A new site that has been popping up all over india media related articles by a range of IP spammers. Primarily the site consists of postings of copyright lyrics and film clips.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
IPs come from India and the same IP Block. Spamming the above URL. Avono ( talk) 18:18, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Other IP addresses:
Before I found those two (assigned to Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd.), I blocked the IP range 119.30.32.0/20 for 1 month. Aunup522 has been indef blocked. Please update this report if the problem resumes. ~ Amatulić ( talk) 18:31, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Defer to Global blacklist MER-C 12:32, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
This sockmaster and socks are changing good refs to links to this website. Ugly linkspam. Jytdog ( talk) 11:39, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
sgs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Links to these domains are being added by a number of IP editors. This may not be an exhaustive list.
As the websites are in Turkish I am not entirely sure what the content is, but the nature of the edits and the overall design of the linked pages make it clear that these are spam. 67.188.230.128 ( talk) 07:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
The Pirate Bay ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
The Piratebay was shutdown after a raid in December. Now SPAs are trying to change the link in the infobox to the one of the many mirror websites. This is dangerous as they could be used to spread malware as explained in this article [22]. The second link is also hidden under a pay wall. Avono ( talk) 00:42, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Bunch of accounts popping up just the last day spamming this domain. Seems to spam it three times and then jumps on to a new account. The ones I caught so far are:
As well as this older account:
Nymf ( talk) 13:18, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Domains:
Spammers:
The following IPs have already been blocked:
I've gone through and removed all links to the domain that I could find, as they all looked like copyvios.
IPs have been adding links to superficially helpful-appearing documents under the edupdf.org domain. The site doesn't even claim it has the rights to host these documents. All links redirect to documents hosted on chester250.org. The site has many pop-ups, and is aggressive about signing up users. Documents linked to in article are on a wide range of topics, and are added in spurts, which suggest this is deliberate.
Examples: Link to a 4th grade class syllabus at Fauna of Saskatchewan, Coral reef ecology at There's No Place Like Home (an episode of Lost the TV show), a government brochure which is just info from the the official site already linked, etc. With the possible exception of some of the government info, every single example I found, even the links that might otherwise have some value, were clear WP:ELNEVER copyvios.
The "PDFs" look like they're just crawled websites, or directly copied from other sites. Many of the documents, like the one added in this edit, include links to where the actual content came from. [25]
Many links misrepresented the target, as well, implying that the link was to an official website, instead of just a document hosted on a commercial site. [26] Gross. Grayfell ( talk) 08:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
This editor, who is currently blocked for two weeks for other infractions, has been spamming this url on article talk pages.
I asked the sysop who applied the most recent blocks what to do about this, and he suggested that one of the courses of action I might consider would be to ask for it to be added to the spam list.
This editor has simply littered talk pages w/the url. He will not listen to others -- he reverted Walter Görlitz who pointed to NOTAFORUM in deleting this editor's addition. See, e.g., here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Epeefleche ( talk) 04:55, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
viejaiglesiacatolicaromanaritolatino.wordpress.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Constantly being added to articles about Catholic churches and rites, either in the external links section or, more recently, at the very top of the article. Also added to category and category talk pages.
For example, see contributions of:
... discospinster talk 21:38, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
This website is constantly put in Microsoft Cortana article but is not registered to Microsoft. It is registered to an ISP in Istanbul, Turkey. Curiously, one of the persons who keep adding it, 92.44.220.141, is also from Istanbul, Turkey. Comodo Internet Security triggered a security alert while I was visiting this website.
Conclusion: High possibility of malware website being advertised in Wikipedia.
Best regards,
Codename Lisa (
talk)
10:33, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Added by various IPs. 203.17.70.53 ( talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot) most recently. It forwards to a Facebook fan community page. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Border Town ‖ 01:54, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Robert Ankony has admitted that he is ICEMANWCS here: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Icemanwcs&oldid=641703720#External_links He has also edit under a few different IP's such as http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Special:Contributions/70.123.198.250&offset=&limit=500&target=70.123.198.250 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/68.43.253.90. He has almost exclusively edited articles where he has inserted references, external links, and further reading references to his website, Vietnam Magazine and books he has written. It is clear he is using Wikipedia mostly as means to promote his own self interests. He violates many Wikipedia guidelines in doing so which include spamming, original research, and conflict of interest. I have placed a warning on his page as well as he promoted his website, books, magazine and self interests through Wikipedia for almost two years. 208.54.38.255 ( talk) 20:51, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
172.56.9.67 ( talk) 22:44, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
It appears that every article he has edited recently (maybe longer) has link spam to his own website, books and articles solely added by himself. 172.56.9.67 ( talk) 07:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
If this series of edits to Running is an example of his choice of references (an opinion piece in a newspaper), adding it in every possible place and then also in the external links section, then there is only one response possible: clear out everything and consider a considered re-addition by an uninvolved editor. I guess a final warning to the editor about adding links to this website is appropriate as well (if not an immediate block for violating terms of use, spamming/promotion). -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:12, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
All "source" the other's bullshit stories about celebrity deaths and the like. Caused some annoyance at Brian Bonsall and Wayne Knight today, pretty clear that's all they're good for. Trying to be sneaky by naming like actual rags. Internet people can and will be fooled. Best to preempt them. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:01, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Persistent spamming. -- TL22 ( talk) 19:59, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Request withdrawn - user blocked indef. -- TL22 ( talk) 20:41, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
My attention was first drawn to this by the site being spammed into ELs of 4 articles by the IP. I checked its usage and it is used in 170 articles, so before listing here, I posted at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#bible-history.com. Consensus there is that this site is not appropriate for use in WP, per WP:SELFPUBLISH, WP:FORK, WP:CIRCULAR, WP:ELNEVER and WP:COPYLINK. Please put on the blacklist. Thanks. Jytdog ( talk) 12:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
The IP was recently blocked for "vandalism" (note that reason should have been "adding spam links"), though it is likely that the IP will continue spamming the link after the block expires, so I recommend blacklisting the link to prevent further disruption. Note: Link additions were just links to watch the movies free, which is unlegitimate and Wikipedia is not a link depository. -- ToonLucas22 ( talk) 23:04, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
A fan website about the popular TV series Game of Thrones, being spammed by one long-term block-evading sockpuppeteer across related articles, notably as references for BLP content in violation of WP:BLP, presumably to promote the website. See generally Piandme ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Piandme/Archive, for recent spamming see the edits of the most recent sock DickissoWitty ( talk · contribs). Sandstein 23:39, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
Websites of company that sells research reagents, getting spammed into various articles about biology by the above IP and others. Jytdog ( talk) 11:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
one spammer, spamming two links into telemedicine articles. Seeking block for spammer here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#thetelemedicinedirectory.com Jytdog ( talk) 12:48, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
The 74' address added this spamlink to several articles, which i removed. The 71' just started adding them back today. Please put on the spamlist. Thanks. Jytdog ( talk) 14:11, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
New user adding this link to several articles. Not a source for encyclopedic content. Jytdog ( talk) 16:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Blacklist removal request:
The user who added this site to the blacklist stated that it is because it is 'Not a source for encyclopedic content'. Wikipedia states, that "the bar for blacklisting is whether a site was spammed to Wikipedia, or otherwise abused, not whether the content of the site is 'spammy' or unreliable. Please indicate why you expect that that abuse has stopped". So stating that they are blacklisted due to non encyclopedic content is incorrect here.
Furthermore, wikipedia says that Blacklisting a URL is a "last resort for spammers", which is not the case here, I am a new user who had a poor understanding of policy and can now see how my contributions could have been seen as spammy. I was not alerted to my wrongdoings till URLs cited were blacklisted.
Consequently, I have shown that the URLs were cited in goodwill and no more unreliable sources will be used, since I have a better understanding as the wikipedia user who submitted these sites. The most that should occur is that wikipedia users should simply reject these URLs as unreliable if cited in the future, thus, listing them in the blacklist is extreme for these sites with no history of abuse by a user with clearly little knowledge of the process, and certainly not the actions of a mass spammer.
Thankyou Thesib12 ( talk) 20:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
New user adding this link to several articles. Not a source for encyclopedic content. Jytdog ( talk) 16:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Blacklist removal
The user who added this site to the blacklist stated that it is because it is 'Not a source for encyclopedic content'. Wikipedia states, that "the bar for blacklisting is whether a site was spammed to Wikipedia, or otherwise abused, not whether the content of the site is 'spammy' or unreliable. Please indicate why you expect that that abuse has stopped". So stating that they are blacklisted due to non encyclopedic content is incorrect here.
