Wikipedia talk:Spam/Archive 1

message: user:142.177.etc suggested some stronger measures against corporate shills and the like, such as "no new articles on any commercial enterprises except when scandals occur and the initial article can be entirely or mostly negative in tone - this ensures that any attempts at spamming are likely to be diverted into spin control". Responses follow:
These solutions are not good.  While I agree that spam is a problem on Wikipedia because it can lead to biased articles, the solution is to write unbiased articles, not to begin applying different measures to different subjects. Tuf-Kat 03:31, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)
One concern that I have about these policies is that someone could post spam posing as one of their competitors, with the hope of negative retaliation. The same currently happens with email spam. -jackson
I dislike these measures. Optim 03:15, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Retaliatory idea

message: I was also confused about the 'guideline' message at the top. Anyone know why that is there? The page doesn't really seem like a particulary great guideline (no better than any other page particularly)  Maybe it was placed there to settle some edit war. I suggest we remove it, unless anyone knows a reason. -- Halz 14:42, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  'guideline' message at the top 

message: Currently our anti-spam system works by ignoring edits containing certain text items. For example, if you try to save a page linking to hukuki dot net, your edit will be ignored. The problem comes when before starting large-scale spamming, the spammer added a few vaguely relevant links to external links sections in various articles. These articles then can't be edited, unless the offending external link is removed. Currently it's necessary to manually search for these links, but I'd like to know the community's opinion on doing this automatically. Presumably some sort of server-side script would search for the links and remove them. I'd also like to add the following statement to this page:
:Note to spammers: spamming Wikimedia wikis, including sandboxes, may lead to the automated removal of all links to your site, even those which were in articles before the attack began.
Hopefully this policy will have a deterrent effect. Any thoughts? -- Tim Starling 04:04, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)
:The danger is that sites may spam their competitors sites instead in order to have them removed from Wikipedia. If it's done, I don't think it should be done automatically, or people may start using it purposefully as a way of removing links from the site. Angela. 04:21, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Once we've put something in our anti-spam system, though, we've effectively prevented it from being in any future edits in Wikipedia in any case.  Usually, this happens because someone with authority over the blacklist has examined the site in question, and has either determined that it will never be the most useful link out of all possibilities on a Wikipedia article, or that it is not worth the risk of allowing spam links on Wikipedia to survive (since Wikipedia-spamming, if it became profitable enough, could easily overcome our community's ability to remove fight it on a one-by-one basis.) --Aquillion 04:23, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Retaliation for SEO spam

message: I am currently tracking down many links in the external links sections (and others) to paperlessarchives dot com.  In many cases the regulars of the articles block these out, but many have not been caught.  I'm unfamiliar with the mediawiki upgrades for handling wikispam, but I think this site's URL needs to be added into the regex for blocking wikispam.  Additionally, a robot-assisted removal would be nice.  I could write one, I suppose, but probably lack the time and can better help by removing what I can find.
Can someone please direct me to the appropriate place to submit this URL for wikispam blocking?
If anyone disagrees that this commercial site does not constitute a legitimate external link, by all means please discuss with me here or on my user talk page or wherever is appropriate. Jdavidb 20:52, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added this request to the new non-development tasks for developers page at Meta. Angela. 19:13, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  paperlessarchives dot com wikispam 

message: An answer : (altinmas@yahoo.com) - 23.9.2004I'm the owner of -www.hukuki.net- (Turkish Law site) . You think we are spammers. Unfortunately we are not spammers. We add some of articles or rules about wiki to many international pages in their languages. Because they are empty pages. And then we add our link to contact us. It is a mistake for you and for me... Best regards.
AND THERE IS NO ATTENTION LIKE THIS:
DO NOT ADD YOUR EXTERNAL LINKS TO THIS PAGE ...
:You are joking? You added this link to at least 43 Wikipedias and hundreds of other wikis on pages that have nothing to with Hukuki, often pasting in pages in English to other language Wikipedias with your link sneakily hidden in the middle of the text. Hukuki is on dozens of blacklists. I fail to see how you do not regard this as spam. Angela. 19:57, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)
:He also complained at chongqed.org about being listed as a spammer and asked to be removed.  After we pointed out some evidence in Google and told him he would not be removed from the list he started spamming our link as well as several other wikis that list him as a spammer on many non-english wikipedias.  The front page of our site gives more details. JoeChongq 06:32, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Hukuki

