings and no hurt feelings. (I didn't know I had a "reputation"). In any case, I believe that the entry now contains all or most of the relevant information -- minus the promotional hype that had been introduced by the employee who overwrote what I had to say when I started it. The main thing that I think would be informative and of interest would be a COMPLETE list of the journals produced by MAL, Inc. You deleted both the link to the list and the interview and I protested the deletion of the interview, but not the list. Unlike the interview, the list of publications is the first thing you see when you go to the company website, so I think that the entry is good as it stands. (Pardon my verbose wool-gathering response.) --Ben Best 18:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"I didn't know I had a "reputation". Don't worry, it's good! --A. B. 18:28, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hope I am doing this right as I am still very new to this!

Regarding the above communications regarding the recent flurry of activity as far as adding various Liebert info/links to Wiki, I must take most responsibility & offer apologies. My/our intent was never to "spam" or abuse wiki in any way. We find wiki (as many do) to be an increasingly important resource to all & simply wanted to add our resources in the appropriate categories for any who would be interested. Tom Mulak is indeed at the company with me & we both had been asked to take this on as a sort of project. I do not personally know Ben Best, but it seems he is someone outside the company who is aware of our presence in the industry & added various info on us of his own accord. I actually thank him for this! I had not responded to JonHarder (& others) sooner as 1, I really did not know how (I'm still unsure if this is the correct way) & I only saw his message (& others) after I'd finished adding what we thought were links within the wiki guidelines....um....yes.....I think we are "done" for now. ;-)

Please accept my sincere apologies & let me know what we can do to "fix" things or if we should just leave all as is for now.

Aetkin 01:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the forthright response. You needn't fix anything, its been tidied up already! JonHarder 02:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aetkin apparently didn't realize this meant s/he shouldn't just repeat past behaviour [13] --Siobhan Hansa 17:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

pmemory.com[edit]

Some additional opinions would be appreciated at Talk:Eidetic memory regarding a link to pmemory.com, which appears (to me and one other editor) to be promotional in purpose, and not a useful link at the least. Thanks --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 03:38, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

...and Talk:Mnemonic, please. Thanks --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 03:51, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Common linkspam page?[edit]

I've been keeping a personal reminder page of linkspam I come across using the Search web links feature. For example:

GeekGirlEssays - spam site. 09/2006
GeekGirlQuotes - spam site. 09/2006
Peterabelard.com spam site. 10/2006

This way I can periodically check if spam is creeping back in. It would be great if there was a central place everyone could note these and track them. Does such a thing exist, officially or through a project? -- Stbalbach 12:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, reading above I see Spam blacklist. This seems like a good solution for clear cut cases but there are some that require warnings and monitoring, such as with blocking a user (like the {test1}..{test2}.. series of tempaltes). I think we need a better process for adding links to the spam blacklist. Also if we follow the Google sharing idea, there needs to be a way to differentiate between real spam, and spam that is inappropriate for Wikipedia but OK for Google. -- Stbalbach 12:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've got a pretty big list of spammed sites here that could be included. I have also been working on an off-wiki database of spam that allows searching by domain name, IP address, or account name. My idea was that a separate database would provide an organized way of tracking spam even after it is removed. For example, a script could do automated linksearches for spammed domains and report if links have been re-added.

The code for the database is working, but the obstacle has been deciding how to control access to it. If anyone is allowed to insert or change information in the database, spammers and vandals would probably fill it with junk data. For technical reasons, it's not currently possible to limit access based on Wikipedia user name and password. ―Wmahan . 14:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea -- I can't wait for you to get this running! --A. B. 18:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Love the database concept. I've been keeping my own list for some spam (too lazy to record it all) here. Just seeing the way Wmahan has kept his list has already helped me improve the format for mine. Would be happy to change over to a format consistent with others or at a central place if it would help. --Siobhan Hansa 18:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's a great idea. If en ever rolls out OpenID support then a Wikipedia-account-based access scheme would be feasible. I wonder if this would be motive enough for Brion to implement at least outgoing OpenID?

