I'm wondering if anyone knows the best way to deal with this. This list has been added multiple times to multiple articles over the course of months. It comes from different shared IPs for various Asian ISPs each time, so IP blocking is not effective. I saw a reference to a spam blacklist someone mentioned, but there wasn't link to it, and I can't find it. Hopefully someone here knows how to take care of this. Thanks. Deli nk 20:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
User:Barrylb recently made an that I disagree with. Basically, he removed all the external links in that article without any discussion. After, I then re-added the essential ones (which I thought was his job, not just removing all links) upon which he proceeded to remove all of those. I've commented here. I've been basing my external links on other good and featured articles. I think these links are useful and are complementary to the article, but evidently, Barry doesn't seem to think so. Maybe you guys could comment and tell me if I'm in the wrong. Thanks. Gflores Talk 22:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm still finding articles with links to this prolific linkspammer. See User:Just zis Guy, you know?/Fisheaters (and also User:Just zis Guy, you know?/Linkspam for my "worklist") - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/ [C] AfD? 23:09, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Please have a look at this guy's talk page. Not just the latest version, but also a couple of previous ones... See also this VIP archived entry and my (failed) plea for help at WP:AIV. I don't have a lot of time this coming couple of months, so if somebody could help watching out for his repeated linkspamming, this would be great. BACbKA 13:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Serial link spammer; added about 30-40 entries promoting some sites. I've undone about half of these (the top half at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Maj_IIM - mostly from 20th January), but it's time consuming. Anyone like to help? Also needs checking for sockpuppets. Caravaca 08:02, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Fellow, Wiki users, when I started with Wiki, I did not read policy guidlines and I made a mistake of adding too many links to my favorite websites, which were rightfully deleted by other users. Anyway, after reading the policies, I'm now more carefull about overlinking to areas of my interest. Sorry for the inconvenience User:Maj IIM
If everyone, particularly admins, could just keep an eye on this . . . started with linkspam, but he's mostly given up on that. An employee of Rushbrands showed up a few months and is continually attempting to make the article an ad for poppers, currently evading a one month block through socks. check out the talk page for some more background. (Dealing with him is what compelled me to join this project, btw . . . ) -- Heah talk 03:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I have an Idea how to reduce link spam significantly if not almost completely. I am pretty new at Wikipedia and don't know any better place to go to make this recommendation so please forgive me, if it is the wrong one. I started a section in my user discussion page with ideas on how to improve Wikipedia and solve or reduce existing problems. One Idea is about an effective way to fight link spam.
This idea is open for discussion. Any comment is appreciated. -- Roy-SAC 09:42, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Additional Ideas and comments:
After all the back and forth, adding, removing, adding, changing, removing of external links (but also doubleing the content of the article itself) it seems to be the perfect candidate for the public testing and demonstration of de-linked external links in the public article itself. -- Roy-SAC 04:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Have a look for yourself at Affiliate marketing
I followed Barry's suggestion and moved the Pilot here that you can see for yourself. De-Linked External Links Test The proposed Idea is attempted to reduce the temptation for Webmasters to place external links at Wikipedia for SEO purposes. I prefer the Idea of the minor code change and add the " No Follow" Tag to External Links better than the de-linking.
Today are a lot very usefull and good and required external links removed from articles by editors and admins that have no clue about the topic the article is about to make an educated decicion if the linked to site is a) related , b) important (in context) and c) supplement the Wikipedia Article.
A very good example is the Affiliate marketing Article. It's Linking now to the "Yellow Pages" of Affiliate Marketing. But good for me, I have a site listed in one of the subcategories (very old one with 301 redirect to new one). This category at DMOZ is hopelessly outdated. Shawn Collings (AfiliateTip.com, AffiliateSummit.com, Affilipedia.com) has no time to clean it up).
Links to Affilipedia.com, ABestWeb.com and ReturnOnAffiliate.com were removed in favor of this DMOZ Category Link. I wrote extensively about the Sites in the Discussion Page of Talk:Affiliate_marketing . At least did Rhobite and me improve the content a little which I plan to continue when I find the time (busy with in discussion pages right now Talk:Online_marketing) -- Roy-SAC 19:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
When you guys have time, can you dive in Category:Lists of software, or monitor Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Lists_of_software?! Our software articles and lists badly need spam and advertisement trimming. -- Perfecto 03:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I propose we remove the following section from Spammer behavior ...
Is this section really necessary? What is it adding to the project page? I'm not sure it has a purpose other than to just vent frustration.
Monkeyman(
talk)
00:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just completed a cleanup of the project page that I hope will clarify our effort to combat spam. The clean-up included: merged sections, added some content, removed duplicate content, moved discussion to talk page, condensed "How to identify spam and spammers" section, etc. Feel free to review my edits and make/revert changes.
Monkeyman(
talk)
03:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Check out the behavior of User:Billgunyon. He's clearly promoting his site. He claimed to me that one editor had looked over his links and passed them. I disagree, and I expressed my reasoning on his talk page.
Any comments? Jdavidb ( talk • contribs) 15:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Contributions look like linkspam to me. But my French isn't great, and I'm hesitant to unilaterally remove. I've remarked on all of the relevant talk pages. If someone else has better French & would like to follow up, that would be great. - Jmabel | Talk 05:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. Just a heads-up on some recent edits I've encountered. Take a look at
this guy's contributions. Instead of adding his linkfarms to the "external links" section, he will add them as references in the body of the article. The red flags are 1.) the excessive linkfarms on the page and 2.) vagueness in the data, "It is estimated that 1 in 4 women may suffer from some type of hair loss" from
here. Please add this user and his pages to your watch list.