Furthermore, wikipedia says that Blacklisting a URL is a "last resort for spammers", which is not the case here, I am a new user who had an admittedly poor understanding of policy, cited a few links in haste, and can now see how my contributions could have been seen as spammy. I was not alerted to my wrongdoings till URLs cited were blacklisted.
Consequently, I have shown that the URLs were cited in goodwill and no more unreliable sources will be used, since I now have a better understanding as the wikipedia user who submitted these sites. The suspected abuse will not continue and I am now well aware of how to cite effectively. The most that should occur is that wikipedia users should simply reject these URLs as unreliable if cited in the future, thus, listing them in the blacklist is extreme for these sites with no history of abuse by a user with clearly little knowledge of the process, and certainly not the actions of a mass spammer. I look forward to being a better member of the WP community.
Thank you Thesib12 ( talk) 20:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
There are many websites that are not reliable sources on wikipedia, one of which I informed you about, but that does not mean they are on the blacklist, simply rejected/changed if referred to in the future, blacklisting a URL is a last resort for serious 'spammers' - I would appreciate if an admin could take a look at this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thesib12 ( talk • contribs) 18:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
Declined -- activity insufficient for blacklisting, nothing in last month. MER-C 12:57, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
classicistranieri.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
All are added by IPs which geolocate to the Abruzzo region of Italy and who make no other additions to articles apart from adding links to this site. The links often go to recordings which are claimed to be licensed under creative commons but many are copyright infringements, in the US at least. Others go to mirrors of pages on Project Gutenberg. The site is full of ads and contains almost nothing that cannot be legitimately found on archive.org, Project Gutenberg, WikiSource, or Commons which are the original sources for the classicistranieri.com content. Voceditenore ( talk) 12:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
newest-cars.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
This user and the IP are beginning to spam in this website to a few car articles; sometimes they're replacing other references with it, other times they're trying to embed it into the main text. Warning the user just seems to have pushed them onto the IP. Website describes itself as a blog, and doesn't appear to name its authors, so it isn't reliable. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 10:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
esybuy.com is no more spam. Domain owner is changed & currently the domain is used by UAE online Shopping portal which is not doing any spam activities. But due to spamming activities of first domain owner the domain name is still in spam. Please follow the below links for more information.
/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive637
/info/en/?search=MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/September_2010
I would request the wikipedia admins remove the domain name esybuy.com from the spam list as soon as possible.
Asohailsk ( talk) 12:11, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
I'd suggest this, but I'm sure this has been rejected ten million times before. So, I won't bother properly justifying this request, other than to say that I find this spam blanket ban of five billion-or-whatever-it-is-now videos on the world's largest and most-significant video hosting website nothing short of a colossal misjudgement. At the very least a whitelist might be a good idea (or, if there is one, have that wall-of-text error message I received after my edit mention how to submit to the whitelist WHILE retaining the edit in a holding pattern). Tracing back my IP to the Talk-page edit of Choi Siwon will provide details. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:44B8:41CD:3800:FCE3:AE21:5DCC:8ABC ( talk) 15:28, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
identify.whatbird.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com It gives a lot of useful information on birds. As a normal editor without any deep Wikipedia knowledge, I do not understand why the link is banned.-- Michael ( talk) 16:29, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
This website give good articles that come from scholarly sources. I have verified that many of these articles have information that is accurate. I am unsure why this website has been blacklisted, but it would seem that someone may have found something that I have not. Please take a look at the information that is presented on this webpage and make a more educated decision on whether this site should be blacklised or not.
I tried to add reference to William Hill (bookmaker) with http://bookielist.com/bookmaker-review-william-hill and found out that it was blacklisted. The same got banned from Wikipedia, reason given was: # Reaper Eternal # Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Xbajs00. The link is a review to the article previously stated. -- Karlhard ( talk) 19:36, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
syriadirect.org is a valid site. It's blocked due to the fact that adirect.org is blacklisted. Someone has to fix the regex not to be that greedy. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
I was trying to add a link to http://www.mappery.com/map-of/Cambodian-National-Road-Map-also-Index-to-Provience-Road-Maps in a reference citation for National Highway 2 (Cambodia) and of course discovered mappery.com is black listed. I'm just wondering why it is black listed. Granted, it's probably not the most reliable of sources, but the map is legit. Is it because maps can be uploaded by users in violation of copyright? That's the only thing I could think of right off hand. I don't want to link the image (obviously), I just want to use the map as a reference for the route of the highway as I haven't been able to find anything better.-- William Thweatt Talk Contribs 08:35, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I was trying to include the link from this site for a wiki page of Sam Pitroda. But it seems this site is blacklisted by wikipedia. I am not seeing any other website with better reference for the Sam Pitroda Quotes than this site. If it is not safe to unlist the entire domain the specific page (<domainname>/2014/03/sam-pitroda-quotes/) can be removed from the blacklist.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.215.208.229 ( talk • contribs)
I've been approached by an employee of Manning Publications to ask for the publisher to be removed from the local blacklist. I myself am not an employee, but I have done some freelance editing work for Manning and continue to do so, and I'm a member of the Wikipedia Guild of Copyeditors.
Familiarization
I acquainted myself with the facts and sent an email back, including the following:
'It was perceived in June 2012 that a user who had received two warnings on their Talk page for spam in June 2011 was using unnamed accounts (IP address only) to post similar external links onto Wikipedia articles in subsequent months. The final item, for example, on the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=499832796#Long_term_book_seller_spam refers to User: 70.48.80.91 and a click on its contribs link shows two contributions only, both on the 27 June 2012. Clicking through to one of the pages contributed to by 70.48.80.91, Activiti (Software), on the View History tab shows that on 29 June 2012, the edit was reverted by User: Hu12 because it was 'not added to verify content.' That same day, Hu12 placed manning,com on the blacklist.
'The immediate reason for blacklisting, as far as I can see, was sockpuppetry. This is a Wikipedia term for when a user creates a number of accounts which purport to be from different users but are in fact from the same person. I have no idea whether it was User: Candace Gilhoolley who was posting links to manning.com as User: 70.48.80.91 on 29 June 2012, but Hu12 assumed that it was and manning,com was blacklisted.
'My suggestion is that Manning creates a single user account and becomes a more balanced contributor to Wikipedia; and in particular, all contributions go through this account. Some links to manning.com pages will be genuinely useful to Wikipedia visitors; explain so when this is the case, in the revision note to the update. If Wikipedia has only a single user to deal with, even where there is a problem, it is more likely that the user will be blocked than that the site the user is linking to will be blacklisted. That was why manning.com was not blacklisted in June 2011, because there was a channel of communication open, via your talk page. Sockpuppetry is much harder to deal with, hence the blacklist.'
How can the site be useful?
Links to a manning.com web page can be useful for verifying the facts in an article because Manning has an Early Access Program (MEAP) where current topics in the field of computer programming, and particularly web-related and data-related topics, are available in PDF format, with some draft chapters freely downloadable, along with illustrative source code.
Why it should no longer be blacklisted
I closed my email to this employee: 'Don't forget, the best way of advertising Manning Publications is to reference Manning texts in the main body of an article. Manning has a wealth of information in its published corpus, and information-packed sentences supported by reference to a Manning text, published or in MEAP, is surely the best advertising there is. After all, everybody knows how to copy/paste into Amazon's search box.
'I'll be happy to write a request for removing manning.com from Wikipedia's blacklist, but I will have to say that the reason for the blacklisting is now fully understood by those involved and that they will give assurances that they now understand Wikipedia a little better and are keen to become good Wikipedia citizens, along with all the good things I can say about Manning, reputable publisher, etc.'
The reply I received, and reproduce here with the permission of the Manning employee concerned, ended with the following:
'We are also interested in being a more balance user and have been providing some more links over this past month that enhance the existing documentation in the primary sections of articles. I also fully agree with the statement that we know what we did wrong and that we understand Wikipedia a little better and are keen to become good Wikipedia citizens.
'We have also asked our authors to add to wikipedia and have distributed these guidelines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles '
Richard asr ( talk) 12:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
examiner.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
How can the site be useful: As a repository for reviews of obscure but meritorious literature. I'd intended to include the following book review ( http://www.examiner DOT com/article/west-oversea-by-lars-walker ) in an article. It appears on-the-level, and from the reviewer's history ( http://www.examiner DOT com/books-in-columbus/kevin-holtsberry ) I have no reason to assume anything unsavory is going on behind the scenes. I would be happy with a whitelist or "grandfather exemption" for the first link in this paragraph.