Also as a general note for anyone keeping Special:Linksearch lists, I made a template to simplify that: {{linksearch}}. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:55, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Linksearch is a big help, thanks. -- Stbalbach 01:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A preliminary version of the database is available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~wmahan/spamdb/. Adding information requires an OpenID. It's not ready for heavy use; I haven't finished features such as modifying or deleting entries, and there are probably still a few bugs. But feel free to play around with it and tell me if you have any comments. ―Wmahan . 06:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

External links in Cascading Style Sheets[edit]

Above was outrageous with over 60 tutorial and example links present. I've culled it right back in the hope that new links be scrutinised a bit more thoroughly. Given the size of the EL section, no doubt there'll be plenty of howls so it'd be appreciated if others can keep an eye on this article also. -- Moondyne 15:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note this recent addition; I think it's a probe from our friend above. It's probably best considered a troll edit to annoy us.--A. B. 18:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can honestly say that that wasn't me. As I said above: I will not add the link again myself. I'm no spammer and never intended to be that. --Jdevalk 09:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good to hear! I see no one's given you an official welcome yet (at least on your user talk page) - I will do this shortly --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 12:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ey thx mate, glad some people here believe in the good of people :) --Jdevalk 21:33, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Epizone[edit]

User Epizone (talk · contribs) seems to be starting out on the wrong foot. I've placed a couple of warnings about articles contribution. What about the user page itself? It feels like that has crossed the line, but not exactly sure where the line is. JonHarder 17:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I blanked the userpage as it was clearly against WP:USERPAGE and WP:NOT. I left a message explaining my action with a request to not repost the advertising. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Online music store[edit]

Online music store is heading for keep in a current AfD, but what a mess. I just cleaned out a recent very blatant load of spam. Editors must be asleep at the wheel. I hope it doesn't get worse than this ... JonHarder 17:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the massive (and somewhat opinionated) comparison list of services. Was a magnet for advertising and original research. This should help out the article a lot in terms of getting away from a spam tool toward a real encyclopedia article. Kevin_b_er 04:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help with israel-music.com[edit]

There are about a dozen or so links to israel-music.com that I don't have time to deal with right now. The site is blatantly commercial with no encyclopedic value that is apparent to me. JonHarder 19:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I reversed some links and ran out of time. Most of the links I deleted were added by different high volume, good faith editors of Israel-related articles; this makes me think that this company may be like amazon.com -- something 1000s of editors link to without thinking about whether it's commercial or not. Maybe the links should be deleted, but there's no spam campaign that I can see. --A. B. 20:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Check edits of 87.69.67.222 (talk · contribs) (resolves to namespace in Israel). Maybe most of those have been cleaned out by now. JonHarder 20:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-wiki spamming[edit]

User Citracyde (talk · contribs) has been adding links to wiki-recipe.org and wikibartender.org. This user is either an exuberant wiki-editor or trying to drive traffic to these two sites. The cynic in me says the latter. Both of these sites are housed on the same server; the bartender site get revenue through advertising and I suspect the other is headed that way too. Thoughts? JonHarder 21:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest starting with a nice note on this editor's talk page -- so far this person seems amenable to others' feedback. --A. B. 21:39, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I've added a note. We'll see what happens. JonHarder 01:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Jon. My appologies I guess everyone tends to play to their strengths over time. I started my short wikipedia career trying to write a few articles (probably what most would consider stubs and did not fair too well with my fellow wikipedians). After checking out my history, I too noticed that over the last week or so I've been cruising around just fiddling with links. I found the couple of wiki sites through a friend and figured I could maybe focus on links more than content. You make a good point. I should have read the rules a bit closer. Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to contribute another way, I guess. --Citracyde 01:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can still focus on links sometimes, just maybe with a bit of a twist. It would be useful (and not trip spam-antennae) to drop a note on the Talk page of articles where you think links to those sites would be useful. Then at least they'd come to more people's attention and their being added will be clearly a matter of consensus. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does Wikipedia use ref=nofollow on external links?[edit]

I I don't know if this has already been discussed, but's it's my understanding that it's possible to code html such that the major search engines are flagged not to follow external links. If so, does Wikipedia's software do this? If it does, then i think that would discourage spamdexers. --A. B. 16:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"nofollow" is used for external links on talk pages, user pages, and other namespaces, but not for links in articles (main namespace). --Aude ;small>(talk) 16:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know all Wikimedia wikis other than the English Wikipedia also use rel="nofollow". See Wikipedia:Nofollow. I agree strongly that this is a good idea. It is an effective way to fight spam that isn't subject to joe jobs like the Google idea above. Indeed, Google invented rel="nofollow" for this sort of situation. ―Wmahan . 17:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At some point we should decide to bring this question again to the Village Pump. There's a decent chance that attitudes have changed on the subject. Pascal.Tesson 00:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who's been accused of spamming just a few topics ago I can tell you one thing: it would STOP link-spamming. --Jdevalk 21:34, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No it wouldn't. There are two kinds of linkspam: google-rank spam and "lots of eyeballs at Wikipedia"-spam. The latter has nothing to do with search engines and everything to do with the visibility of a link in a Wikipedia article. Granted, it would make linkspam volume less. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