Monkeyman(
talk)
14:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I just made a template {{ NoSpam}} after putting {{ spam}} on an article page proved successful. I hope that's okay? -- Fasten 21:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Any comments on this? I think it's borderline advertising (especially the "review" sections), though a few of the companies mentioned do meet WP:CORP. OhNo itsJamie Talk 02:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Today I cleaned up some links from 163.121.179.232. I found these links to a blog in Redundant array of independent disks, Network-attached storage, and Bulletproof vest(!?) Despite being a blog about photography, there were articles about those subjects. I assumed he thinking "hey! I wrote about that...other people would be interested." I was even planning to write a gentler version of the Spam tag. Then I googled his site. It looks like he has added links to a good many forums, etc. I won't say he is consciously spamming, but it does seem to be a habit. So googling to determine prior behavior can make it easier to decide intent. Google also showed me something unfortunate; in the 4 hours between the link's (in Bulletproof vest) creation and my deletion, not only had answers.com picked it up, but google had indexed answers.com's version.-- Straif 15:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Would anyone like to offer a second opinion on this link added to Sconce. I've removed spam from this article in the past (along with a number of other home improvement related articles). However, although this latest link is still wet behind the ears and also has some of the character of previous spam links, it doesn't actually contain any advertising at the moment. -- Solipsist 09:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
How do I get it unblocked....I didn't even contribute anything...some user named Master of the Bulls did according to your warning. How do I get unblocked? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.188.117.70 ( talk • contribs)
Well this case is a tricky one, I prefer to discuss it here before taking any action. This guy User:Nmyers is introducing the Jargon of a not so notable organisation (n3p) Neutral Third Party and presenting it as if it was Universal and Encyclopaedic. Here are some examples: Universal Enterprise Infrastructure, Business process interoperability, BPI Project, Information silo, more can be tracked by looking at the history of his contributions.
The origin of this vocabulary can be seen here : http://www.n3p.org/
Although the organisation claims to be non profit and the guy has apparently got the authorisation to post the material in WP and the approach the organisation has adopted can have some merit, I still see many problems here.
I am sure there many other cases like this in other fields I am not aware of, but as far as I know there is no specific policy in WP to deal with this problem, please correct me if I am wrong. or maybe this is just a case of original research-- Khalid hassani 15:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Watch out for sirlinksalot links, random blog links, in the American Idol contestants' articles. It is pure spam. Occasionally anonymous users and IP addresses will attempt to add it in surreptitously.
Is it such a good idea to look for red-link user talk pages? When I RC patrol, I first check contributions by IP addresses with blue talk page links; more often these are warnings than welcome messages. Any other thoughts on this? Feezo (Talk) 00:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I think there are too many links on the QWERTY page, the information on which is mostly already in the article. Would someone from this project see what they think? 218.102.218.250 03:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
There has been a user (or users) that have been placing many (over 300) links to a organisation called ARKive [2] ( User:195.188.139.172/ talk). He's been warned on the talk page - should I just delete these on sight? Sabine's Sunbird talk 15:49, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's one to keep an eye on. Has a history of adding almost nothing but linkspam since starting here last April. Has been warned previously but has somehow managed to get away with blanking the warnings. Seems to have stopped after I issued the {{spam}} warning but judging by his past behavior he'll probably be back after a while. - Loren 04:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have random IPs insisting on adding links to a sport memorabilia we store from a handful of hockey player articles. Any suggestions. The last round came from User:69.158.119.222. ccwaters 14:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
In order that linkspam doesn't live on in spoken form for too long after it has been removed from an article, it might be helpful if participants in this project, on seeing a link to a spoken version in the External Links section of an article, drop a note on the spoken article producer's talk page informing them of the situation. Editing a spoken article is best done by those that have the original, uncompressed version of the audio to work from. -- Macropode 10:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
24.53.194.27 ( talk · contribs) has inserted the same link into World Baseball Classic twice in the past 24 hours, and a total of 5 times since January. His three other edits were also spamlinks. I request that an admin block him/her. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 01:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I ran into a guy who's adding his personal blog to Lake Braddock Orchestras...It's relevant to a certain extent but what bugs me is the inherent self-promotion that he is doing...I've removed the link once and he's put it back so instead of a revert war I want to make sure I'm justified in taking it out? Can someone more experienced than me clarify on this matter? Jarfingle 06:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's a relevant request for comment that might get some more attention here.