Why it should not be blacklisted: From the relevant log entry, they appear they've been blocked since 2009. A prominent argument made during that discussion was: "(examiner)...offers its authors financial incentives to increase page views: "Examiners" are paid a very competitive rate based on standard Internet variables including page views, unique visitors, session length, and advertising performance."
That strikes me as a curious rationale for being blacklisted given that it's essentially identical to the business model of every other private-sector entry Wikipedia considers RS; for example, columnists at the New York Times have to move copy, and anchors on the TV news have to peg the Nielsens, or they're out the door looking for another line of work. With the rapid transition of former "dead tree" institutions onto the internet over the last five years, the differences are diminishing to indistinguishable. Many of them, such as the LA Weekly, rent blog space under their banner.
Otherwise, Wikipedia's main article doesn't link any cited criticism of Examiner.com more recent than 2011.-- Раціональне анархіст ( talk) 05:33, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
bitly.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
tinyurl.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
goo.gl.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
...and others.
Either these should all be restored, or the "pink alert" text of...
...should be removed for explicitly recommending editors embrace futility when attempting to link examples here during removal proposals.-- Раціональне анархіст ( talk) 05:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
tutorialspoint.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
How can the site be useful: tutorialspoint.com is a repository that provides free access to largest database of technical and non-technical tutorials. These tutorials are updated and kept up-to-date by their owners. There are many articles on WiKipedia where reference to this site can be given as example.
Why it should not be blacklisted: I have tried my best to search in which segment this website was blocked/spammed. I did not find any logs or information on why it is blocked. This website has very good Alexa ratings.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gopal Krishan Verma ( talk • contribs)
.compileonline.com
in
ALGOL and
Comparison of JavaScript-based source code editors. It is appropriate to link there in this context. When was the last time those links have been added massively? «
Saper //
@talk »
21:29, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
The site "ffconsultancy.com" is in global spam-blacklisting, though it was quite enough to put in a local English list. As far as I read on talk Spam, the whole portal was blocked because of "megalomania" of his author. It is sad, but it doesn't reduce the importance of the information on the site. The "Ray Tracer Language Comparison" (http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/) subpage of that portal is a very important WP:RS for pages like Hindley-Milner, MLton, Standard ML, OCaml, Scheme, Stalin (Scheme implementation), etc., and for C++ criticism. I'm sure, Jon Harrop won't spam Wiki in other languages, and there will be only a single link in each adequate page. So I request on moving the portal to local English wiki spam-blacklisting. (If he or someone will spam, the question may be decided locally.) -- Arachnelis (russian)
Simpler to link to search strings when sharing research path references than Google itself, contains no embedded advertising strings, is overall shorter to type out, and its url shortener isn't used by spam bots. 174.62.68.53 ( talk) 22:40, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I just trying to add a link to an article by Yad Vashem, which was blocked because Yad Vashem is on the spam list. I don't possibly why Vad Vashem should be on the blacklist, and I can't help, but wondering if this reflects somebody's anti-Semitic agenda. I would be very happy if that link was taken off the blacklist. Thanks! -- A.S. Brown ( talk) 01:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
aikido-sydney.com.au was blacklisted inadvertently along with sydney.com.au. sydney.com.au does not appear to be spammy either (any longer). Sam Watkins ( talk) 13:33, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
themeparkincorporated was blacklisted for adding the same link over and over again The user who did this in turn will no longer do it and will promise to continue to use Wikipedia appropriately by adding useful edits and useful links. The site it's self is aimed at bringing people the latest news from theme parks around the world and therefore the user was just trying to be helpful by adding useful and relevant links to pages. Please accept my apologizes and my word that I will no longer spam Wikipedia and I will instead help make it an even more useful site. [User talk: 176.10.98.140 ] 22:22, 8 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.10.98.140 ( talk)
flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Not sure why this was blacklisted ? The blocked site is the acedemic page of Bent Flyvbjerg which is part of the Aalborg University web site. Bent Flyvberg is a world-wide acedemic authority on project planning with numerous articles and even has his own Wiki article Bent Flyvbjerg. His groundbreaking article "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects" is cited in the Wiki article Cost overrun. Even though this article widely cited (it also returns 3,700 hits on Google) the full text is only available from the blocked site so I cannot add a link to it in the Wiki article citation :(
There is no reference to this this site in the Spam Log so I do not know who or why this site was entered onto the list. I do not think this site should be on the Wikipedia spam blacklist Bigglesjames ( talk) 19:36, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
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utilitywarehouse.co.uk: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com .
I am trying to update the address for the UK's sixth largest energy company, the Utility Warehouse. They are a FTSE listed company. Historically, customers were able to create subdirectories on this site and this led to abuse. This is no longer the case and spam abuse will no longer be an issue. The company's homepage is utilitywarehouse.co.uk. -- Sspyrou ( talk) 12:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I understand this revert of the addition of this link was due to the actions of a since-banned admin whose preventing its addition was PAE (paid advocacy editing). Accordingly, all of the user's edits to block URLs merit review. Anyone do that after the ban?-- Elvey( t• c) 17:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi, I am posting this proposal here after discussion with administrator Beetstra [31] so that wikipedia community can have their consensus to remove this site from the black list.
In 2012 my friend (owning borntosell.com) hired someone for online marketing and that person decided to spam wikipedia with their website. It was nothing that could not have been handled by blocking those 3 accounts and the single IP that were spamming but an admin decided to put the website in the blacklist right away. Which is ok but now they have stopped editing wikipedia since 2013 (1.5 years) to prove that they want to abide by the rules. The warning given to them was after adding the site to blacklist and they did not know wikipedia rules about which links were eligible, which is no excuse, but also not fair enough to get blacklisted. It is not an excuse but now they are ready to prove it by wikipedia norms by first stopping like you do in WP:Standard Offer for blocked users. I request that this website be removed from the wikipedia blacklist in exchange for the promise that they will not add it again and keep check on any PR working for them that they do not add links to wikipedia for online marketing. Wikipedia:Give 'em enough rope says people should be given a chance and if they do it again, you can add back so is it possible to remove it and see that they are keeping their promise.
Wikipedia does not need their links and they do not want to add as well, the main reasons for the request to get removed from the black list are that some other companies and websites copy and use wikipedia's blacklist as their own which is hurting their website ranking and also their newsletter which goes to spam folder of their subscribers even though it is not spam. They just asked me to explain to you as I regularly read wikipedia. I want to explain that they only want to disappear from your blacklist and they will stop getting involved with link spam. Kindly give your input and make consensus to remove this site from blacklist. -- Riven999 ( talk) 09:29, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
No objection on this? Can an administrator approve this now? -- Riven999 ( talk) 07:33, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I think wikipedia community should give consensus and a lone administrator should not decline it so I am appealing it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard so that regular contributors can give consensus and your objection is no more. -- Riven999 ( talk) 05:45, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
ebooks.abc-clio.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com This site was blacklisted by mistake. One IP editor ( who was only active on one day in 2013) found a useful reference in a serious encyclopedia published by ABC-Clio. He put it in a footnote and added that footnote to about four articles were was relevant. ABC-CLIO is a major publisher that specializes in books for university libraries, such as encyclopedias, and is heavily used by university students in both the print and e-book versions. Rjensen ( talk) 07:57, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
pickeringchatto.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Why would this publisher be blocked? Specifically I wanted to refer to the contents page of a forthcoming book on the page dealing with her work - Anna Seward. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 14:19, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Tried to include an archive.today URL (.today/YHMIR) with edit of Alternative Press Expo, but archive.today on spam-blacklist. Can't use archive.org Wayback NOR Webcitation.org because neither can handle hashtag (#) in middle of URL. QUESTION: What alternative archive website(s) can handle a hashtag in middle of URL? -- EarthFurst ( talk) 08:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
This section is to report problems with the blacklist. Old entries are archived |
Currently, "cbronline.com" is blacklisted on the English Wikipedia as of late 2013. "Computer Business Review Online" used to be a reasonable news source, but at some point it transitioned to "Your Tech Social Network" and went downhill. All the old URLs stopped working (the ones with the form "?guid=" followed by a long hex string) but can be fixed from the Internet Archive. New URLs have a different syntax. I suggest updating the regular expression on the blacklist to exclude URLs of the old form. They were legitimate links in many articles. In general, blacklisting links from years ago is a bad idea. It damages the encyclopedia. I'm trying to fix the mess Cydebot II created at RegisterFly now. John Nagle ( talk) 22:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
As a general reply to this. Look, it is not our fault that a company finds it necessary to optimize their search engine results, or to just generally make sure that their site gets promoted. I agree, sometimes sites are a reasonable source that is reasonably used, but if the amount of spam pushed by this company exceeds that level significantly (a whole long list of sites; a whole list of sock/meatpuppets, reports go back to 2009), then the spam blacklist is designed to just do what it should do: stop the spamming (it was not blacklisted in 2013, it was blacklisted in 2010).