True, but I think it would substantially reduce the volume. Also, the spamdexers are more sophisticated; I think what would be left would be easier to spot and fix Mom-and-Pop business type spam. --A. B. 23:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, tracking spam created by what you call "spamdexers" is harder, especially since these guys would use proxies and would never come from 1 IP. --Jdevalk 21:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Do people think a push to get nofollow implemented site-wide at en would be successful now? It's been a while since it was first considered and was rejected. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now is as good a time as any to reopen the rel=nofollow debate IMO. Armies of tireless bots and humans are now operating which bombard us with linkspam all day every day for the sole purpose of improving their pagerank and to make a monetary gain at the cost of encyclopaedic content. We spend countless hours arguing with these people with one hand tied behind our backs while they laugh at our feeble attempts to regain control. There's a whole industry writting and distributing instruction manuals on how to do all this. We'll not stop the problem, but if we take away a some of the motivation, it may become manageable again. At the moment its not.

I haven't seen "armies of bots" here yet. I did see them on smaller mediawiki sites, though. The majority of external links and references is still completely legit, i.e. the affected sites actually deserve the traffic and pagerank. Han-Kwang 12:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. Most EL's currently being added to existing articles are unjustified IMO. Some are OK, but most are just spam and are unencyclopaedic. — Moondyne 13:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The debate at Wikipedia:Nofollow in February 2005 is now 20 months old. Many of the keep votes then argued that nofollow was too bleeding edge or that the issue of spam was manageable by vandalism patrols. Neither of those arguments can no longer be used. — Moondyne 09:59, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:External links is being reworked[edit]

There's an effort to replace the current WP:EL guideline by a somewhat leaner Wikipedia:External links/workshop. My initial feeling is that the changes are modest and don't particularly make the guideline more EL-friendly or less EL-friendly. Still, people active on the spam project should have their say while it's being fiddled with. Pascal.Tesson 00:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm liking the "What cannot be linked to" section, which includes "links to websites that you own or maintain". Before, there was still some wiggle room, as "links to normally avoid" is not "never link to". Now it's black and white, people can't add links to their own websites. This can be A Very Good Thing if it sticks. --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 03:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not black and white. Is it meant to imply Wikibooks editors can no longer add the {{wikibooks}} template? Angela . 15:08, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikibooks arguably isn't an external link since it's a Wikimedia project. I agree that it's not always black and white. The problem is that spammers will seize upon any excuse to argue that the rules don't apply to them. The current wording vaguely implies that it's sometimes OK to link to one's own site, and leaves the specifics open to interpretation. Spammers tend to choose the interpretation most beneficial to their own interests. ―Wmahan . 15:51, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually if anyone likes the proposal, I urge you to get involved in editing it: there has been a fairly heated debate between two small groups of editors surrounding it (you might have seen this from the Village Pump). As far as I understand, the mud-slinging might all be about whether or not fan sites should be linked to. Sigh... In any case, it would be good for fresh input into the talk pages so that everyone can cool down. Pascal.Tesson 18:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do not agree, AbsolutDan, as you probably know. A link can be very good, even if added by the owner of a site... --Jdevalk 13:22, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Um, wikibooks editors don't own the site, though I suppose they maintain it. But those are interwikimedia links anyway. That does make me wonder about "forums you hang on" though. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 14:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possible reference spamming[edit]

John Hill (talk · contribs · count) has been adding a lot of references to articles without making other edits. Some of the references appear to be his own work, and he has also added the same book as a reference to a number of articles on different kinds of fish. It looks like spamming to me, but he's a well established editor, and I thought I would ask some other opinions before doing anything. -- Donald Albury 22:06, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Might be a silly suggestion but have you tried discussing the issue with him? My initial reaction would be that this is not spamming, just someone who loves one book too much. Pascal.Tesson 22:27, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At any rate, the edits don't appear to be helpful. Items listed in a reference section should have been actually used in expanding the text of the article. In my opinion this is spam in the general sense and a note on the talk page probably would help, as suggested above. JonHarder 22:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Others have already complained on his talk page. I added my own comments. -- Donald Albury 03:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Help with wiley[edit]