Hello. Could I have your opinions about links to http://www.islamicarchitecture.org which seem to be being inserted on an industrial scale. The website seems to specialise in Islam-related retail such as books, and there are lots of affiliate (Amazon) ads on the site. There seems to be no content which could not be put into the encyclopedia. You can see the links being inserted by related IP addresses here and here and here (and there are others) and at least one registered user. Yahoo shows 389 links from Wikipedia. I think this is linkspamming on an industrial scale, and I would like your opinions on the website, and the edits. Jim182 13:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
The IP started out with this and after being warned stopped. Then Cinema-astoria started, got warned and then blocked for 3 hours. All of the links are to the same site. So can someone double check and ensure they are spam and also keep an eye out on Cinema-astoria as I go home soon and won't be able to watch them. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:11, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Over the last few days Dave Mott has added a number of links in company-related articles to buyblue.org. Usually the description is something like "Company X Ratings and Political Contributions". The ratings and commentary on the site have a strong political bias--and I'm not sure how accurate it is. I've removed about half of the links--so far everything from today, but there are still some from 4/11 and 4/9. My revert finger is getting tired, so if anyone would like to take a look at these (be sure to check for valid changes after the link was added), I would welcome the help. For the sake of POV honesty: I happen to lean the same way the website does. I just don't think it has any business being here. -- Straif 17:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please look at the recent contributions of User:Alpheus and decide whether the additions of this link is appropriate? Thanks. Deli nk 14:29, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I keep running into pages with links to this company. A google search for crossflo [3] reveals about 15 different articles with links to it. (For reasons I don't understand, Wikipedia's search facilities only reveal two). Most of them are posted by either Joinarnold ( talk • contribs) or 206.171.118.254 ( talk • contribs). There also seems to be an article on Crossflo Systems. Almost by accident, I discovered that there had been earlier versions of the article which had been deleted. See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Crossflo, [4] and [5]. I don't understand what to do in such a case. Nominate it for deletion all over again? — Veyklevar 09:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Note the contributions by Avigdor6 ( talk · contribs). While the user is adding content, it almost seems as if all content is intended to provide an opening to add a Factsmart.org link, which does have some Overture ad scripting code. Spam? OhNo itsJamie Talk 19:42, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
68.98.103.108 ( talk · contribs · count) is adding links in dozens of articles to various pages at http://super70s.com. It's pretty clearly an attempt to promote the site, but the links are all at least somewhat relevant, so I'd like to get some input from other users. Fe e zo (Talk) 09:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I took the time to summarize and explain an important aspect of link spam on my user discussion page below. Some Editors expressed the opinion in the past that the proposed solution will not help to significantly reduce the problem which I vehement reject. Even if the impact is not as much as I expect will it still have enough impact to justify the necessary work to implement the solution. Being an enterprise solution developer myself gives me the authority to make the statement that the implementation of the solution can only be a matter of hours. An amount of time that will be saved multiple times over with absolute certainty in the future when it comes to link spam removal.
This will not immediately, because the word about the change has to go around and get to the potential link spammers first. Unless it will be picked up by the media and other means (bloggers etc.), a gradual impact should be expected. I invite everybody interested in this to join the discussion. Wikipedia Developers and Admins are more than welcome to join as well.
-- Roy-SAC 11:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Even as somebody who detests link spam, I have always objected to using "rel=nofollow". The central reason is that by using it, Wikipedia is basically saying "We wish to not contribute any information to search engines that may aid in people finding the material they are seeking." In short, this would be an anti-search, anti-Internet move in my opinion. The value of search comes from how web documents relate to each other. Extricating the tremendously important resource that is the Wikipedia from this overall process would in turn remove a lot of value from Internet search. And I will jump up and down and up and down again if that helps in preventing the Wikipedia from ever making such a foolhardy decision to implement nofollow.
Now, add to the above the other common reasons for being against it, including "doing this won't really deter spam", which I also agree with. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is an interesting post about the "nofollow" attribute by Matt Cutts (Who is a Senior Engineer at Google). He bloged about it
here.
Arguments coming from such a highly knowledgable and respected authority might convince some of you more than I was able to. --
roy<sac>
Talk! .oOo.
13:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
User:80.201.222.234 ( [6]) has been adding dozens of references to a single site on Belgium-related pages. Unfortunately I haven't got the time to go through and clean up. Ianb 09:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Can you check out this users contributions. They all lead to individual pages at Cookbook Wiki. Spam or not spam. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I have removed most of the spam. More was here, and there has been a subsequent discussion with Wikimanager on my talk page, and there was also a previous discussion about more linkbombing by the same editor here. -- Linkspamremover 17:32, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to say it, but Fisheaters has been returning the pagerank linkspam to Wikipedia pages. Scoll up for the sad story. Maybe I can be famous and get another AfD. Dominick (TALK) 19:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
The only place you've been is to the Dies Irae entry, and the link to Fish Eaters was amended -- having been formerly to kensmen.com/catholic, the site's first URL -- way back in December. Quit lying, Dominick.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.236.26.142 ( talk • contribs)
Oh please, are we starting that again? Dominick (TALK) 17:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Are "we" starting what again, Dominick? Is there an error in the above statement (if so, can you post the link you are referring to?) or are you again smearing the site because of its paleo-conservative stance? Who posted above at 19:20, 19 April 2006, thereby "starting something again"? You? Me? The person who runs the Fish Eaters website? Looks as if it was you. And "starting" what, exactly? Looks to me as if "it" has never ended. You are using Wikipedia to smear a Catholic website you don't like for political reasons. Congratulations on your success, mendacious one.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.219.225.82 ( talk • contribs)
Is this guy a spammer? [7] Westfall 16:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
BIG TIME - Pretty much everything he (or better "they") ever "contributed" to the hundreds of articles was one line of content in the "external links", "reference" and "see also" sections of the articles containing an external link to to a page at "destination360.com" which is a free website providing a lot of (good) resources, financed via Google Adwords and direct sponsored ads (see "destination360.com/advertising.php"). The site is not selling or offering any services directly to consumers. They have been quite "busy" at Wikipedia over time, unnoticed.
You are witnessing Text-Book SEO. Getting Traffic and gaining Page Rank is on top of the Users agenda.
This is not an accusation, but a fact.
WP:AGF can not be applied here. What they are doing does not happen by accident. As a matter of fact, they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
The Owner of the Site is: studio360.com. It was registered by Dan Taylor. Visit the the Site and you will not be surprised about what they were doing anymore.