Per Blethering Scot - Cyberbot II has not created a mess - the mess is completely at the side of the spammers who were the editors responsible for getting the site blacklisted. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 05:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Mr. Stradivarius, in my opinion this removal is long overdue. I have put in hours and hours of my time working to support whitelisting efforts for reference-links to this site (which has been a significant distraction from other projects I've committed to work on). I am willing to put in similar time manually reverting spam-links to this site which might result from this action. Until the time I spend reverting spam-links greatly exceeds the time I've already spent working towards whitelisting, I won't be supporting a re-blacklist of this site. I am still unclear on the best methods for detecting spam-link additions that point to this site. Any advice on how to do that is appreciated. Can an edit filter be created that flags any edits adding the text "cbronline"? If anyone points me to unwanted spam from this site I will work to remove it. Wbm1058 ( talk) 20:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
A case of trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer.Clearly the goal here is to put Progressive Digital Media Group out of business. We won't be satisfied until that organisation shuts down all its sites and turns off the lights. They are an evil organisation that needs to be banished from the face of the earth and we will do whatever it takes to deny them all sources of revenue. Yeah, we begrudgingly whitelist those old cbronline cites after making the requesters jump through lots of hoops and show a lot of patience, but we really want editors to just remove those links. Removing those links is easy and is the best and recommended way to get rid of that annoyingly helpful banner template our bot puts on those pages. Hey, I've identified another spammer. Google is spamming links to Wikipedia all over its search engine results. They need to stop that. Readers should just find Wikipedia articles by searching Wikipedia. We don't want or need Google's help to pay our bills, thank you. We need to blacklist Google until they stop spamming their search results with links to Wikipedia. Wbm1058 ( talk) 14:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Gentlemen, I added this on another page, but it is more appropriated to add it here. Please see my findings below.
designbuild-network.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
roadtraffic-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
airforce-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
power-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
aerospace-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
foodprocessing-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
airport-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
army-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
mining-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
naval-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
railway-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
offshore-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
ship-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Less used, from the same group:
semiconductor-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
mobilecomms-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
hotelmanagement-network.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
water-technology.net: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
I could identify only some spammers, as apparently they have been active since 2006 at least. All those domains appear to be part of the same farm and have about 2k links combined. They are all part of Kable.
Some sites appear to have actual content, many links are just dropped on the "external links" section.
Legionarius ( talk) 03:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I recently looked at a page for the Boeing 737 Next Generation (and, related, the Boeing 737 root page which also mentions the 737NG), and I saw the site aerospace-technology.com on the blacklist. This, with other previously posted examples in this section, I've seen that these appear at first glance to be valid references. However, I haven't had the chance (and won't have the time) to scrutinize the site; all I'm saying is that I think that some people need to go through all the sites made by these posters, to check their accuracy, and, if necessary, change the links, whitelist the links, or even remove the sites from the blacklist. I'd do it myself, but I don't have the time commitment necessary to do that massive task; only just to add the Boeing 737NG link issue to your attention.
In my personal opinion, though it does come off as spammy in the way it was posted, and even if the person posting the links may be paid to do it (proof permitting; after all, it could be someone who -really- likes cbronline.com as a reference), if the sources are valid (unless it's against Wikipedia policy), as long as they are accurate, why not leave them as is and keep them off the blacklist? But again, that's just me. :)
From what I've seen, all the External Links shown seem to directly relate to the content, so there's no question on whether it's on the wrong page or not, and it does help explain the content similar to a reference. I see it in similar vein to a link to almost any movie's wikipedia page, that almost always has a metacritic.com, rottentomatoes.com, and/or some other review site page on it, even though they are all ultimately business sites, similar to cbonline.com. But again, I'm not educated on this particular website host, so if I'm mistaken, feel free to let me know. The Legacy ( talk) 18:31, 4 April 2014 (UTC) (Edited The Legacy ( talk) 18:39, 4 April 2014 (UTC))
I've just seen dozens of railway related articles tagged by the bot because they contain links from railway-technology. Most of these links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations in many articles. I added some of them myself. And I'm certainly not a spammer. This has been raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Trains#Blacklisted website. This bot is causing more havoc to the wikipedia than any spammer could, and I rather resent this taking up time which I could better put to something useful! G-13114 ( talk) 21:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
All what was said about Railway-Technology.com applies also to Power-Technology.com and Offshore-Technology.com. The first one is included in more than 150 articles and the second one is included in more than 130 articles. Most of these links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations. And as the previous editor, also I may say that a number of these links were added by me and I am not a spammer. It is also unacceptable that that kind of mass listings are made without prior notification of affected Wikiprojects (concerning these two sites it is mainly WP:Energy but also WP:Geology, WP:Dams and some others). Beagel ( talk) 16:43, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
The first is used in over 300 articles, the second over 200. These links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations. It seems that the blacklist is a bigger menace to the integrity of the wikipedia that any spammer. Hawkeye7 ( talk) 06:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I have for now commented out the blacklisting, though I will encourage further discussion (and I will undo this if I find ongoing abuse or see that the scale is bigger than expected - we have a blacklist and whitelist for a reason). There is to me NO question that CBROnline and Kable are spamming Wikipedia using multiple Single Purpose Accounts, and that they have been doing this for many, many years now. Although regulars have been using this site, I know that spammers have engaged in 'reference spamming' as well as plain external link spamming. This is an issue that needs to be resolved, as this (the spamming) goes straight against our core policies and guidelines. I am also worried by several (knowledgeable) voices saying that either the information they provide is replaceable, or is used to support not-notable information. Editors may want to start and look into those issues. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Just noting, that I do not have any problem if another admin disagrees with my (temporary) removal of the blacklisting and reverts that removal. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:58, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Are these sites on XLinkBot? MER-C 07:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
...this is one for long-term abuse. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 07:02, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
This issue has been building for some time; see MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/December 2013#cbronline.com for an earlier thread. Extracting some comments from that:
A journal like the Times does not need spam to get their links out (so that says something about companies that do spam), moreover, if a site like that would engage in a massive spamming campaign, we would indeed have a nice problem, which likely would be handled through the legal department of Wikimedia (we have had congressman or their representatives spam Wikipedia - besides blocking, they have to be reported to the Foundation). I would however not exclude that if such a site would engage in such massive spamming, that blacklisting (though more likely an edit filter) may be needed to mitigate the problem - and it has happened for sites like that.
We have something of on an ongoing crisis in journalism, as traditional print newspapers have become more and more scarce, and those that survive have shrinking resources and content. If all we have left are a handful of sources who can afford not spamming Wikipedia to build their audience, then the only remaining available media may be that provided by a handful of major corporations who will have a de facto oligopoly on the news. Why should we give the Times or any other major media special treatment? Shouldn't Progressive Digital Media be given equal treatment? Has Wikimedia's legal department been made aware of this situation? Why haven't we used an edit filter to deal with this problem, as would "more likely" be done to fight Times spam? A cynic—and make no mistake, in my earlier post that was dismissed as "ridiculous", I was in cynic or devil's advocate mode—might think that the problem was that Progressive Digital Media wasn't generous enough with contributions to the Foundation, and that the Foundation favors organisations that are generous towards it. Wbm1058 ( talk) 15:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
The blacklist contains the following entry:
\b^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b
As far as I can tell, the intent is to block IPv4 addresses – but that entry contains a caret (just after the first "\b") which prevents this rule from actually working. You can paste this anywhere, and it will just work:
[http://192.168.1.1/ foo]
-- Gutza T T+ 07:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
tinyurl.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
I want to add the full URL for TinyURL.com in the infobox for the article about that website: TinyURL. I cannot save that change because TinyURL.com is on the spam blacklist. Is there a way to do this? I am a long-confirmed registered Wikipedian, I have no connection to this company, and hate spam at least as much as anybody. However, it is standard practice to include a working (i.e., clickable) hyperlink in an article about a company or website.— Finell 05:35, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
A new site that has been popping up all over india media related articles by a range of IP spammers. Primarily the site consists of postings of copyright lyrics and film clips.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 13:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
IPs come from India and the same IP Block. Spamming the above URL. Avono ( talk) 18:18, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Other IP addresses:
Before I found those two (assigned to Teletalk Bangladesh Ltd.), I blocked the IP range 119.30.32.0/20 for 1 month. Aunup522 has been indef blocked. Please update this report if the problem resumes. ~ Amatulić ( talk) 18:31, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Defer to Global blacklist MER-C 12:32, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
This sockmaster and socks are changing good refs to links to this website. Ugly linkspam. Jytdog ( talk) 11:39, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
sgs.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Links to these domains are being added by a number of IP editors. This may not be an exhaustive list.