User Hdynes (talk · contribs) has systematically been adding links to interscience.wiley which should probably be removed. There are hundreds of other wiley links, but don't know if there is a systematic effort to add them. I don't have time to deal with these now. JonHarder 18:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Links to www.wiley.com/*/product* should be deleted as they appear to be promotion to buy the different books (there is an Add to Cart feature, so that qualifies as an attempt to sell an object vaguely related to the article). I checked some of the www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/* links, and you are given a set of books, where you can only read the abstract information. Clicking on the References or the PDF links require registration. Since the information given for these journal entries (I guess it is something like a category or search) is insignificant, they should also be deleted. The www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/* links appear to give valid information, although they could be upgraded to references if editors in the respective pages decide to use them. 333 interscience links, 464 wiley.com in total. I guess it could take a couple of hours to remove the journal and product links. I don't want to open 50 PDF to check media.wiley.com, though. -- ReyBrujo 18:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just ran across the Hdynes additions as well. The link at coral reef, for example (Wiley Journal Aquatic Conservation) was simply to a page of abstracts that linked to a 'pay per view' request. This seemed way too commercial and promotional and was not used to expand or reference the article, so I removed it. I also hit a few more links added to articles that were in the exact same format, but ran into the same problem with linksearch; the domain hosts abstracts and articles which are being used as references. It will probably take a bit of time to sort the wheat from the chaff here. Kuru ^talk 22:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A handful of editors have cleaned up essentially all of Hdynes edits (thanks!) and I nailed the few that were left. JonHarder 01:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User 172.141.156.104 (talk · contribs) is another contributor of wiley links. JonHarder 01:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above edits were recognized as spam and all cleaned up a while back. JonHarder 01:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, there are 3 /journal/ links and 67 /productCd. Those should be removed too. We can then check the 370 or so left to see which ones are not useful. Good work! -- ReyBrujo 02:02, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yuck, look at Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, they even give you a two-click subscription link. I would suggest removing all the links but the media and cochrane ones. I should be able to give a hand in a matter of minutes. -- ReyBrujo 02:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

yoyita[edit]

I'm not keeping up today. If someone is looking for something to do, yoyita looks like a worthy project. Many added by 74.227.4.189 (talk · contribs). JonHarder 02:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removed all but three that appear to be useful. Most of the links had either too little information, information from Wikipedia, had just a remote link with the article, were pages with only images, or in spanish existing other english and spanish links. -- ReyBrujo 02:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

rosencomet.com[edit]

If I can move beyond chabad recipes for rhubarb pie, there's a WP:ANI discussion involving possible spamming (+ wikistalking, conspiracies sockpuppetry and other accusations) at: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Stalking, vandalism, possible sockpuppetry evasion of block by User:Timmy12. Note that spam is only part of a much wider set of complaints and counter-complaints that spreads over multiple AN/I threads:

Among Timmy's other alleged sins is his going around and inappropriately deleting links added by Rosencomet. I don't propose we get involved in all the personalities involved but there is the question of spam and should some of the 77 links get reversed. --A. B. 04:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, is it possible to partially blacklist a website? The reason why I ask is that the Rosencomet website is probably quite appropriate for the Starwood Festival and Winterstar Symposium pages. It's just that the website doesn't need to be inserted in umpteen different articles. Is it possible to allow a blacklisted site to appear in some specified list of articles? --BostonMA ^talk 23:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, your slogan says "Tag 'em to stop 'em". OK, I've tagged 'em. What next. By the way, there are 100 links under rosencomet.com and another 65 under search.freefind.com, although not all of the latter links are rosencomet. There is an editor User:Timmy12 who is valiantly removing the links, but they are restored soon afterwards. So what is the next step? --BostonMA ^talk 21:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately there's no partial-blacklist feature. That might be kinda nifty, actually. Anyway, what have you "tagged"? The slogan refers to vandals (not their vandalism), so by tagging the vandals with the {{spam1}}/2/3/4 templates, eventually they'll either get the message or get blocked. — Saxifrage ✎ 00:28, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

rosencomet (talk · contribs) [14] [15]

999 (talk · contribs) [16]

ekajati (talk · contribs)[17] [18] user removed warnings

--BostonMA ^talk 01:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Project directory[edit]

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Source to a commercial product[edit]

Hi, I need your expertise from this project. I've removed sources that links to a specific commercial website in this article Stage lighting instrument, but the editors objected it (see the talk page). Could somebody weighing there to tell us, whether linking to a commercial site is categorized as a spam link or not? Thanks. — Indon (reply) — 15:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kellen Interactive's link-spamming of Wikipedia[edit]

We appear to have a concerted (link-spam) effort by Kellen Interactive (a web design and promotion firm) to promote their clients' sites on wikipedia. I've found a couple of IP addresses that have been adding (link-spam to) Kellen Interactive sites over the last few months, documented here. According to the Signpost Kellen issued a press release in the summer talking about the need to engage with Wikipedia.[19] And they seem to be living up to that.