The Site was established in 1998, but it did not seem to get up to speed before mid 2004. Something must have happened around April 2004. Their Alexa Traffic Rank made a huge jump up
[8]
Only one external Back Link can be found in Google (although a lot more exist) which is a highly related deep link to the site fromlas-vegas-hotel-web.info ("www.las-vegas-hotel-web.info/resources/las-vegas-wynn-resort-and-hotel.shtml") which happens to be registered by Federico Carnales , who also owns the site: www.nichemonster.com which is about SEO (figures)
See
[9].
The Back links in Google do not reflect their existing Back links. It seems that their Site is one of the many that were affected by Flaws of Google's "Big Daddy" update. Google is still working on fixing issues. Their Ranking can not be as high as it is with only those back links.
I found 4 Dmoz Listings for example which are important and certainly counted by Google. See
[10] and
[11]
They have multiple Top Rankings for highly competitive phrases and keywords in Google like "brazil tours", "iguassu" and others.
They Lost Ranking on the Key phrase "cheap flights to las vegas". They were in the top 10, but are now "only" on page 2 of the SERPS. What does this mean? Consider this. The phrase returns over 40 Million!!! results and there have over 300,000 competing sites with exactly the same keyword phrase in the content. A Page 2 Listing is very good, a Page 1 Listing highly impressive. They are "only" #6 for "brazil tours" which shows "only" 19 Million Results and about 170,000 competing sites with the same phrase in the content.
There is tons of additional proof which could fill books, but I think this proofs enough already.
All the links should get removed, based on WP:SPAM. Time to contact a sysop on the meta-wiki: they can put in a site-wide text filter. How do I do that? They should also be added to the site-wide spam blacklist When a sysop is at it, search for Links with <some letters>360.com in the domain name. They have a bunch of "content" sites and I bet destination360.com is not the only one of them they added links to at Wikipedia.
I would like to know how to go about this exactly, since I am pretty new, but interested and willing to help, a little guidance by Wikipedia Veterans would be appreciated. --
roy<sac>
Talk! .oOo.
08:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedians,
I've been routed to your link as a user and not so frequent contributor to Wikipedia I'm a bit surprised by what has been said. We do have junior developer here in the office that has been tasked with providing search engines with relavant content. As I read your page it looks like to me this has gone beyond what would be providing value to Wikipedia.
This has just been brought to my attention and I would ask you to email me directly at the username D360 if this ever happens again. I personally apologize for his actions we are a repuable company and I do not want "my" company labeled as a spammer.
We have worked hard at producing quality travel guides over the past two years and yes there is advertising on this site but I don't believe it is a spam site. True if my developer added links that are considered spamming he will be dealt with. I do believe there are many people including "RoySac" "Wiki Travel" that use wiki for personal gain.
I do believe some of what was said true is not true but I don't want to get into a he said/she said issue. I do believe there needs to be better measures at contacting potiental spammers. Again consider this issue with destination360 resolved.
Best Regards,
Dan Taylor destination360.com
66.9.150.10 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has been adding nothing but links to articles from the Council on Foreign Relations. While CFR is a legitimate body with good information which is referenced on some articles, this person has not added any content to any of the articles in question. Despite the organization being linked to, this anon's behavior looks suspiciously like spamming and I've warned the anon accordingly. It might be worth keeping an eye out on this guy. Second opinions on whether this is spam also appreceated.- Loren 19:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
64.4.141.196 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has been adding many links to a website called Platial. Some seem to me like the might be worthwhile, others are clearly useless. I've reverted only some of them, but thought that others might want to take a look too. Deli nk 20:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous editor, with three recent IPs of 216.114.80.202 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 209.214.14.184 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) and 209.214.14.15 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), adds links to gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com on a few pages and keeps re-adings them from new IP addresses. Ah, jeez, that's BellSouth. Fat chance of blocking him. Be on the lookout for him. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 01:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
This spammer, most recently using 209.214.14.138 ( talk · contribs), has made a legal threat against me, and has resumed spamming. For the moment, I will refrain from reverting him. Does anyone else care to take a look at those edits? -- Donald Albury( Talk) 03:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
User Amotis has been systematically adding a link to a site with videos on hundreds of articles about birds (see his contributions). Now normally whenever I see someone adding the same link to multiple sites with no additional content I remove that link everywhere they inserted it, regardless of what the link contains. However I hesitate in this case because I'm concerned it might actually be considered a useful and relevant link. Could I get some opinions on this? Thanks much! -- AbsolutDan (talk) 13:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed two external links to what I regard as link farms from Seduction Community (see diff [13]). I have now received this on my talk page. I would like some other opinions on the links I removed before I pursue this. Thanks. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 22:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
What do we do about spam on user pages? Nothing I have read says they are exempt from the spam policy. Anyhow, I had a run-in with Dogtoyco ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who seems to exist only to promote their own web site, someone other than me should probably take action as I have already had an interaction with them. - Trysha ( talk) 08:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
He's at it again, and not on his user page, but another article. [14]. See last line. Time for a block, I feel. Nelson50 21:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Please take a look at these. Need a second opinion, thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I've changed the "To-do" list section to a full page width. Its previous formatting (as a 40% right justified column) cut into the body of the page and disrupted the flow of the article. Feel free to revert or improve if you don't prefer this.