message: Before writing this message, I have browsed through a few Wikipedia: series page to see what was already written on this topic ; I found nothing. More surprisingly, I found very little on the general theme of Wikipedia pollution by unfair use of its articles for Google ranking promotion. This does not seem a "hot" issue, but I fear it could become in a near future as long as Wikipedia gets better known and gets higher (together with its clones) on Google.
Indeed I became aware of the problem when googling http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org+asinah&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
to see what was already written about a (non GFDL compliant) Singapurese clone of WP. Look : they have linked about twenty of their pages from WP articles ; in each case, the page is not blatantly irrelevant, simply it is a poor page and indeed in reality a link farm.
Then I have kept looking for similar abuse. Watch out this interesting one (I link to a diff page, since I removed it) : http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Tourism&diff=5861245&oldid=5802398
An anonymous user adds two links ; the first one is irrelevant but not shocking ; the second one is blatant self-promotion. Probably naive from a good-faith editor (he also wrote a "real" sentence on a talk page), and not too dangerous (though the links remained more than one week with nobody noticing the problem).
Now, browse through the various links in the "Commercial travel sites" of Tourism. Some are indeed relevant, like http://www.letsgo.com/ . A few others are self-promotion of sites which are in no way nasty, but not remarkable enough to justify a link from a very general encyclopedy page, e.g. http://www.luggage-life.com/. Lastly and more annoyingly, some are simply there to help link farms sucking Google ranking, see http://www.asinah.net/ (the WP clone which made me conscious of the problem) or http://www.insidetraveltips.com/, still more blatant.
What should be done ? Nothing, hoping that I overestimate the danger and that this kind of parasiting can be contained by the editors as teenager vandalism is effectively contained ? Listing offender domaine names and forbidding external links towards them ? Adding a "nofollow" tag in WK pages, finding another way to have our articles archived ? Something else ? --French Tourist 12:48, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We already, controversially, ban links to a number of locations where active link-farmers were hitting us. It's controversial because it causes problems when editing some real pages and because it's easy to work around it. Wikipedia is an effective device for artifically raising page rank, but is also an important source for Google of authoritative links. At this point, we pretty much hope that the usual wiki process will take care of such links (often, once such a user is noticed once, their other contributions will be checked and all their changes are then easy to revert.) Derrick Coetzee 23:13, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: self promotion is often considered spam even if it add something usefull to the article. even if you legitametely belive that your resource on something is of a sufficiantly high quality and/or relavence to be listed in the article then you should get at least a second opinion before going forward. Plugwash 16:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia as a [[link farm]] ? 

message: I think DV wanted to discuss this - it's come up w.r.t. the arbcom elections, and possibly other cases. Certainly something I think we should think about. That's not to say we necessarilly need to make any actual policies about it. Martin 23:45, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Other situations that have involved "internal spam": adminship/bureaucratship candidates inviting support for their nominations, critics trying to mobilize opposition, and editors in a dispute recruiting new participants, especially when a survey/poll is involved. With respect to this last case in particular, some people have complained about "selective spamming" to those likely to be sympathetic to the spammer's perspective, even though this practice is fairly common and it should not be surprising that few people feel inclined to "get out the other side's vote". So these are some of the situations that can be considered in formulating any kind of internal spam policy. --Michael Snow 02:53, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internal spamming (1st) 

message: (http://www.ju li and i bbell.com/brazil/brazil.html Julian Dibbel) is a englishman who lived in brazil many years and wrote fantastic, profound and light hearted essays on brazilian culture, specially the (http://www.juli andi bbel l.com/texts/brasilia.html) mysticisms of brasilia, (http://www.juli an di bbell.com/tex ts/ gil_tropicalismo.html)tropicalismo, and even http://www.wired.com/wired/arc hive/12.11/linux.html open-source soft
I can't add those links on the article. our spam filter thinks nice guy dibbel is a spammer. How do I fix it?--Alexandre Van de Sande 22:45, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Culture of brazil]] article 

message: Has anyone else had problems with the wiki spam filter? Every once in awhile, it seems to go on the blink and start blocking a bunch of legitimate links. 69.243.41.28 02:28, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Malfunctioning spam filter