The pattern seems to be to produce informational websites, often ending in .org, that are industry group sponsored rather than approaching an issue from a neutral point of view (not that all other .org sites are neutral). The sites frequently say they are maintained by Kellen Interactive (link-spam) in small type at the bottom, occassionally they say they're a project of some group whose main website says it's maintained by Kellen. Kellen adds (spam) links to these sites to appropriate articles in the external links sections. There have been a few uses of a couple of sites by other editors - not every link has been spam all though only a two or three have actually been appropriate.

Two IP addresses found so far: 71.204.14.32 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) Comcast, Georgia and 216.91.92.18 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) (actually registered to Kellen Company) (have been used for spamming). So far these Is have limited themselves to adding external links. I asked for a block on 216.91.91.18 but the Admin just warned them again.

I would be interested if anyone finds others (IPs or Kellen Interactive (link-spam) sites) - I'm tryng to document it comprehensively. Seems like it might be useful down the line if Wikipedia decides to be more blunt in dealing with paid editing. --Siobhan Hansa 17:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Italicized material in parentheses above added later by myself; see edit summary for rationale. --A. B. 18:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See if this helps; I pulled it off Google:

Results 1 - 37 of about 85 for "Site designed maintained and hosted by Kellen Interactive" (sites spammed by Kellen). (0.51 seconds)

*.kellencompany.com/
*.richemailmarketing.com/howcanwehelp.html
*.jelly.org/sitemap.html
*.hcea.org/
*.gaasla.org/member.html
*.gaasla.org/
*.healthyfridge.org/
*.never2early.org/
*.sucralose.org/facts.html
*.edpa.com/
*.procurement.gatech.edu/ Georgia Tech site - is maintained by Kellen.
*.caloriescount.com/
*.margarine.org/
*.greetingcard.org/
*.caloriescount.org/
*.juiceproducts.org/
*.choosemargarine.com/
*.versatilevinegar.org/
*.globalweatherpages.com/
*.concordgrape.org/homepage.html
*.appleproducts.org/
.shelsdreams.net/calorie-control-council.htm NOT a Kellen site (but not a "good" site either!)
*.cookingwithmargarine.com/
*.americantaxpolicyinstitute.org/
*.ifsanet.com/
*.doorsafetycouncil.org/
*.aspartametruth.net/
*.horseradish.org/homepage.html
*.infantformula.org/
*.dressings-sauces.org/
*.ifacmem.org/
*.applejuice.org/static_homepage.html
*.aspartameissafe.com/
*.hqservices.com/homepage.html
*.actconline.org/
*.aspartame-experts.com/

This is a start. Some may be useful links so I'd be careful; I suggest starting by looking at who added them, then working back from there. If it's an abusive editor, then look for other links added. Probably many of their sites lack the exact phrase I searched Google with.

--A. B. 18:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you identify any of these as involved with true link-spam, could you note it next to their URL above with some notation such as "Wikipedia link spam" --A. B. 18:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! This is great. I should have thought of googling the phrase. I'll get to work. --Siobhan Hansa 18:23, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not every site has their fingerprints on it. For instance saccharin.org doesn't mention Kellen, our spammer, but digging around, I found a press release with this phone number: 404-252-3663. Googling it turns up many pages of various groups with that number -- all apparently based out of Kellen in Atlanta (area code 404).

I wonder if Kellen's competitors are also spamming? If they're doing the same thing, we should watch out for it. On the other hand, if they're not, then they will be interested to see Kellen's Wiki-spamming gets some clients blacklisted.--A. B. 18:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kellen has the following IP address block registered: 216.91.92.16 - 216.91.92.31. It's also possible they use other, non-contiguous blocks as well. I checked user contributions and only 216.91.92.18 has edited Wikipedia. There are probably ways to find out the IP addresses of the web sites Kellen hosts. It may then be possible to see who owns those address blocks and look for other sites. --A. B. 18:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can see, those are all "spider food" and, even without spamming, would not be something we would want in external links. (FWIW, neither will the ODP.) —Wrathchild ^(talk) 19:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ODP? --A. B. 19:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Open Directory Project

JImbo Wales apparently got involved earlier; see:

Jimmy Wales on PR in the social media era
dot com/archives/199-STORY-TEASE-PRS-Golden-Goose-Under-Indictment.html STORY TEASE: PR'S Golden Goose Under Indictment (strumpette dot com is blacklisted, so you'll have to fill in the dots)
Wikipedia editors discussing PR firms participation - Rules of Engagement in Social Media Commons -- lots of links to these stories, other Wikipedia discussions, and other abusers

Also, here's a "partial" Kellen client list. Another list is here under "company profile" and still more at this "portfolio".