Monkeyman(
talk)
15:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that Jwhyte ( talk · contribs), who describes himself as a "Search Engine Marketer," has been adding Motor Trend reviews to links of just about every vehicle page. While I think Motor Trend is good car magazine and a good source, I'm wondering if it's a bit excessive. Given that he only adds Motor Trend links, I'm guessing they are paying him. OhNo itsJamie Talk 01:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm wondering if anyone knows the best way to deal with this. This list has been added multiple times to multiple articles over the course of months. It comes from different shared IPs for various Asian ISPs each time, so IP blocking is not effective. I saw a reference to a spam blacklist someone mentioned, but there wasn't link to it, and I can't find it. Hopefully someone here knows how to take care of this. Thanks. Deli nk 20:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
User:Barrylb recently made an that I disagree with. Basically, he removed all the external links in that article without any discussion. After, I then re-added the essential ones (which I thought was his job, not just removing all links) upon which he proceeded to remove all of those. I've commented here. I've been basing my external links on other good and featured articles. I think these links are useful and are complementary to the article, but evidently, Barry doesn't seem to think so. Maybe you guys could comment and tell me if I'm in the wrong. Thanks. Gflores Talk 22:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm still finding articles with links to this prolific linkspammer. See User:Just zis Guy, you know?/Fisheaters (and also User:Just zis Guy, you know?/Linkspam for my "worklist") - Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/ [C] AfD? 23:09, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Please have a look at this guy's talk page. Not just the latest version, but also a couple of previous ones... See also this VIP archived entry and my (failed) plea for help at WP:AIV. I don't have a lot of time this coming couple of months, so if somebody could help watching out for his repeated linkspamming, this would be great. BACbKA 13:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Serial link spammer; added about 30-40 entries promoting some sites. I've undone about half of these (the top half at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Maj_IIM - mostly from 20th January), but it's time consuming. Anyone like to help? Also needs checking for sockpuppets. Caravaca 08:02, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Fellow, Wiki users, when I started with Wiki, I did not read policy guidlines and I made a mistake of adding too many links to my favorite websites, which were rightfully deleted by other users. Anyway, after reading the policies, I'm now more carefull about overlinking to areas of my interest. Sorry for the inconvenience User:Maj IIM
If everyone, particularly admins, could just keep an eye on this . . . started with linkspam, but he's mostly given up on that. An employee of Rushbrands showed up a few months and is continually attempting to make the article an ad for poppers, currently evading a one month block through socks. check out the talk page for some more background. (Dealing with him is what compelled me to join this project, btw . . . ) -- Heah talk 03:37, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I have an Idea how to reduce link spam significantly if not almost completely. I am pretty new at Wikipedia and don't know any better place to go to make this recommendation so please forgive me, if it is the wrong one. I started a section in my user discussion page with ideas on how to improve Wikipedia and solve or reduce existing problems. One Idea is about an effective way to fight link spam.
This idea is open for discussion. Any comment is appreciated. -- Roy-SAC 09:42, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Additional Ideas and comments:
After all the back and forth, adding, removing, adding, changing, removing of external links (but also doubleing the content of the article itself) it seems to be the perfect candidate for the public testing and demonstration of de-linked external links in the public article itself. -- Roy-SAC 04:45, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Have a look for yourself at Affiliate marketing
I followed Barry's suggestion and moved the Pilot here that you can see for yourself. De-Linked External Links Test The proposed Idea is attempted to reduce the temptation for Webmasters to place external links at Wikipedia for SEO purposes. I prefer the Idea of the minor code change and add the " No Follow" Tag to External Links better than the de-linking.
Today are a lot very usefull and good and required external links removed from articles by editors and admins that have no clue about the topic the article is about to make an educated decicion if the linked to site is a) related , b) important (in context) and c) supplement the Wikipedia Article.
A very good example is the Affiliate marketing Article. It's Linking now to the "Yellow Pages" of Affiliate Marketing. But good for me, I have a site listed in one of the subcategories (very old one with 301 redirect to new one). This category at DMOZ is hopelessly outdated. Shawn Collings (AfiliateTip.com, AffiliateSummit.com, Affilipedia.com) has no time to clean it up).
Links to Affilipedia.com, ABestWeb.com and ReturnOnAffiliate.com were removed in favor of this DMOZ Category Link. I wrote extensively about the Sites in the Discussion Page of Talk:Affiliate_marketing . At least did Rhobite and me improve the content a little which I plan to continue when I find the time (busy with in discussion pages right now Talk:Online_marketing) -- Roy-SAC 19:29, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
When you guys have time, can you dive in Category:Lists of software, or monitor Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Lists_of_software?! Our software articles and lists badly need spam and advertisement trimming. -- Perfecto 03:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I propose we remove the following section from Spammer behavior ...
Is this section really necessary? What is it adding to the project page? I'm not sure it has a purpose other than to just vent frustration.
Monkeyman(
talk)
00:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I've just completed a cleanup of the project page that I hope will clarify our effort to combat spam. The clean-up included: merged sections, added some content, removed duplicate content, moved discussion to talk page, condensed "How to identify spam and spammers" section, etc. Feel free to review my edits and make/revert changes.
Monkeyman(
talk)
03:51, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Check out the behavior of User:Billgunyon. He's clearly promoting his site. He claimed to me that one editor had looked over his links and passed them. I disagree, and I expressed my reasoning on his talk page.
Any comments? Jdavidb ( talk • contribs) 15:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Contributions look like linkspam to me. But my French isn't great, and I'm hesitant to unilaterally remove. I've remarked on all of the relevant talk pages. If someone else has better French & would like to follow up, that would be great. - Jmabel | Talk 05:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. Just a heads-up on some recent edits I've encountered. Take a look at
this guy's contributions. Instead of adding his linkfarms to the "external links" section, he will add them as references in the body of the article. The red flags are 1.) the excessive linkfarms on the page and 2.) vagueness in the data, "It is estimated that 1 in 4 women may suffer from some type of hair loss" from
here. Please add this user and his pages to your watch list.