message: Recently someone posted a substantially identical message on over 50 user talk pages.  Immediate issues aside (it was an attempt to pack a vote) it concerns me that there is no policy explicitly saying you can't round up a targetted list of talk pages (user talk, article space talk, whatever) and spamming substantially identical text on them.
This may be something that will be more important in future than it is now--such spamming is rare and sometimes done by hand (although sometimes it has been done using a bot).
I'd like to canvas for ideas on whether this kind of thing merits new policy, or whether existing policy is sufficient to treat any abuses that might arise. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:10, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we have any existing policy that consensus agrees covers this issue. I also don't think that a hard-limit would work on its own as I can see people attmepting to get around this by posting the messages to a batch of (limit-1) pages, substantially rephrasing it and then doing another batch of (limit-1) pages. Thryduulf 13:14, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Problem is that some people are interested in things that are put on a large number talk pages (colabiration of the week is the first example to come to mind). I'd like to see template nospam become inforced by policy with admins being left to decide if something is spamGeni 15:09, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: That's what WP:Watch is aiming to achieve, at least partly. violet/riga (t) 18:51, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But I don't want to know about every COTW I just want to know if the one I voted on won so I know I should do some work on itGeni 20:39, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: Indeed. I was one of the spammed people - my annoyance was because the poster had not bothered to check that I had already done what he was asking me to do. -- Arwel 16:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: I strongly agree that policy creep is a major consideration--which is why I'm not at the stage of saying "all talk page spamming is utterly evil."  My problems with using this method to coordinate campaigns are pretty much solved by Violetriga's excellent (and timely!) WP:W. If I see people spamming I'll simply recommend that they use that more benign and equitable method instead.  Factionalization and politicking are much bigger issues than spamming which is why I'm deliberately separating them out from this proposal--there are many good, noncontentious reasons to want to contact a group of people, so the question is just whether we could or should reach agreement on the when and the where. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 17:11, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  From [[Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)]] 

message: This may be interesting to those watching this page: Talk:Department of Motor Vehicles Rl 08:16, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Potemkin villages

message: After development and approval at Wikipedia:How not to be a spammer, this guideline has been merged into Wikipedia:Spam. --FOo 22:55, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-merged 

message: The article says there are two types of wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, and wide-scale external link spamming.
I think there is a third kind: Adding a link to your companys website on the Wkipedia page about the field of your business. For example, I just reverted these two: ,  --Apoc2400 20:32, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I suspect this was omitted because of the frequent perception that "spam" involves a message repeated many times. I happen to agree with you, though: Wikipedia is a popular enough resource that adding an irrelevant link for the purpose of driving traffic to a site should be considered, if not "spam", then something very similar. "Vanity linking", we could call it, but we might as well just say "spam". --FOo 22:26, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Third kind of wikispam 

message: Many external links are links to sites such as lyrics or guitar tab pages. I'm trying to decide whether these could be considered spam. 
Argument that such links are spam:
*The same site can appear in many different articles. 
*Often such sites are low-quality or commercial or ad-based sites.
Arguments that such links are not spam:
*Such links are useful to each individual article.
What do other users think? DDerby | Talk 19:42, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In my opinion, any site that has something to do with the individual, whether they contain something that is in the article or not (unless it's virtually identical) should be considered valid to the artist and fans.  I.e., this is especially in the case of tabs and lyric sites that may have Google ads on them, but otherwise contain relevant content.  But it is also relative to the case whereby a site may not add much to the article, but may be used as a reference so that someone may conveniently access information that won't change as much as articles that are commonly changed one way or another by maybe vandalism and edit wars.  It's difficult to trust some of the information any more by articles on celebrities where of course these types of external links would be placed.  That said, low quality, high commercial sites should be removed promptly.   Drdr1989 20:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links criteria and lyrics sites 

message: Several people have attempted to communicate to this user that they are not to make controversial alterations to a Wikipedia policy or guideline page without establishing consensus first. Wikipedia guidelines are supposed to reflect consensus among editors. Therefore, altering a guideline to bring it in line with one's own preferences without consulting other editors is simply a form of deceit: it is creating the false appearance that the alteration has been agreed upon, by placing it under the heading of a Wikipedia guideline.
So far, the clue has not sunk in. This user persists in reverting the guideline page to a version which does not represent the consensus of editors in discussion. It doesn't seem to reflect anyone's position other than that of an anonymous user ... a person who created some articles that a number of people considered spammy, and therefore seems to have a vested interest in altering the rules against spam.
I consider User:24.54.208.177's reverting to be unacceptable conduct for a Wikipedia editor. I invite him/her to demonstrate some good faith: quit reverting. Either convince us that your changes to this guideline are worthwhile, or quit trying to change the rules. --FOo 20:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: All right, I'll leave it alone. 205.217.105.2 20:59, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unacceptable conduct by [[User:24.54.208.177]] 