As the websites are in Turkish I am not entirely sure what the content is, but the nature of the edits and the overall design of the linked pages make it clear that these are spam. 67.188.230.128 ( talk) 07:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
The Pirate Bay ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
The Piratebay was shutdown after a raid in December. Now SPAs are trying to change the link in the infobox to the one of the many mirror websites. This is dangerous as they could be used to spread malware as explained in this article [22]. The second link is also hidden under a pay wall. Avono ( talk) 00:42, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Bunch of accounts popping up just the last day spamming this domain. Seems to spam it three times and then jumps on to a new account. The ones I caught so far are:
As well as this older account:
Nymf ( talk) 13:18, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
Domains:
Spammers:
The following IPs have already been blocked:
I've gone through and removed all links to the domain that I could find, as they all looked like copyvios.
IPs have been adding links to superficially helpful-appearing documents under the edupdf.org domain. The site doesn't even claim it has the rights to host these documents. All links redirect to documents hosted on chester250.org. The site has many pop-ups, and is aggressive about signing up users. Documents linked to in article are on a wide range of topics, and are added in spurts, which suggest this is deliberate.
Examples: Link to a 4th grade class syllabus at Fauna of Saskatchewan, Coral reef ecology at There's No Place Like Home (an episode of Lost the TV show), a government brochure which is just info from the the official site already linked, etc. With the possible exception of some of the government info, every single example I found, even the links that might otherwise have some value, were clear WP:ELNEVER copyvios.
The "PDFs" look like they're just crawled websites, or directly copied from other sites. Many of the documents, like the one added in this edit, include links to where the actual content came from. [25]
Many links misrepresented the target, as well, implying that the link was to an official website, instead of just a document hosted on a commercial site. [26] Gross. Grayfell ( talk) 08:35, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
This editor, who is currently blocked for two weeks for other infractions, has been spamming this url on article talk pages.
I asked the sysop who applied the most recent blocks what to do about this, and he suggested that one of the courses of action I might consider would be to ask for it to be added to the spam list.
This editor has simply littered talk pages w/the url. He will not listen to others -- he reverted Walter Görlitz who pointed to NOTAFORUM in deleting this editor's addition. See, e.g., here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Epeefleche ( talk) 04:55, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
viejaiglesiacatolicaromanaritolatino.wordpress.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Constantly being added to articles about Catholic churches and rites, either in the external links section or, more recently, at the very top of the article. Also added to category and category talk pages.
For example, see contributions of:
... discospinster talk 21:38, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
This website is constantly put in Microsoft Cortana article but is not registered to Microsoft. It is registered to an ISP in Istanbul, Turkey. Curiously, one of the persons who keep adding it, 92.44.220.141, is also from Istanbul, Turkey. Comodo Internet Security triggered a security alert while I was visiting this website.
Conclusion: High possibility of malware website being advertised in Wikipedia.
Best regards,
Codename Lisa (
talk)
10:33, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
Added by various IPs. 203.17.70.53 ( talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot) most recently. It forwards to a Facebook fan community page. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Border Town ‖ 01:54, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
Robert Ankony has admitted that he is ICEMANWCS here: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Icemanwcs&oldid=641703720#External_links He has also edit under a few different IP's such as http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Special:Contributions/70.123.198.250&offset=&limit=500&target=70.123.198.250 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/68.43.253.90. He has almost exclusively edited articles where he has inserted references, external links, and further reading references to his website, Vietnam Magazine and books he has written. It is clear he is using Wikipedia mostly as means to promote his own self interests. He violates many Wikipedia guidelines in doing so which include spamming, original research, and conflict of interest. I have placed a warning on his page as well as he promoted his website, books, magazine and self interests through Wikipedia for almost two years. 208.54.38.255 ( talk) 20:51, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
172.56.9.67 ( talk) 22:44, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
It appears that every article he has edited recently (maybe longer) has link spam to his own website, books and articles solely added by himself. 172.56.9.67 ( talk) 07:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
If this series of edits to Running is an example of his choice of references (an opinion piece in a newspaper), adding it in every possible place and then also in the external links section, then there is only one response possible: clear out everything and consider a considered re-addition by an uninvolved editor. I guess a final warning to the editor about adding links to this website is appropriate as well (if not an immediate block for violating terms of use, spamming/promotion). -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:12, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
All "source" the other's bullshit stories about celebrity deaths and the like. Caused some annoyance at Brian Bonsall and Wayne Knight today, pretty clear that's all they're good for. Trying to be sneaky by naming like actual rags. Internet people can and will be fooled. Best to preempt them. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:01, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
Persistent spamming. -- TL22 ( talk) 19:59, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Request withdrawn - user blocked indef. -- TL22 ( talk) 20:41, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
My attention was first drawn to this by the site being spammed into ELs of 4 articles by the IP. I checked its usage and it is used in 170 articles, so before listing here, I posted at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#bible-history.com. Consensus there is that this site is not appropriate for use in WP, per WP:SELFPUBLISH, WP:FORK, WP:CIRCULAR, WP:ELNEVER and WP:COPYLINK. Please put on the blacklist. Thanks. Jytdog ( talk) 12:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
The IP was recently blocked for "vandalism" (note that reason should have been "adding spam links"), though it is likely that the IP will continue spamming the link after the block expires, so I recommend blacklisting the link to prevent further disruption. Note: Link additions were just links to watch the movies free, which is unlegitimate and Wikipedia is not a link depository. -- ToonLucas22 ( talk) 23:04, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
A fan website about the popular TV series Game of Thrones, being spammed by one long-term block-evading sockpuppeteer across related articles, notably as references for BLP content in violation of WP:BLP, presumably to promote the website. See generally Piandme ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Piandme/Archive, for recent spamming see the edits of the most recent sock DickissoWitty ( talk · contribs). Sandstein 23:39, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
Websites of company that sells research reagents, getting spammed into various articles about biology by the above IP and others. Jytdog ( talk) 11:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
one spammer, spamming two links into telemedicine articles. Seeking block for spammer here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#thetelemedicinedirectory.com Jytdog ( talk) 12:48, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
The 74' address added this spamlink to several articles, which i removed. The 71' just started adding them back today. Please put on the spamlist. Thanks. Jytdog ( talk) 14:11, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
New user adding this link to several articles. Not a source for encyclopedic content. Jytdog ( talk) 16:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Blacklist removal request:
The user who added this site to the blacklist stated that it is because it is 'Not a source for encyclopedic content'. Wikipedia states, that "the bar for blacklisting is whether a site was spammed to Wikipedia, or otherwise abused, not whether the content of the site is 'spammy' or unreliable. Please indicate why you expect that that abuse has stopped". So stating that they are blacklisted due to non encyclopedic content is incorrect here.
Furthermore, wikipedia says that Blacklisting a URL is a "last resort for spammers", which is not the case here, I am a new user who had a poor understanding of policy and can now see how my contributions could have been seen as spammy. I was not alerted to my wrongdoings till URLs cited were blacklisted.
Consequently, I have shown that the URLs were cited in goodwill and no more unreliable sources will be used, since I have a better understanding as the wikipedia user who submitted these sites. The most that should occur is that wikipedia users should simply reject these URLs as unreliable if cited in the future, thus, listing them in the blacklist is extreme for these sites with no history of abuse by a user with clearly little knowledge of the process, and certainly not the actions of a mass spammer.
Thankyou Thesib12 ( talk) 20:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
New user adding this link to several articles. Not a source for encyclopedic content. Jytdog ( talk) 16:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
Blacklist removal
The user who added this site to the blacklist stated that it is because it is 'Not a source for encyclopedic content'. Wikipedia states, that "the bar for blacklisting is whether a site was spammed to Wikipedia, or otherwise abused, not whether the content of the site is 'spammy' or unreliable. Please indicate why you expect that that abuse has stopped". So stating that they are blacklisted due to non encyclopedic content is incorrect here.