Interestingly, their August press release boasting of their Wikipedia article-writing service has totally disappeared from their web site. Yet they continue their spam attack, just underground. --A. B. 20:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I started leaving preemptive messages at the other Kellen IP addresses before they make any contributions or access Wikipedia. I got several done, but I have to knock off for now. If you concur, feel free to keep at it; here's what I've done so far:

These numbers continue up to 216.91.92.31; x.18 was the spammer warned today. --A. B. 20:40, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have now left the same message on all of the talk pages in that address block. I'd be interested in your feedback if you get a chance to look at them. That might not be a bad idea to use with some other spamming companies where we know their IP block (such as yesterday's Altesys spammer). In some cases, the spamming attempts may not be fully sanctioned by senior management and this may ultimately call others attention to the problem. --A. B. 14:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome find. Ajusted your comment to include linksearches for convienence sake. Kevin_b_er 03:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I went through the list above (haven't worked on the phone number generated list yet). I didn't find any evidence of spamming. a couple of the sites have been added, but by legitimate editors. This seems like good news - Kellen's efforts (so far at least) appear to have been fairly standard spam tactics that are picked up with our normal vigilance.

This is making me think a bit more about idea spamming though (i.e. editing to influence POV not just getting an external link in. We've found IP address that just put in links - a classic way to identify a linkspammer is that all they do is add links. But Kellen is trying to do more than make a site popular - they're trying to promote a meme. We already see people editing to promote one idea on some of the more political articles. If Kellen (or their competitors) get more sophisticated and start editing articles instead of just adding links - we might have a much harder time catching them, and the damage to Wikipedia will be much worse. I'm not sure what tactics would work against that sort of spamming. --Siobhan Hansa 14:10, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After some thought, I am going to block 216.91.92.16/28 (Kellen's range) indefinitely. Please discuss to see if this is appropriate and, if the consensus is no, please reverse me. --Nlu (talk) 15:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you make that a 3 month or a 6 month block maybe? Indefinite blocks of IPs are problematic. JoshuaZ 16:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nlu, I left preemptive messages yesterday and today at all of the other Kellen IP addresses before they made any contributions or even accessed Wikipedia for plain old reference purposes. Here's a sample. I'd be interested in your feedback if you get a chance to look at them. I tried to write something that would really make people think about the implications of where they were going. There may be some propaganda/psychological warfare value in leaving that message there. Even if if not for spam, sooner or later probably every IP address will be used by someone at Kellen to access Wikipedia for reference purposes. Kellen is a big company with big clients and has a lot to lose going down the Wikipedia-spamming path; it would be good for all of us if they started reflecting on it now.

That's my 2 cents worth. I may be wrong (I all too often am -- I'm pretty junior around here) but in this case I suspect my idea has merit. --A. B. 16:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like your message, A. B., but my current feeling is: if Jimbo has banned Kellen (and he has, as far as we know -- he can always unban them), then there is no reason to allow Kellen IPs to edit. Again, I am not totally sure about this, but I don't think a 3-6 month block makes sense; either they shouldn't be blocked or they should be blocked completely, I think. Blocking for 3-6 months merely means that it has to be redone again. --Nlu (talk) 17:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble with perma-blocking IP addresses is that they're just IP addresses. So every now and then some one needs to go in and check that they're still registered to Kellen. Other than that I don't see the problem with it being a perma-block. I do think we need to get confirmation from Jimbo that he did mean they should be perma-blocked if that's the reason being quoted. Reading something in an interview published by someone else isn't the same as seeing it from his user account. We should be aware though that this will just drive them to other IP addresses. Not that it shouldn't be done, but I can't see it actually stopping them. --Siobhan Hansa 18:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Altesys[edit]

Please keep an eye out for altesys dot com links. A new user, Altesys (talk · contribs), editing in conjunction with a company-owned IP account, 213.26.14.178 (talk · contribs) has been submitting vanity articles and adding spam links in spite of warnings. I think I'm all caught up on warnings and reversions, but I don't have time to keep pursuing this guy today. Thanks, --A. B. 17:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As of now he has one link left which is in a vanity article, Eustachio, I've tagged for speedy deletion. (Any admins out there feel free to delete.)--A. B. 17:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