message: I encourage users to make use of the advert tag as a substitute for AFD of suspected advertisements. 24.54.208.177 02:28, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Advert" tag

message: Why don't they just added noindex, nofollow to the tags of all external links? That way, if any spam, borderline spam or otherwise bad links were put on Wikipedia, they wouldn't be promoted by Wikipedia's PageRank. Nathan J. Yoder 03:59, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As I understand, "they" already do. --DDerby-(talk) 06:43, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Because "they" (devs) did put nofollow on external links, and there followed an outcry and much indignation, moaning about unilateralism, and a vote.  The result is that en.wikipedia no longer uses nofollow. -- Jeronim 18:12, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  noindex, nofollow 

message: What about requesting help from lots of users simultaniously? Like the translations of Encyclopædia Britannica articles User:Armour were asking for. Doesn't it count as spam in some way? How should it be dealt with? --Boivie 22:10, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple requests for help. 

message: Is  really necessary for most of the articles that it is on? If it must be used, please only put it down in the External links section, rather used as the article header. 
My personal opinion is that for articles that are permanent spam magnets (e.g. Search engine optimization), it would be better to have a "hidden" template that gets substituted in the External links section that adds an HTML comment warning spammers that they will get promptly reverted and possibly banned for multiple link spamming, and add the :Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup to the article. 
Any halfway intelligent link-spammmer will remove the template and category, so you also need to create a Wikipedia:List of frequently spammed articles. BlankVerse 00:28, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup-spam 

message: I've been noticing a lot of spam from a mailing list calling themselves  OTR digest Could we get a removal bot or a block for this site thanks. Deathawk 19:00, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  OTR Spam 

message: User:166.82.88.109 is adding to the external links section for a lot of articles related to Half-Life. I reverted one, but don't have time at the moment to go after the rest. Can anyone lend a hand? --Wrathchild (talk) 19:51, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spamming in progress 

message: Can someone please look at the recent contributions of User:Alpheus and decide whether the additions of this link is appropriate?  Thanks.  Deli nk 14:22, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say it's not appropriate. It serves no encyclopedic purpose and is just advertising for people to come edit it. Generally I am not in favor of linking to other wikis as by their nature they aren't going to be all that encyclopedic (anything they do that would be encyclopedic should be done here instead of linking there), and in this case it's not even trying to be info but a call to action. I'd say remove them all. DreamGuy 19:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a response to this matter on my talk page, under 'External links'. Good day. Alpheus 01:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And your response does nothing to justify the links at all and shows a crass disdain for our policies. DreamGuy 03:39, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My response admits my error, DreamGuy. Alpheus 04:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: CounterCulture Wikia

message: Recently I have been accused of link spamming because I was putting links to articles at mises.org. Other user deleted following links:
- from Criticisms of socialism:
* "The Impossibility of Economic Calculation Under Socialism", by Ludwig von Mises    
*  Socialism: Still Impossible After All These Years, by Peter J. Boettke and Peter T. Leeson 
* The Socialist Fantasy, by William L. Anderson  
* The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism, by Per Bylund
- from Marxism:
* Marx Lite, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo    
* A Farewell to Marx: An Outline and Appraisal of His Theories, by David Conway
* What the Nazis Borrowed from Marx, by Ludwig von Mises
Mises Institute is not a company and they don’t have adverts on pages. Linked articles are written by university professors and published authors and they can’t be found anywhere else on web. Is putting these links in the “External links” section link spamming? -- Vision Thing -- 14:53, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Link spamming 