Furthermore, wikipedia says that Blacklisting a URL is a "last resort for spammers", which is not the case here, I am a new user who had an admittedly poor understanding of policy, cited a few links in haste, and can now see how my contributions could have been seen as spammy. I was not alerted to my wrongdoings till URLs cited were blacklisted.
Consequently, I have shown that the URLs were cited in goodwill and no more unreliable sources will be used, since I now have a better understanding as the wikipedia user who submitted these sites. The suspected abuse will not continue and I am now well aware of how to cite effectively. The most that should occur is that wikipedia users should simply reject these URLs as unreliable if cited in the future, thus, listing them in the blacklist is extreme for these sites with no history of abuse by a user with clearly little knowledge of the process, and certainly not the actions of a mass spammer. I look forward to being a better member of the WP community.
Thank you Thesib12 ( talk) 20:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
There are many websites that are not reliable sources on wikipedia, one of which I informed you about, but that does not mean they are on the blacklist, simply rejected/changed if referred to in the future, blacklisting a URL is a last resort for serious 'spammers' - I would appreciate if an admin could take a look at this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thesib12 ( talk • contribs) 18:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
Declined -- activity insufficient for blacklisting, nothing in last month. MER-C 12:57, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
classicistranieri.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
All are added by IPs which geolocate to the Abruzzo region of Italy and who make no other additions to articles apart from adding links to this site. The links often go to recordings which are claimed to be licensed under creative commons but many are copyright infringements, in the US at least. Others go to mirrors of pages on Project Gutenberg. The site is full of ads and contains almost nothing that cannot be legitimately found on archive.org, Project Gutenberg, WikiSource, or Commons which are the original sources for the classicistranieri.com content. Voceditenore ( talk) 12:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
newest-cars.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
This user and the IP are beginning to spam in this website to a few car articles; sometimes they're replacing other references with it, other times they're trying to embed it into the main text. Warning the user just seems to have pushed them onto the IP. Website describes itself as a blog, and doesn't appear to name its authors, so it isn't reliable. Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 10:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
esybuy.com is no more spam. Domain owner is changed & currently the domain is used by UAE online Shopping portal which is not doing any spam activities. But due to spamming activities of first domain owner the domain name is still in spam. Please follow the below links for more information.
/info/en/?search=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive637
/info/en/?search=MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/September_2010
I would request the wikipedia admins remove the domain name esybuy.com from the spam list as soon as possible.
Asohailsk ( talk) 12:11, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
I'd suggest this, but I'm sure this has been rejected ten million times before. So, I won't bother properly justifying this request, other than to say that I find this spam blanket ban of five billion-or-whatever-it-is-now videos on the world's largest and most-significant video hosting website nothing short of a colossal misjudgement. At the very least a whitelist might be a good idea (or, if there is one, have that wall-of-text error message I received after my edit mention how to submit to the whitelist WHILE retaining the edit in a holding pattern). Tracing back my IP to the Talk-page edit of Choi Siwon will provide details. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:44B8:41CD:3800:FCE3:AE21:5DCC:8ABC ( talk) 15:28, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
identify.whatbird.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com It gives a lot of useful information on birds. As a normal editor without any deep Wikipedia knowledge, I do not understand why the link is banned.-- Michael ( talk) 16:29, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
This website give good articles that come from scholarly sources. I have verified that many of these articles have information that is accurate. I am unsure why this website has been blacklisted, but it would seem that someone may have found something that I have not. Please take a look at the information that is presented on this webpage and make a more educated decision on whether this site should be blacklised or not.
I tried to add reference to William Hill (bookmaker) with http://bookielist.com/bookmaker-review-william-hill and found out that it was blacklisted. The same got banned from Wikipedia, reason given was: # Reaper Eternal # Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Xbajs00. The link is a review to the article previously stated. -- Karlhard ( talk) 19:36, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
syriadirect.org is a valid site. It's blocked due to the fact that adirect.org is blacklisted. Someone has to fix the regex not to be that greedy. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 09:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
I was trying to add a link to http://www.mappery.com/map-of/Cambodian-National-Road-Map-also-Index-to-Provience-Road-Maps in a reference citation for National Highway 2 (Cambodia) and of course discovered mappery.com is black listed. I'm just wondering why it is black listed. Granted, it's probably not the most reliable of sources, but the map is legit. Is it because maps can be uploaded by users in violation of copyright? That's the only thing I could think of right off hand. I don't want to link the image (obviously), I just want to use the map as a reference for the route of the highway as I haven't been able to find anything better.-- William Thweatt Talk Contribs 08:35, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
I was trying to include the link from this site for a wiki page of Sam Pitroda. But it seems this site is blacklisted by wikipedia. I am not seeing any other website with better reference for the Sam Pitroda Quotes than this site. If it is not safe to unlist the entire domain the specific page (<domainname>/2014/03/sam-pitroda-quotes/) can be removed from the blacklist.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.215.208.229 ( talk • contribs)
I've been approached by an employee of Manning Publications to ask for the publisher to be removed from the local blacklist. I myself am not an employee, but I have done some freelance editing work for Manning and continue to do so, and I'm a member of the Wikipedia Guild of Copyeditors.
Familiarization
I acquainted myself with the facts and sent an email back, including the following:
'It was perceived in June 2012 that a user who had received two warnings on their Talk page for spam in June 2011 was using unnamed accounts (IP address only) to post similar external links onto Wikipedia articles in subsequent months. The final item, for example, on the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=499832796#Long_term_book_seller_spam refers to User: 70.48.80.91 and a click on its contribs link shows two contributions only, both on the 27 June 2012. Clicking through to one of the pages contributed to by 70.48.80.91, Activiti (Software), on the View History tab shows that on 29 June 2012, the edit was reverted by User: Hu12 because it was 'not added to verify content.' That same day, Hu12 placed manning,com on the blacklist.
'The immediate reason for blacklisting, as far as I can see, was sockpuppetry. This is a Wikipedia term for when a user creates a number of accounts which purport to be from different users but are in fact from the same person. I have no idea whether it was User: Candace Gilhoolley who was posting links to manning.com as User: 70.48.80.91 on 29 June 2012, but Hu12 assumed that it was and manning,com was blacklisted.
'My suggestion is that Manning creates a single user account and becomes a more balanced contributor to Wikipedia; and in particular, all contributions go through this account. Some links to manning.com pages will be genuinely useful to Wikipedia visitors; explain so when this is the case, in the revision note to the update. If Wikipedia has only a single user to deal with, even where there is a problem, it is more likely that the user will be blocked than that the site the user is linking to will be blacklisted. That was why manning.com was not blacklisted in June 2011, because there was a channel of communication open, via your talk page. Sockpuppetry is much harder to deal with, hence the blacklist.'
How can the site be useful?
Links to a manning.com web page can be useful for verifying the facts in an article because Manning has an Early Access Program (MEAP) where current topics in the field of computer programming, and particularly web-related and data-related topics, are available in PDF format, with some draft chapters freely downloadable, along with illustrative source code.
Why it should no longer be blacklisted
I closed my email to this employee: 'Don't forget, the best way of advertising Manning Publications is to reference Manning texts in the main body of an article. Manning has a wealth of information in its published corpus, and information-packed sentences supported by reference to a Manning text, published or in MEAP, is surely the best advertising there is. After all, everybody knows how to copy/paste into Amazon's search box.
'I'll be happy to write a request for removing manning.com from Wikipedia's blacklist, but I will have to say that the reason for the blacklisting is now fully understood by those involved and that they will give assurances that they now understand Wikipedia a little better and are keen to become good Wikipedia citizens, along with all the good things I can say about Manning, reputable publisher, etc.'
The reply I received, and reproduce here with the permission of the Manning employee concerned, ended with the following:
'We are also interested in being a more balance user and have been providing some more links over this past month that enhance the existing documentation in the primary sections of articles. I also fully agree with the statement that we know what we did wrong and that we understand Wikipedia a little better and are keen to become good Wikipedia citizens.
'We have also asked our authors to add to wikipedia and have distributed these guidelines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles '
Richard asr ( talk) 12:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
examiner.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
How can the site be useful: As a repository for reviews of obscure but meritorious literature. I'd intended to include the following book review ( http://www.examiner DOT com/article/west-oversea-by-lars-walker ) in an article. It appears on-the-level, and from the reviewer's history ( http://www.examiner DOT com/books-in-columbus/kevin-holtsberry ) I have no reason to assume anything unsavory is going on behind the scenes. I would be happy with a whitelist or "grandfather exemption" for the first link in this paragraph.