MyWikiBiz.com spam articles[edit]

See the web page for this wiki-spammer. He proudly displays a list of articles he's submitted. I don't know if any are still around, but I'd have at it! --A. B. 20:08, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From this list of articles:

Aerocomp Aerospace (deleted as blatant advert), Arch Coal, Cummins Inc., Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie (deleted as spammy), Feedmarker (deleted as blatant advert), FirstEnergy, Imation, Immersion Games (deleted as db-corp), Kirby Company, Los Angeles Maritime Museum, Occidental Petroleum, Public Radio Exchange, Save Indian Family — JonHarder 14:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He he he... started going through the list and within 10 minutes the list had disappered. That's got to be a pretty stupid spammer... By the way, the Google caches will be able to retrieve the lists! Pascal.Tesson 20:51, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, some of the stuff is both encyclopedic and notable, so don't delete blindly. The Arch Coal article is excellent, for instance, and that's a very notable company. I expect that actually he's probably a little too decent and conscientious to be a successful spammer. --A. B. 20:57, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK you can slap me for developing Stockholm syndrome, but I think some of this stuff is pretty good and this guy may be performing a useful service. For more info, see http://mywikibiz-com.blogspot.com. Having said that, I have only looked at a couple of things so far. His theory is that there's a gap in Wikipedia's coverage of notable companies and organizations and that there's some (not a lot) of money to be made in filling that gap with quality articles that won't get deleted. --A. B. 21:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I could not care less that he sometimes adds useful info. He is also using multiple sockpuppets and clearly using Wikipedia as a soabox for his clients. He is editing with a conflict of interest and that should be the end of that. By the way, I am creating a sockpuppetry case against Bborn (talk · contribs) (arbitrary choice, you can't really point to one puppetmaster) but I'd appreciate if you can let me know of editors that you know are tied to this spammer. Pascal.Tesson 21:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think this sockpuppetry case Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Bborn clearly shows that the little good that mywikibiz might do is vastly outweighed by its clear abuse of the Wikipedia structure. Also, please feel free to add other evidence and puppets you might have. Pascal.Tesson 21:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I figured I must be suffering Stockholm syndrome ... --A. B. 22:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is that none of it can be unbiased. You are being paid by the people you're writing about. You are biased toward them. Its an impossible conflict of interest, no matter how hard you try. The content can't be from a neutral point of view. All the facts will lean toward the positive. What's more, he 'guarentees' an article. Nothing is guarenteed that an article won't be deleted by tommorrow. At least the coal company wasn't a 'buisness solutions' company like so many of the spam articles are. Hopefully the rewrite helped. Kevin_b_er 04:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In all fairness, A. B. only went Patty Hearst on us for a grand total of 106 minutes. Now that he has come to his senses, you're preaching to the faithful! 04:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

See also User:MyWikiBiz — Moondyne 04:34, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You guys are SO far behind the times, it's not even funny. Have you even noticed that the whole MyWikiBiz phenomenon has been reviewed and debated, ad nauseum, here, here, and even here. You guys read The Signpost much? This has been old news since mid-August. Guys, it's almost November now. You must be a crack team of detectives. I love how Bborn (somebody with no proven relationship to MyWikiBiz whatsoever) is a sockpuppet of a company that has made every conceivable effort to act in the light of full disclosure. Furthermore, I love those must-be-a-noob opinions that it's impossible to be neutral about an entity that has paid you. How does NBC ever do a story about General Electric, without the entire field of journalism shutting down in chaos? Finally, the MyWikiBiz website guarantees satisfaction, not an article on Wikipedia. PLEASE delete from Wikipedia every article that appears on the MyWikiBiz GFDL site. I would enjoy watching that. Geniuses. --~ ~ ~ ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.150.221 (talk • contribs)

Yes, we are behind the times, MyWikiBiz so thank you for bringing us to date. Those are useful links you provided. Since this Wikiproject is a just collection of time-pressed volunteers up against people with lots of time and a vested financial interest, we're often behind the information curve. We always need more information on what's going on, spam-wise, and will welcome it, no matter how disparagingly it may be packaged. It helps us accomplish our task.