message: This section hasn't changed significantly since User:MyRedDice wrote it in November 2004.  Recently, it seems to be increasingly the opinion of the community that internal spamming is strongly discouraged, and there is a discussion at WP:AN/I currently about an admin blocking users for internally spamming notifications of deletion discussions, presumably in an effort to "stack votes".
It has become apparent that we have no policy or guideline explicitly proscribing vote-stacking, and that WP:Spam here seems to condone it, by telling us how to do it politely.  On the other hand, there is an argument that it's disruptive, no matter how politely done, and we have the experience of having seen things like Wikipedia:Catholic Alliance of wikipedia by now.  I thought it might be a good idea to start a discussion here, not of the recent events at the Administrators' noticeboard, but about whether this guideline needs to be revised in some way to reflect what we've learned as a community in the last 18 months. -GTBacchus(talk) 02:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internal spamming, take 2 

message: there is a page where you can put web addresses that constantly get spamlinks on wikipedia. these web addresses are then checked when a user presses "save" - if one is included the user cannot save until that address is removed. does anyone know where that page is, and shouldnt it be mentioned on this page somewhere? Zzzzz 08:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: meta:Spam blacklist —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:27, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spam blacklist

message: Following a current discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list, and occasional earlier discussions elsewhere, where the it has met no opposition at all, I am hereby proposing that rel="nofollow" be enabled for external links on the English Wikipedia outside the main (i.e. article) namespace.
While the use of rel="nofollow" in Wikipedia articles has been and continues to be controversial, there is little reason not to use it on talk and other non-article pages.  The reason this has not been done so far is technical: there has been no way to enable rel="nofollow" in some namespaces but not others.
However, a patch now exists to enable this functionality in MediaWiki.  I am now seeking confirmation that consensus in fact exists to enable it on the English Wikipedia — if so, the technical aspects should be trivial.  Please note that this proposal is not about using rel="nofollow" in articles; this is not the time and place to discuss that.  Once the (presumably) uncontroversial part — using nofollow on non-article pages — has been dealt with, the remaining issues can then be discussed at leisure.
Please indicate your opinion on the matter below.
—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Do you have a source for the Google request? Snoutwood (talk) 23:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Never mind, here's something on it from Wikitech-l. Snoutwood (talk) 00:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: Enable rel="nofollow" outside the main namespace 

message: I've just read this project page and am left feeling intimidated. I try to work on poorly covered areas, and sometimes have to defend articles against deletion – or at least improve the level of discussion at the AfD. To do this, I often seek out the three (or whatever) other people on the whole of Wikipedia who might know something about the topic to add their comments either way. Will I be shot for spamming? The project page has a lot about what isn't allowed: very little explicitly on what is... Could you possibly expand? Nice people read this page as well as horrid spammers! Ta, JackyR | Talk 17:32, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fear of spamming accidentally 

message: The existing guideline says, "Don't attempt to sway consensus by encouraging participation in a discussion by people that you already know have a certain point of view, but do encourage people who might have an interest in the discussion, and whom you reasonably believe will objectively apply applicable Wikipedia policy, to participate in forming a consensus."  I am going to add have added, "You may inform multiple editors on both sides of an issue about a pertinent debate, but not those on just one side."  This will allow me to build consensus by posting an announcement on Wikiproject AntiUserBoxes and Wikiproject ProUserBoxes (the actual wikiproject names have been changed because they don't really matter; the point is that they are likely to have opposite viewpoints) without violating this guideline. Supplicant 01:07, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Um... rewording a guideline doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't do before, you know.  Do those Wikiprojects really exist?  How bizarre. -GTBacchus(talk) 05:20, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More on canvassing 

message: I made a page that takes an external link URL or domain name as input, and returns a list of all articles containing that link: . It's an automated version of a method I've been using to find linkspam.
The results are usually a couple of days old, so it's not good for reverting recent spam. Still, I think it could be useful for the links that are continually re-added to articles.
If you're interested, try it out and tell me what you think.  Is it a good idea? Is there an easier way of accomplishing the same thing? Wmahan. 06:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Very useful! I'm dealing with someone who is spamming one site across a large variety of pages, with a plausible enough link that it may not get caught, under a variety of accounts, so it's really hard to know that I've found it all. Just yesterday I found myself wishing for such a tool, and this caught seven pages I didn't know about. Thanks! · rodii · 13:52, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm glad you found it useful. That's just the sort of situation where I was hoping the tool would come in handy. Wmahan. 16:43, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you for your tool.  I find it very helpful.  Neil916 15:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Try Special:Linksearch. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  External link finder 

message: Are there any spam templates for talk pages that deal with actual advertising content added to the body of the article rather than just adding links, like Lisk Content Management System? Anand 13:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think :Template:Advert would be appropriate for such a situation. Maybe it should be mentioned on the project page. Wmahan. 16:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spam templates 