Why it should not be blacklisted: From the relevant log entry, they appear they've been blocked since 2009. A prominent argument made during that discussion was: "(examiner)...offers its authors financial incentives to increase page views: "Examiners" are paid a very competitive rate based on standard Internet variables including page views, unique visitors, session length, and advertising performance."
That strikes me as a curious rationale for being blacklisted given that it's essentially identical to the business model of every other private-sector entry Wikipedia considers RS; for example, columnists at the New York Times have to move copy, and anchors on the TV news have to peg the Nielsens, or they're out the door looking for another line of work. With the rapid transition of former "dead tree" institutions onto the internet over the last five years, the differences are diminishing to indistinguishable. Many of them, such as the LA Weekly, rent blog space under their banner.
Otherwise, Wikipedia's main article doesn't link any cited criticism of Examiner.com more recent than 2011.-- Раціональне анархіст ( talk) 05:33, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
bitly.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
tinyurl.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
goo.gl.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
...and others.
Either these should all be restored, or the "pink alert" text of...
...should be removed for explicitly recommending editors embrace futility when attempting to link examples here during removal proposals.-- Раціональне анархіст ( talk) 05:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
tutorialspoint.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
How can the site be useful: tutorialspoint.com is a repository that provides free access to largest database of technical and non-technical tutorials. These tutorials are updated and kept up-to-date by their owners. There are many articles on WiKipedia where reference to this site can be given as example.
Why it should not be blacklisted: I have tried my best to search in which segment this website was blocked/spammed. I did not find any logs or information on why it is blocked. This website has very good Alexa ratings.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gopal Krishan Verma ( talk • contribs)
.compileonline.com
in
ALGOL and
Comparison of JavaScript-based source code editors. It is appropriate to link there in this context. When was the last time those links have been added massively? «
Saper //
@talk »
21:29, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
The site "ffconsultancy.com" is in global spam-blacklisting, though it was quite enough to put in a local English list. As far as I read on talk Spam, the whole portal was blocked because of "megalomania" of his author. It is sad, but it doesn't reduce the importance of the information on the site. The "Ray Tracer Language Comparison" (http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/) subpage of that portal is a very important WP:RS for pages like Hindley-Milner, MLton, Standard ML, OCaml, Scheme, Stalin (Scheme implementation), etc., and for C++ criticism. I'm sure, Jon Harrop won't spam Wiki in other languages, and there will be only a single link in each adequate page. So I request on moving the portal to local English wiki spam-blacklisting. (If he or someone will spam, the question may be decided locally.) -- Arachnelis (russian)
Simpler to link to search strings when sharing research path references than Google itself, contains no embedded advertising strings, is overall shorter to type out, and its url shortener isn't used by spam bots. 174.62.68.53 ( talk) 22:40, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
I just trying to add a link to an article by Yad Vashem, which was blocked because Yad Vashem is on the spam list. I don't possibly why Vad Vashem should be on the blacklist, and I can't help, but wondering if this reflects somebody's anti-Semitic agenda. I would be very happy if that link was taken off the blacklist. Thanks! -- A.S. Brown ( talk) 01:26, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
aikido-sydney.com.au was blacklisted inadvertently along with sydney.com.au. sydney.com.au does not appear to be spammy either (any longer). Sam Watkins ( talk) 13:33, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
themeparkincorporated was blacklisted for adding the same link over and over again The user who did this in turn will no longer do it and will promise to continue to use Wikipedia appropriately by adding useful edits and useful links. The site it's self is aimed at bringing people the latest news from theme parks around the world and therefore the user was just trying to be helpful by adding useful and relevant links to pages. Please accept my apologizes and my word that I will no longer spam Wikipedia and I will instead help make it an even more useful site. [User talk: 176.10.98.140 ] 22:22, 8 March 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.10.98.140 ( talk)
flyvbjerg.plan.aau.dk: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Not sure why this was blacklisted ? The blocked site is the acedemic page of Bent Flyvbjerg which is part of the Aalborg University web site. Bent Flyvberg is a world-wide acedemic authority on project planning with numerous articles and even has his own Wiki article Bent Flyvbjerg. His groundbreaking article "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects" is cited in the Wiki article Cost overrun. Even though this article widely cited (it also returns 3,700 hits on Google) the full text is only available from the blocked site so I cannot add a link to it in the Wiki article citation :(
There is no reference to this this site in the Spam Log so I do not know who or why this site was entered onto the list. I do not think this site should be on the Wikipedia spam blacklist Bigglesjames ( talk) 19:36, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
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utilitywarehouse.co.uk: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com .
I am trying to update the address for the UK's sixth largest energy company, the Utility Warehouse. They are a FTSE listed company. Historically, customers were able to create subdirectories on this site and this led to abuse. This is no longer the case and spam abuse will no longer be an issue. The company's homepage is utilitywarehouse.co.uk. -- Sspyrou ( talk) 12:54, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I understand this revert of the addition of this link was due to the actions of a since-banned admin whose preventing its addition was PAE (paid advocacy editing). Accordingly, all of the user's edits to block URLs merit review. Anyone do that after the ban?-- Elvey( t• c) 17:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
Hi, I am posting this proposal here after discussion with administrator Beetstra [31] so that wikipedia community can have their consensus to remove this site from the black list.
In 2012 my friend (owning borntosell.com) hired someone for online marketing and that person decided to spam wikipedia with their website. It was nothing that could not have been handled by blocking those 3 accounts and the single IP that were spamming but an admin decided to put the website in the blacklist right away. Which is ok but now they have stopped editing wikipedia since 2013 (1.5 years) to prove that they want to abide by the rules. The warning given to them was after adding the site to blacklist and they did not know wikipedia rules about which links were eligible, which is no excuse, but also not fair enough to get blacklisted. It is not an excuse but now they are ready to prove it by wikipedia norms by first stopping like you do in WP:Standard Offer for blocked users. I request that this website be removed from the wikipedia blacklist in exchange for the promise that they will not add it again and keep check on any PR working for them that they do not add links to wikipedia for online marketing. Wikipedia:Give 'em enough rope says people should be given a chance and if they do it again, you can add back so is it possible to remove it and see that they are keeping their promise.
Wikipedia does not need their links and they do not want to add as well, the main reasons for the request to get removed from the black list are that some other companies and websites copy and use wikipedia's blacklist as their own which is hurting their website ranking and also their newsletter which goes to spam folder of their subscribers even though it is not spam. They just asked me to explain to you as I regularly read wikipedia. I want to explain that they only want to disappear from your blacklist and they will stop getting involved with link spam. Kindly give your input and make consensus to remove this site from blacklist. -- Riven999 ( talk) 09:29, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
No objection on this? Can an administrator approve this now? -- Riven999 ( talk) 07:33, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
I think wikipedia community should give consensus and a lone administrator should not decline it so I am appealing it at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard so that regular contributors can give consensus and your objection is no more. -- Riven999 ( talk) 05:45, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
ebooks.abc-clio.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com This site was blacklisted by mistake. One IP editor ( who was only active on one day in 2013) found a useful reference in a serious encyclopedia published by ABC-Clio. He put it in a footnote and added that footnote to about four articles were was relevant. ABC-CLIO is a major publisher that specializes in books for university libraries, such as encyclopedias, and is heavily used by university students in both the print and e-book versions. Rjensen ( talk) 07:57, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
pickeringchatto.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Why would this publisher be blocked? Specifically I wanted to refer to the contents page of a forthcoming book on the page dealing with her work - Anna Seward. -- Michael Goodyear ( talk) 14:19, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Tried to include an archive.today URL (.today/YHMIR) with edit of Alternative Press Expo, but archive.today on spam-blacklist. Can't use archive.org Wayback NOR Webcitation.org because neither can handle hashtag (#) in middle of URL. QUESTION: What alternative archive website(s) can handle a hashtag in middle of URL? -- EarthFurst ( talk) 08:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
This section is to report problems with the blacklist. Old entries are archived |
Currently, "cbronline.com" is blacklisted on the English Wikipedia as of late 2013. "Computer Business Review Online" used to be a reasonable news source, but at some point it transitioned to "Your Tech Social Network" and went downhill. All the old URLs stopped working (the ones with the form "?guid=" followed by a long hex string) but can be fixed from the Internet Archive. New URLs have a different syntax. I suggest updating the regular expression on the blacklist to exclude URLs of the old form. They were legitimate links in many articles. In general, blacklisting links from years ago is a bad idea. It damages the encyclopedia. I'm trying to fix the mess Cydebot II created at RegisterFly now. John Nagle ( talk) 22:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
As a general reply to this. Look, it is not our fault that a company finds it necessary to optimize their search engine results, or to just generally make sure that their site gets promoted. I agree, sometimes sites are a reasonable source that is reasonably used, but if the amount of spam pushed by this company exceeds that level significantly (a whole long list of sites; a whole list of sock/meatpuppets, reports go back to 2009), then the spam blacklist is designed to just do what it should do: stop the spamming (it was not blacklisted in 2013, it was blacklisted in 2010).