Monkeyman(
talk)
14:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I just made a template {{ NoSpam}} after putting {{ spam}} on an article page proved successful. I hope that's okay? -- Fasten 21:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Any comments on this? I think it's borderline advertising (especially the "review" sections), though a few of the companies mentioned do meet WP:CORP. OhNo itsJamie Talk 02:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Today I cleaned up some links from 163.121.179.232. I found these links to a blog in Redundant array of independent disks, Network-attached storage, and Bulletproof vest(!?) Despite being a blog about photography, there were articles about those subjects. I assumed he thinking "hey! I wrote about that...other people would be interested." I was even planning to write a gentler version of the Spam tag. Then I googled his site. It looks like he has added links to a good many forums, etc. I won't say he is consciously spamming, but it does seem to be a habit. So googling to determine prior behavior can make it easier to decide intent. Google also showed me something unfortunate; in the 4 hours between the link's (in Bulletproof vest) creation and my deletion, not only had answers.com picked it up, but google had indexed answers.com's version.-- Straif 15:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Would anyone like to offer a second opinion on this link added to Sconce. I've removed spam from this article in the past (along with a number of other home improvement related articles). However, although this latest link is still wet behind the ears and also has some of the character of previous spam links, it doesn't actually contain any advertising at the moment. -- Solipsist 09:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
How do I get it unblocked....I didn't even contribute anything...some user named Master of the Bulls did according to your warning. How do I get unblocked? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.188.117.70 ( talk • contribs)
Well this case is a tricky one, I prefer to discuss it here before taking any action. This guy User:Nmyers is introducing the Jargon of a not so notable organisation (n3p) Neutral Third Party and presenting it as if it was Universal and Encyclopaedic. Here are some examples: Universal Enterprise Infrastructure, Business process interoperability, BPI Project, Information silo, more can be tracked by looking at the history of his contributions.
The origin of this vocabulary can be seen here : http://www.n3p.org/
Although the organisation claims to be non profit and the guy has apparently got the authorisation to post the material in WP and the approach the organisation has adopted can have some merit, I still see many problems here.
I am sure there many other cases like this in other fields I am not aware of, but as far as I know there is no specific policy in WP to deal with this problem, please correct me if I am wrong. or maybe this is just a case of original research-- Khalid hassani 15:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Watch out for sirlinksalot links, random blog links, in the American Idol contestants' articles. It is pure spam. Occasionally anonymous users and IP addresses will attempt to add it in surreptitously.
Is it such a good idea to look for red-link user talk pages? When I RC patrol, I first check contributions by IP addresses with blue talk page links; more often these are warnings than welcome messages. Any other thoughts on this? Feezo (Talk) 00:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I think there are too many links on the QWERTY page, the information on which is mostly already in the article. Would someone from this project see what they think? 218.102.218.250 03:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
There has been a user (or users) that have been placing many (over 300) links to a organisation called ARKive [2] ( User:195.188.139.172/ talk). He's been warned on the talk page - should I just delete these on sight? Sabine's Sunbird talk 15:49, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's one to keep an eye on. Has a history of adding almost nothing but linkspam since starting here last April. Has been warned previously but has somehow managed to get away with blanking the warnings. Seems to have stopped after I issued the {{spam}} warning but judging by his past behavior he'll probably be back after a while. - Loren 04:41, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I have random IPs insisting on adding links to a sport memorabilia we store from a handful of hockey player articles. Any suggestions. The last round came from User:69.158.119.222. ccwaters 14:20, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
In order that linkspam doesn't live on in spoken form for too long after it has been removed from an article, it might be helpful if participants in this project, on seeing a link to a spoken version in the External Links section of an article, drop a note on the spoken article producer's talk page informing them of the situation. Editing a spoken article is best done by those that have the original, uncompressed version of the audio to work from. -- Macropode 10:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
24.53.194.27 ( talk · contribs) has inserted the same link into World Baseball Classic twice in the past 24 hours, and a total of 5 times since January. His three other edits were also spamlinks. I request that an admin block him/her. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 01:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I ran into a guy who's adding his personal blog to Lake Braddock Orchestras...It's relevant to a certain extent but what bugs me is the inherent self-promotion that he is doing...I've removed the link once and he's put it back so instead of a revert war I want to make sure I'm justified in taking it out? Can someone more experienced than me clarify on this matter? Jarfingle 06:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's a relevant request for comment that might get some more attention here.