message: I've come across a sophisticated spammer who has done the full range of spamming - images, blatantly advertisement articles for (minor) companies, link-spamming and even promotional categories! They are obviously quite aware of all kinds of wikitricks, including making a null edit to their user page so they show up as a blue link (grrr) and getting rid of speedy deletion notices. Unfortunately I was the first one to apply the "spam" warning template to their talk page so it may be quite some time before they end up being banned. I found that the spam warning template doesn't apply so well to this kind of high-end spammer, they are obviously far more than just linkfarming, so it feels like they are being censured only for a minor part of their annoying activities. Should there not be a more general warning for spammers who engage in this full gamut of spamming? TheGrappler 05:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spam warning message to ad-spammers 

message: Hi.  Putting the sentence "You are encouraged to inform multiple editors on both sides of an issue about a pertinent debate." into the guideline doesn't make it true.  Where on Earth has it been the case that such activity is "encouraged".  Are we just lying the guidelines now, and using "you are encouraged to" to mean "I really want to"? GTBacchus(talk) 18:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand what you are asking.  If you are asking for examples, I can provide plenty where people have been notified about issues in a responsible way, and the person notified has responded in a reasonable and objective fashion.  What I don't know is the mechanics of showing those threads -- how do you do that?  Also, I don't appreciate you making me the subject of a debate -- feels like WP:PA -- please remove my name from the subheading.  Morton devonshire 03:05, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't consider you the subject of a "debate", Morton, and you're free to edit the subject heading to whatever you think it should be - this is a Wiki.  The statement I quoted above "you are encouraged to inform multiple editors..." says that editors are encouraged to notify a broad spectrum of other editors of a "pertinent debate".  I don't think that's true, which is to say, I don't think that activity is actually encouraged.  Who encourages it?  I'd like to see a case where someone has notified a lot of people on "both sides of an issue", and that's been "encouraged".  Like maybe it came up, that someone thought it might not be cool, and posted on AN/I, where the general consensus was "no, that's perfectly cool behavior, in fact, we encourage it."  Every time I remember a case of vote-notifying coming to the attention of the community at large, at AN/I or the Village Pump, there's been a pretty strong chorus of discouragement.  Would links help, to where that's happened?  Should the guidelines say that something is encouraged, when it is in fact regularly discouraged?  I could be wrong about this - if so, please show me. -GTBacchus(talk) 03:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morton Devonshire, come on down 

message: I think the spam guideline is a bit too narrow in scope and leaves the door open to more subtle forms of advertisement. There is an ongoing AfD debate on ABCOffice in which the user fighting for keep (User:ABCOffice.com) complains that Office Depot or Staples get an unfair advantage because their articles describe, for instance, their policy of "low price guarantee". To a certain extent that latter information can be considered as NPOV but I think that still should be considered as using Wikipedia as a vehicle for advertising. I think the spam guideline should include a section that specifically deals with what is fair game in such cases. Pascal.Tesson 15:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spamming vs advertising 

message: JA: Like any WP:Policy or Guideline whose fair and equal enforcement would depend on knowing the real-world identity and affiliations of each editor in question, the aspects of WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:VER, and WP:SPAM that deal with advancing particular purposes are simply null and void.  Just f'r'instance, nobody has any way of knowing for sure whether that editor or that cabal of evatars who are so insistent about imposing the POV of their favorite secondary source on an article is in fact the author or publisher of the work in question.  What will be the result of attempting to enforce a WikiProvision of this type — and I use the word "vision" blindly?  The editors who are honest enough to use their real names will be at the disadvantage of the editors, their agents, and their evatars who are not.  WikiPar for the course, of course.  Jon Awbrey 18:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yet Another Unenforceable Policy (YAUP)

message: Would anyone have a problem with me subst:ing and then decategorising the example of  on this page? It's coming up in categories and it would perhaps be better if it didn't. Thanks. —Xyrael / 20:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Substituting cleanup tag example 