Per Blethering Scot - Cyberbot II has not created a mess - the mess is completely at the side of the spammers who were the editors responsible for getting the site blacklisted. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 05:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Thank you, Mr. Stradivarius, in my opinion this removal is long overdue. I have put in hours and hours of my time working to support whitelisting efforts for reference-links to this site (which has been a significant distraction from other projects I've committed to work on). I am willing to put in similar time manually reverting spam-links to this site which might result from this action. Until the time I spend reverting spam-links greatly exceeds the time I've already spent working towards whitelisting, I won't be supporting a re-blacklist of this site. I am still unclear on the best methods for detecting spam-link additions that point to this site. Any advice on how to do that is appreciated. Can an edit filter be created that flags any edits adding the text "cbronline"? If anyone points me to unwanted spam from this site I will work to remove it. Wbm1058 ( talk) 20:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
A case of trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer.Clearly the goal here is to put Progressive Digital Media Group out of business. We won't be satisfied until that organisation shuts down all its sites and turns off the lights. They are an evil organisation that needs to be banished from the face of the earth and we will do whatever it takes to deny them all sources of revenue. Yeah, we begrudgingly whitelist those old cbronline cites after making the requesters jump through lots of hoops and show a lot of patience, but we really want editors to just remove those links. Removing those links is easy and is the best and recommended way to get rid of that annoyingly helpful banner template our bot puts on those pages. Hey, I've identified another spammer. Google is spamming links to Wikipedia all over its search engine results. They need to stop that. Readers should just find Wikipedia articles by searching Wikipedia. We don't want or need Google's help to pay our bills, thank you. We need to blacklist Google until they stop spamming their search results with links to Wikipedia. Wbm1058 ( talk) 14:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
Gentlemen, I added this on another page, but it is more appropriated to add it here. Please see my findings below.
designbuild-network.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
roadtraffic-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
airforce-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
power-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
aerospace-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
foodprocessing-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
airport-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
army-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
mining-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
naval-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
railway-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
offshore-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
ship-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
Less used, from the same group:
semiconductor-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
mobilecomms-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
hotelmanagement-network.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
water-technology.net: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
I could identify only some spammers, as apparently they have been active since 2006 at least. All those domains appear to be part of the same farm and have about 2k links combined. They are all part of Kable.
Some sites appear to have actual content, many links are just dropped on the "external links" section.
Legionarius ( talk) 03:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
I recently looked at a page for the Boeing 737 Next Generation (and, related, the Boeing 737 root page which also mentions the 737NG), and I saw the site aerospace-technology.com on the blacklist. This, with other previously posted examples in this section, I've seen that these appear at first glance to be valid references. However, I haven't had the chance (and won't have the time) to scrutinize the site; all I'm saying is that I think that some people need to go through all the sites made by these posters, to check their accuracy, and, if necessary, change the links, whitelist the links, or even remove the sites from the blacklist. I'd do it myself, but I don't have the time commitment necessary to do that massive task; only just to add the Boeing 737NG link issue to your attention.
In my personal opinion, though it does come off as spammy in the way it was posted, and even if the person posting the links may be paid to do it (proof permitting; after all, it could be someone who -really- likes cbronline.com as a reference), if the sources are valid (unless it's against Wikipedia policy), as long as they are accurate, why not leave them as is and keep them off the blacklist? But again, that's just me. :)
From what I've seen, all the External Links shown seem to directly relate to the content, so there's no question on whether it's on the wrong page or not, and it does help explain the content similar to a reference. I see it in similar vein to a link to almost any movie's wikipedia page, that almost always has a metacritic.com, rottentomatoes.com, and/or some other review site page on it, even though they are all ultimately business sites, similar to cbonline.com. But again, I'm not educated on this particular website host, so if I'm mistaken, feel free to let me know. The Legacy ( talk) 18:31, 4 April 2014 (UTC) (Edited The Legacy ( talk) 18:39, 4 April 2014 (UTC))
I've just seen dozens of railway related articles tagged by the bot because they contain links from railway-technology. Most of these links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations in many articles. I added some of them myself. And I'm certainly not a spammer. This has been raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Trains#Blacklisted website. This bot is causing more havoc to the wikipedia than any spammer could, and I rather resent this taking up time which I could better put to something useful! G-13114 ( talk) 21:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
All what was said about Railway-Technology.com applies also to Power-Technology.com and Offshore-Technology.com. The first one is included in more than 150 articles and the second one is included in more than 130 articles. Most of these links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations. And as the previous editor, also I may say that a number of these links were added by me and I am not a spammer. It is also unacceptable that that kind of mass listings are made without prior notification of affected Wikiprojects (concerning these two sites it is mainly WP:Energy but also WP:Geology, WP:Dams and some others). Beagel ( talk) 16:43, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
The first is used in over 300 articles, the second over 200. These links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations. It seems that the blacklist is a bigger menace to the integrity of the wikipedia that any spammer. Hawkeye7 ( talk) 06:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
I have for now commented out the blacklisting, though I will encourage further discussion (and I will undo this if I find ongoing abuse or see that the scale is bigger than expected - we have a blacklist and whitelist for a reason). There is to me NO question that CBROnline and Kable are spamming Wikipedia using multiple Single Purpose Accounts, and that they have been doing this for many, many years now. Although regulars have been using this site, I know that spammers have engaged in 'reference spamming' as well as plain external link spamming. This is an issue that needs to be resolved, as this (the spamming) goes straight against our core policies and guidelines. I am also worried by several (knowledgeable) voices saying that either the information they provide is replaceable, or is used to support not-notable information. Editors may want to start and look into those issues. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Just noting, that I do not have any problem if another admin disagrees with my (temporary) removal of the blacklisting and reverts that removal. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:58, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
Are these sites on XLinkBot? MER-C 07:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
...this is one for long-term abuse. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 07:02, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
This issue has been building for some time; see MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/December 2013#cbronline.com for an earlier thread. Extracting some comments from that:
A journal like the Times does not need spam to get their links out (so that says something about companies that do spam), moreover, if a site like that would engage in a massive spamming campaign, we would indeed have a nice problem, which likely would be handled through the legal department of Wikimedia (we have had congressman or their representatives spam Wikipedia - besides blocking, they have to be reported to the Foundation). I would however not exclude that if such a site would engage in such massive spamming, that blacklisting (though more likely an edit filter) may be needed to mitigate the problem - and it has happened for sites like that.
We have something of on an ongoing crisis in journalism, as traditional print newspapers have become more and more scarce, and those that survive have shrinking resources and content. If all we have left are a handful of sources who can afford not spamming Wikipedia to build their audience, then the only remaining available media may be that provided by a handful of major corporations who will have a de facto oligopoly on the news. Why should we give the Times or any other major media special treatment? Shouldn't Progressive Digital Media be given equal treatment? Has Wikimedia's legal department been made aware of this situation? Why haven't we used an edit filter to deal with this problem, as would "more likely" be done to fight Times spam? A cynic—and make no mistake, in my earlier post that was dismissed as "ridiculous", I was in cynic or devil's advocate mode—might think that the problem was that Progressive Digital Media wasn't generous enough with contributions to the Foundation, and that the Foundation favors organisations that are generous towards it. Wbm1058 ( talk) 15:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
The blacklist contains the following entry:
\b^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b
As far as I can tell, the intent is to block IPv4 addresses – but that entry contains a caret (just after the first "\b") which prevents this rule from actually working. You can paste this anywhere, and it will just work:
[http://192.168.1.1/ foo]
-- Gutza T T+ 07:17, 30 January 2015 (UTC)
tinyurl.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot- Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
I want to add the full URL for TinyURL.com in the infobox for the article about that website: TinyURL. I cannot save that change because TinyURL.com is on the spam blacklist. Is there a way to do this? I am a long-confirmed registered Wikipedian, I have no connection to this company, and hate spam at least as much as anybody. However, it is standard practice to include a working (i.e., clickable) hyperlink in an article about a company or website.— Finell 05:35, 10 April 2015 (UTC)