Your posts here and on your talk page also help give us insights into your motivations and values. That has some intangible value; if nothing else it helps me see how wrong I was in my initial assessment of your efforts and ethics (my "Patty Hearst moment").--A. B. 13:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply, A.B. Agreed, MyWikiBiz can be really snitty at times (but, honestly, can you blame them, considering how hostile some Wikipedians have been toward them?), but I still don't think it's fair to call into question MyWikiBiz's "ethics". You see, with cooperation and full-disclosure, MyWikiBiz could actually be a major contributor to Wikipedia's fight AGAINST spam. It seems that MyWikiBiz can recognize the difference between a home-basement-operated record label with two artists on file writing an article about themselves, and a Fortune 600 company like Arch Coal. I guess additionally, your concern is that if MyWikiBiz is paid $79 to write an article for such a company, there is no way (?) that article could possibly be NPOV. Again, I think that the deletion reversal of the Arch Coal article by the Wikipedia community suggests that it actually CAN be done. Keep fighting the spam -- MyWikiBiz has shown that they actually support that. I just wonder how a company like Wikia.com gets away with 2,800+ spam links out of Wikipedia to their Google-ad-infested site, but Arch Coal, you're out to slaughter. -- ~ ~ ~ ~

There are a number of issues here. One is disclosure: it is a welcome effort that mywikibiz.com has a list of articles it wikifies but it is clear that creating a new sockpuppet to edit an article for a new client is an attempt to hide. Second, there's an issue of trust. Wiki editors tend to trust one another and really do assume good faith. However, once this trust is broken, there's a backlash: I agree that Arch Coal should have its article and Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie might also make it per WP:BK but since you refuse to be perfectly transparent about your editing, these articles get speedied by suspicious admins. Pascal.Tesson 14:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody claimed it's impossible to be unbiased, just that we're not interested in sorting people's biases out in each and every case that comes up. Instead, we have a handy, and non-problematic except for spammers, heuristic that says self-promotion is spam. Since there are hundreds of thousands of contributors, we're not worried about one small section of contributors not being able to contribute one specific kind of edit. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:02, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody claimed it's impossible to be unbiased? What is this, from Kevin Breitenstein? "The issue is that none of it can be unbiased. You are being paid by the people you're writing about. You are biased toward them. Its an impossible conflict of interest, no matter how hard you try." -- ~ ~ ~ ~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.150.47 (talk • contribs)

Yes, the issue has been debated ad nauseam, but it is also true that some of these sockpuppets have been active even after you were banned from editing. Pascal.Tesson 05:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My mistake, I hadn't read that comment. Regardless, it stands that that's the rationale behind the "don't self-promote" rule at Wikipedia. We don't want to mind-read everyone who adds a link, so we don't, but we also have free rein to make judgements when bias is clear, such as in this case. (Also, would you mind not putting spaces between the tildes when you "sign" your name? It doesn't work and such sloppiness is painful for us geniuses.) — Saxifrage ✎ 05:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

EgyptianHoliday[edit]

First a bunch of Egyptian tourism spam (Wikipedia's links to his business) and now some other sorts of spam being propagated by Egyptianholiday (talk · contribs). Sorry, but no time today on my end to warn or revert; if someone else can, go for it. --A. B. 22:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleaned out and on my linkspam watch page. We'll see how they take the spam1 message. — Saxifrage ✎ 03:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IRC link feed[edit]

For those who might be interested, there is some testing currently underway of an IRC bot that watches articles and reports (in the channel) those that have recent edits that include external links. It includes a link to the diff and the link that was added. It's already been helpful in finding some link spam and other inappropriate external links.

The channel is named #wikipedia-spam on freenode (same one as the other primary wikipedia IRC channels). --AbsolutDan ^(talk) 02:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to note, the program has gotten some upgrades. It now does not crash (except for when it crashes because of flooding!) Too many links being added to wikipedia at one time of course!. Hope you all will have a look. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 23:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be nice if Wikipedia's software ...[edit]

... had a "recent links added" page just as it has special pages for new articles, new usernames and recent changes.

--A. B. 14:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Resource when investigating PR companies[edit]

The Center for Media and Democracy (a generally anti-commercial advocacy group) has a project called Source Watch which is a Wiki that documents the activities of people who try to sway public and political opinion. They have articles on PR firms that list the organizations the firms represent, as well as contact numbers and other useful identifiers. Source Watch PR firms. --Siobhan Hansa 18:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Book spamming for Ninth Day of Creation[edit]

I'm hitting the road and have not time to follow up for a while:

Book (probably non-notable; see talk page): Ninth Day of Creation
Author's article (also probably non-notable): Leonard Crane
Book's promoter (see contribs): Randommouse (talk · contribs)
Author's IP acct: 4.231.172.152 (talk · contribs)

Cheers, --A. B. 04:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Related page for over-nice articles on real companies?[edit]