message: I have made the guideline reflect reality by adding in the fact that spam is often deleted on sight and spammers are often blocked. Hipocrite - «Talk» 12:51, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never seen internal spam for AFDs, etc. be removed outright, nor have I ever seen anyone be blocked for it.  Could you provide some evidence of this? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: , from yesterday. If you believe that was out of process, I am happy to find other incidents. Hipocrite - «Talk» 20:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But have the messages/spammings themselves been deleted? IronDuke 02:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Hipocrite - «Talk» 10:34, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not trying to be a jerk, but can you show where? I am planning on making some changes to the page, time permitting (as per what I wrote above), and would like as much info and as many opinions as possible. IronDuke 13:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  and others discussed at []. As a side note, I suggest that you not make substantial changes to this guideline unless said changes reflect already existing consensus. Hipocrite - «Talk» 13:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the links. As for making changes, that is in fact exactly what I am contemplating, and will soon do, although I believe my changes will be entirely consistent with current policy (and I'm sure people will quickly let me know if I'm wrong). I (and others) have left numerous requests for comments and clarifications, and I welcome your input as well. IronDuke 14:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Right, spamming random people can get you blocked, that's true, and such spam is often removed (rather pointlessly, since the new-messages message still appears).  I was thinking of internal spamming generally, in which the recipients are often happy to be pointed to whatever you're trying to show them.  That generally doesn't ever get removed or blocked, as your addition suggested it did. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  In the cited example, the vote-stacking targets were excited and happy they were shown where to votestack. Hipocrite - «Talk» 19:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hmm, really?  Interesting. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  deleted/blocked 

message: In order to be a Wikipedia policy, something must have *WIDE* consensus, and not just be the point of view of a few advocates.  Please stop re-writing the Internal Spamming section to reflect what is your aggressive and not-widely-held point of view.  Morton devonshire 18:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your latest removal relies heavily on an ArbCom decision and yes, I do believe it pretty much reflects consensus.  There's certainly no reason to remove the fact that the ArbCom has held this against people before. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:14, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: One Arbcom decision, which did not turn on cross-posting, but on other disruptive behavior as the reason for discipline, does not constitute wide consensus.  We are not talking about editing an article here, we are talking about changing Wikipedia policy, and that requires a much wider consensus before implementation.  That wide consensus has to be demonstrated, not just alleged.  Morton devonshire 00:28, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone who is sympathetic to your position, Morton, I have to say I disagree with you. I think what evidence there is in terms of policy is all on the side of the deleted paragraphs. If you could come up with something countervailing, other decisions, which could be added to what was there already to modify it, I see no reason for anyone to object. My main objection isn't so much to the policy per se but to the vague way that it's presented. I think it's bound to confuse people. IronDuke 00:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I stand with the consensus that the paragraphs merit inclusion, and would like to see a clarification proposal. This appears to be strong consensus. Hipocrite - «Talk» 00:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I made one up here (in the festive purple box). Thoughts? IronDuke 01:05, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Remove "using userboxes," and I disagree with "usualy ok," to be replaced with "sometimes accepted." Hipocrite - «Talk» 15:55, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously, there is no consensus for your changes.  Morton devonshire 00:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Policy and Consensus

message: Okay, so I've made some changes. My intent was not to change policy here, but to illuminate it. Feel free, of course, to edit this mercilessly, but I hope people won't revert it; I believe that my changes reflect a rough consensus. IronDuke 21:37, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Hipocrite's edit of your proposal.  I've reverted a removal by Morton Devonshire. --Tony Sidaway 18:27, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fine. IronDuke 00:42, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Canvassing

message: What, if anything, is the policy for archived user talk page spam?  Should it be blanked or deleted or left alone?  I'm referring to this.  I've also posted the matter on the village pump if anyone is interested. Karwynn (talk) 17:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the isse is specifically spam in this instance... An article's talk page is for discussing the article, not the item/topic itself. There is a lot on that archive which should just probably be deleted since it's not about the article... /wangi 11:49, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Also, the non-main namespaces use rel="nofollow" (see above), which reduces the incentive to spam talk pages as compared to articles. Wmahan. 14:59, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archives 

message: Is there a WikiProject evaluating possible spam the way that there is one evaluating fair use issues. I've read this page, but don't see anywhere to go for an evaluation of a particular user's conduct or a particular set of links. The contributions by  on August 1 look to me like spamming for a particular video. My connection is not high-speed enough for me to look at the video and evaluate whether it might actually merit the link. Can someone check into this? And can someone tell me if there was a better place to report it? - Jmabel | Talk 05:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure if it's spam, but in general you can report possible spam at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam. Wmahan. 06:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where does one go to report possible spam? 