Hello. Could I have your opinions about links to http://www.islamicarchitecture.org which seem to be being inserted on an industrial scale. The website seems to specialise in Islam-related retail such as books, and there are lots of affiliate (Amazon) ads on the site. There seems to be no content which could not be put into the encyclopedia. You can see the links being inserted by related IP addresses here and here and here (and there are others) and at least one registered user. Yahoo shows 389 links from Wikipedia. I think this is linkspamming on an industrial scale, and I would like your opinions on the website, and the edits. Jim182 13:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
The IP started out with this and after being warned stopped. Then Cinema-astoria started, got warned and then blocked for 3 hours. All of the links are to the same site. So can someone double check and ensure they are spam and also keep an eye out on Cinema-astoria as I go home soon and won't be able to watch them. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:11, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Over the last few days Dave Mott has added a number of links in company-related articles to buyblue.org. Usually the description is something like "Company X Ratings and Political Contributions". The ratings and commentary on the site have a strong political bias--and I'm not sure how accurate it is. I've removed about half of the links--so far everything from today, but there are still some from 4/11 and 4/9. My revert finger is getting tired, so if anyone would like to take a look at these (be sure to check for valid changes after the link was added), I would welcome the help. For the sake of POV honesty: I happen to lean the same way the website does. I just don't think it has any business being here. -- Straif 17:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please look at the recent contributions of User:Alpheus and decide whether the additions of this link is appropriate? Thanks. Deli nk 14:29, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
I keep running into pages with links to this company. A google search for crossflo [3] reveals about 15 different articles with links to it. (For reasons I don't understand, Wikipedia's search facilities only reveal two). Most of them are posted by either Joinarnold ( talk • contribs) or 206.171.118.254 ( talk • contribs). There also seems to be an article on Crossflo Systems. Almost by accident, I discovered that there had been earlier versions of the article which had been deleted. See Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Crossflo, [4] and [5]. I don't understand what to do in such a case. Nominate it for deletion all over again? — Veyklevar 09:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Note the contributions by Avigdor6 ( talk · contribs). While the user is adding content, it almost seems as if all content is intended to provide an opening to add a Factsmart.org link, which does have some Overture ad scripting code. Spam? OhNo itsJamie Talk 19:42, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
68.98.103.108 ( talk · contribs · count) is adding links in dozens of articles to various pages at http://super70s.com. It's pretty clearly an attempt to promote the site, but the links are all at least somewhat relevant, so I'd like to get some input from other users. Fe e zo (Talk) 09:00, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I took the time to summarize and explain an important aspect of link spam on my user discussion page below. Some Editors expressed the opinion in the past that the proposed solution will not help to significantly reduce the problem which I vehement reject. Even if the impact is not as much as I expect will it still have enough impact to justify the necessary work to implement the solution. Being an enterprise solution developer myself gives me the authority to make the statement that the implementation of the solution can only be a matter of hours. An amount of time that will be saved multiple times over with absolute certainty in the future when it comes to link spam removal.
This will not immediately, because the word about the change has to go around and get to the potential link spammers first. Unless it will be picked up by the media and other means (bloggers etc.), a gradual impact should be expected. I invite everybody interested in this to join the discussion. Wikipedia Developers and Admins are more than welcome to join as well.
-- Roy-SAC 11:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Even as somebody who detests link spam, I have always objected to using "rel=nofollow". The central reason is that by using it, Wikipedia is basically saying "We wish to not contribute any information to search engines that may aid in people finding the material they are seeking." In short, this would be an anti-search, anti-Internet move in my opinion. The value of search comes from how web documents relate to each other. Extricating the tremendously important resource that is the Wikipedia from this overall process would in turn remove a lot of value from Internet search. And I will jump up and down and up and down again if that helps in preventing the Wikipedia from ever making such a foolhardy decision to implement nofollow.
Now, add to the above the other common reasons for being against it, including "doing this won't really deter spam", which I also agree with. — Stevie is the man! Talk | Work 22:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Here is an interesting post about the "nofollow" attribute by Matt Cutts (Who is a Senior Engineer at Google). He bloged about it
here.
Arguments coming from such a highly knowledgable and respected authority might convince some of you more than I was able to. --
roy<sac>
Talk! .oOo.
13:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
User:80.201.222.234 ( [6]) has been adding dozens of references to a single site on Belgium-related pages. Unfortunately I haven't got the time to go through and clean up. Ianb 09:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Can you check out this users contributions. They all lead to individual pages at Cookbook Wiki. Spam or not spam. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 17:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I have removed most of the spam. More was here, and there has been a subsequent discussion with Wikimanager on my talk page, and there was also a previous discussion about more linkbombing by the same editor here. -- Linkspamremover 17:32, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry to say it, but Fisheaters has been returning the pagerank linkspam to Wikipedia pages. Scoll up for the sad story. Maybe I can be famous and get another AfD. Dominick (TALK) 19:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
The only place you've been is to the Dies Irae entry, and the link to Fish Eaters was amended -- having been formerly to kensmen.com/catholic, the site's first URL -- way back in December. Quit lying, Dominick.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.236.26.142 ( talk • contribs)
Oh please, are we starting that again? Dominick (TALK) 17:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Are "we" starting what again, Dominick? Is there an error in the above statement (if so, can you post the link you are referring to?) or are you again smearing the site because of its paleo-conservative stance? Who posted above at 19:20, 19 April 2006, thereby "starting something again"? You? Me? The person who runs the Fish Eaters website? Looks as if it was you. And "starting" what, exactly? Looks to me as if "it" has never ended. You are using Wikipedia to smear a Catholic website you don't like for political reasons. Congratulations on your success, mendacious one.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.219.225.82 ( talk • contribs)
Is this guy a spammer? [7] Westfall 16:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
BIG TIME - Pretty much everything he (or better "they") ever "contributed" to the hundreds of articles was one line of content in the "external links", "reference" and "see also" sections of the articles containing an external link to to a page at "destination360.com" which is a free website providing a lot of (good) resources, financed via Google Adwords and direct sponsored ads (see "destination360.com/advertising.php"). The site is not selling or offering any services directly to consumers. They have been quite "busy" at Wikipedia over time, unnoticed.
You are witnessing Text-Book SEO. Getting Traffic and gaining Page Rank is on top of the Users agenda.
This is not an accusation, but a fact.
WP:AGF can not be applied here. What they are doing does not happen by accident. As a matter of fact, they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
The Owner of the Site is: studio360.com. It was registered by Dan Taylor. Visit the the Site and you will not be surprised about what they were doing anymore.