message: If I write, on my user page, a certain university I'm attending and link it to an article available on Wikipedia, is it considered spamming (or advertising the university)?
Thanks,
--JT 11:35, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it's not. The purpose of your user page is to help provide some context about yourself, see WP:USER for the relevant guidelines. Thanks/wangi 11:44, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about spam 

message: Regularly, ads icons are inserted in front of external links, that make it look like Wikipedia treats them special, promoting or endorsing those sites. This gets worse now with the templates used for external links to IMDb, MusicBrainz, etc.
*   Diff of the latest insertion of an icon ad in the template for MusicBrainz external links
* Last.fm spam icon (fair use) This external links icon ad for Last.fm keeps popping up right and left.
We really could use a specific, explicit point of policy against this (and a direct WP:ICONAD or WP:SPAMICON or something), that could be immediately cited in the edit summary for removing or reverting this spam without long discussions with each "new user" doing the spamming for those sites. We could also mention it in bold as a NoInclude warning in the related templates, so as to remove plausible denial to future offenders.
→ Crossposted at WP:VPP#Icon_ads_spam_making_it_like_Wikipedia_promotes_commercial_sites
-- 62.147.37.34 23:44, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Icon ads spam making it like Wikipedia promotes commercial sites 

message: I started reverting a long list of the same links by one IP, then realized they were more widespread than I thought; as of this writing, 142 links.  Thought it is a .org, it has Google ads. Personally, I think it might be appropriate for one or two articles (like Historical_marker), but the number of links shouts "spam" to me. OhNoitsJamie Talk 04:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To me, the fact that the links were mass-added gives the appearance of spam, and a few of the links I chose at random didn't have much unique content. Other IPs adding the links include  and . Wmahan. 06:58, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

text: The spamming continues almost as fast as I can remove it, for example by  and the first IP I mentioned above. Another one used previously is . Wmahan. 20:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  There are only about 17 left now (thanks to everyone who pitched in). The ones that remain are reasonably specific to the article, so I left some of them be. OhNoitsJamie Talk 22:27, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Historical markers website...spam?

message: : This was originally posted as a query on Requests for arbitration.  It has been moved here to facilitate permanent record-keeping.
: For the arbitration committee. --Tony Sidaway 02:30, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Briefly, I think a reasonable amount of communication about issues is fine. Aggressive propaganda campaigns are not. The difference lies in the disruption involved. If what is happening is getting everyone upset then it is a problem. Often the dividing line is crossed when you are contacting a number of people who do not ordinarily edit the disputed article. Fred Bauder 16:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Internal spamming/campaigning 

message: A small amount of link spamming has occurred on Electrical wiring and Electrical wiring (UK). I have placed an informal request on the talk page of the IP address, and then a final spam warning template when exactly the same behavior was repeated with no explaination. If the spamming continues, I will no longer be able to revert it due to the three revert rule. If necessary, where should I report this spamming? --Gerry Ashton 19:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Usually if you ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam about suspected spam, someone will take a look. In this case, it looks like the person stopped adding the links, at least for now. In case you didn't know, the standard practice for first-time spammers is to go through each of the templates , , , and  (or an informally-worded equivalent), waiting each time to see if the spamming continues, before resorting to blocks. Often an apparent spammer is slow to understand Wikipedia's policies against promotion, but will stop if gently corrected. Thanks and I hope you continue to help keep Wikipedia clean of spam the future. Wmahan. 20:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Also you should be made aware that the three revert rule does not apply to spam or vandalism. The only thing is to be sure that it actually is such, not an editorial dispute. Pollinator 03:19, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reporting link-spam

message: I got this message on my talk page: User_talk:DirkvdM#What_about_this.3F. I don't see how this is relevant to me, so it looks a lot like spam. actually, it looks a lot like something I'd find horribly uninteresting, but may be potentially dangerous to the 'weak of mind'. It's just that the one who put it on my page is not the same person who wrote that. So strictly speaking it is not spam, but that does not change anything from my pov. DirkvdM 13:23, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this spam? 

message: Could someone please have a look at this:
*
I believe that this clearly breaches Wikipedia:Spam and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines; but I would appreciate it if some more experienced people in this area had a look. It is part of a spamming campaign by sockpuppet , when they have even put spam in article space: . --Mais oui! 12:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk page abuse