The Site was established in 1998, but it did not seem to get up to speed before mid 2004. Something must have happened around April 2004. Their Alexa Traffic Rank made a huge jump up
[8]
Only one external Back Link can be found in Google (although a lot more exist) which is a highly related deep link to the site fromlas-vegas-hotel-web.info ("www.las-vegas-hotel-web.info/resources/las-vegas-wynn-resort-and-hotel.shtml") which happens to be registered by Federico Carnales , who also owns the site: www.nichemonster.com which is about SEO (figures)
See
[9].
The Back links in Google do not reflect their existing Back links. It seems that their Site is one of the many that were affected by Flaws of Google's "Big Daddy" update. Google is still working on fixing issues. Their Ranking can not be as high as it is with only those back links.
I found 4 Dmoz Listings for example which are important and certainly counted by Google. See
[10] and
[11]
They have multiple Top Rankings for highly competitive phrases and keywords in Google like "brazil tours", "iguassu" and others.
They Lost Ranking on the Key phrase "cheap flights to las vegas". They were in the top 10, but are now "only" on page 2 of the SERPS. What does this mean? Consider this. The phrase returns over 40 Million!!! results and there have over 300,000 competing sites with exactly the same keyword phrase in the content. A Page 2 Listing is very good, a Page 1 Listing highly impressive. They are "only" #6 for "brazil tours" which shows "only" 19 Million Results and about 170,000 competing sites with the same phrase in the content.
There is tons of additional proof which could fill books, but I think this proofs enough already.
All the links should get removed, based on WP:SPAM. Time to contact a sysop on the meta-wiki: they can put in a site-wide text filter. How do I do that? They should also be added to the site-wide spam blacklist When a sysop is at it, search for Links with <some letters>360.com in the domain name. They have a bunch of "content" sites and I bet destination360.com is not the only one of them they added links to at Wikipedia.
I would like to know how to go about this exactly, since I am pretty new, but interested and willing to help, a little guidance by Wikipedia Veterans would be appreciated. --
roy<sac>
Talk! .oOo.
08:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Dear Wikipedians,
I've been routed to your link as a user and not so frequent contributor to Wikipedia I'm a bit surprised by what has been said. We do have junior developer here in the office that has been tasked with providing search engines with relavant content. As I read your page it looks like to me this has gone beyond what would be providing value to Wikipedia.
This has just been brought to my attention and I would ask you to email me directly at the username D360 if this ever happens again. I personally apologize for his actions we are a repuable company and I do not want "my" company labeled as a spammer.
We have worked hard at producing quality travel guides over the past two years and yes there is advertising on this site but I don't believe it is a spam site. True if my developer added links that are considered spamming he will be dealt with. I do believe there are many people including "RoySac" "Wiki Travel" that use wiki for personal gain.
I do believe some of what was said true is not true but I don't want to get into a he said/she said issue. I do believe there needs to be better measures at contacting potiental spammers. Again consider this issue with destination360 resolved.
Best Regards,
Dan Taylor destination360.com
66.9.150.10 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has been adding nothing but links to articles from the Council on Foreign Relations. While CFR is a legitimate body with good information which is referenced on some articles, this person has not added any content to any of the articles in question. Despite the organization being linked to, this anon's behavior looks suspiciously like spamming and I've warned the anon accordingly. It might be worth keeping an eye out on this guy. Second opinions on whether this is spam also appreceated.- Loren 19:37, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
64.4.141.196 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) has been adding many links to a website called Platial. Some seem to me like the might be worthwhile, others are clearly useless. I've reverted only some of them, but thought that others might want to take a look too. Deli nk 20:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous editor, with three recent IPs of 216.114.80.202 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), 209.214.14.184 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) and 209.214.14.15 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log), adds links to gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com on a few pages and keeps re-adings them from new IP addresses. Ah, jeez, that's BellSouth. Fat chance of blocking him. Be on the lookout for him. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 01:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
This spammer, most recently using 209.214.14.138 ( talk · contribs), has made a legal threat against me, and has resumed spamming. For the moment, I will refrain from reverting him. Does anyone else care to take a look at those edits? -- Donald Albury( Talk) 03:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
User Amotis has been systematically adding a link to a site with videos on hundreds of articles about birds (see his contributions). Now normally whenever I see someone adding the same link to multiple sites with no additional content I remove that link everywhere they inserted it, regardless of what the link contains. However I hesitate in this case because I'm concerned it might actually be considered a useful and relevant link. Could I get some opinions on this? Thanks much! -- AbsolutDan (talk) 13:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed two external links to what I regard as link farms from Seduction Community (see diff [13]). I have now received this on my talk page. I would like some other opinions on the links I removed before I pursue this. Thanks. -- Donald Albury( Talk) 22:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
What do we do about spam on user pages? Nothing I have read says they are exempt from the spam policy. Anyhow, I had a run-in with Dogtoyco ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) who seems to exist only to promote their own web site, someone other than me should probably take action as I have already had an interaction with them. - Trysha ( talk) 08:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
He's at it again, and not on his user page, but another article. [14]. See last line. Time for a block, I feel. Nelson50 21:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Please take a look at these. Need a second opinion, thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 14:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I've changed the "To-do" list section to a full page width. Its previous formatting (as a 40% right justified column) cut into the body of the page and disrupted the flow of the article. Feel free to revert or improve if you don't prefer this.
Monkeyman(
talk)
15:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that Jwhyte ( talk · contribs), who describes himself as a "Search Engine Marketer," has been adding Motor Trend reviews to links of just about every vehicle page. While I think Motor Trend is good car magazine and a good source, I'm wondering if it's a bit excessive. Given that he only adds Motor Trend links, I'm guessing they are paying him. OhNo itsJamie Talk 01:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)