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learnerstv.com
Continuing and unceasing spamming of two articles, promoting some pay-to-learn online site when the material is freely available. Forever changing IP addy, so blocks not effective. Bots don't seem to have a good strike rate, and the spamming has now been ongoing for over 2 months at [1] and [2]. Plenty of examples for diffs from those histories, for example:
Since XLinkBot started watching for this site, it caught the first time it was added but not the second. Not sure if second was missed, intentionally ignored, or I screwed up the regex for the site when I added it. But regardless, I've never seen an acceptable use of this site, but it is indeed often spammed to various articles (the Lewin ones are the most common but not the only targets) by throw-away anon IP accounts. WP:WPSPAM reports:
Defer to XLinkBot There are only two articles, there has been little disruption this month, and XLinkBot has reverted the last couple of issues. Recommend semi-protection in the case of it getting seriously out of hand. Stifle (talk) 12:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is an aggressive spammer, or maybe more correct someone abusing Wikipedia for his personal vendetta against Thailand and/or the Thai authorities, adding his soapbox texts into several articles, most commonly Thailand. One common thing about these entries is that he adds links to the forum of the newspaper The Nation, which have the common form of nationmultimedia.com/qvote/... - though this link is not included always. Maybe it can help to stop this person at least a bit when he cannot add that link anymore. But mkake sure it's only the qvote subpage which gets blocked, other URLs from the Nation have to work as it is a common reference link. The IPs listed below are just the most recent ones, this goes on for months already. Blocking the IPs for longer times is not possible, as these belong to a Thai ISP and thus might block out other users.
We can just use the edit histories (contribs) for a source of diffs.
I'm going to go ahead and blacklist nationmultimedia.com/qvote. There's no reason to quote the newspaper's forums since forums are unreliable sources (as opposed to the newspaper's articles).
The shared IP (67.107.70.147) seems to be a continued source of SPAM. Warnings were posted to 67.107.70.147's talk page in July 2007 and September 2007. --Berkland (talk) 14:04, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've given them last warnings. If it recurs, we will blacklist. In the meantime, here are additional domains and accounts for the record:
Here is a report and comment from WP:AIV. This seems like an issue that is best handled by the spam blacklist, so I've moved it here. (I blocked the most recent IP, but a rangeblock is probably too much, in my opinion.) -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, sorry, I accidentally put my report in proposed removals instead of proposed additions. Below is a lot more of this guy's sites, plus an extensive (but probably not comprehensive) collection of diffs showing the extent of the spamming. Note that while abdulmatic.com and abdulpaula.com are the ones he adds the most, there are three others that could use blacklisting too. --Jaysweet (talk) 13:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Steve -- as you can see below, a 24-hour block would be laughably ineffective. User:Abdulmatics is indef banned, and one of the 78.*.*.* IPs got a 31-day ban at some point last month (please don't make me look it up ;D ). In neither case was any deterrent effect observed.
This really needs blacklisted. If that doesn't happen, well, okay, the spamming is slow enough that we can just revert it manually, but it's a lot of extra work, and as far as I can tell these sites have no legitimate EL or reference value. --Jaysweet (talk) 13:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Persistent spamming lasting nearly two months, needs immediate blacklisting.
The Abdul-related ones all redirect to the same site. Abdulmatic is not the name of Paula Abdul's new album. User:Abdulmatics is banned for spamming, and apparently was also banned at the German Wikipedia. Vandalism continues from numerous IPs in the 78.*.*.* range, hence the need for a blacklist.
abdulmatic.com and abdulpaula.com are the real problem links. The others have only been added <5 times each, but since they are coming from the same User:Abdulmatics account, I have to assume they are spam-only and have no EL value.
List of diffs (all diffs are from Paula Abdul unless otherwise noted):
Gaps where there was no apparent spamming for several days indicate a case when the spam link was not caught and remained in the article. Since February 7th, there has rarely been a 24-hour period where Paula Abdul did not link to one of this guy's sites for at least a few minutes. --Jaysweet (talk) 12:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Several IP addresses [13][14][15]
repeatedly add a metric conversion and body mass calculator site, icalculator.org, to the articles Body mass index and Metrication. Since there are many good quality conversion sites available there is no reason to tolerate this site; the incorrect SI symbols on the page would make anyone who understand the metric system cringe. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 03:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Have been spamming furniture, designer and architect (Frank Lloyd Wright) pages for several months. The registered account has been permanently blocked for spamming, the IP users keep popping up; all have received a final warning; the most recent spammings took place today by User 81.138.7.114, diffs here and
here, after a final warning. --CliffC (talk) 13:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The same user (193.33.49.9) keeps inserting these Ukrainian commercial sites (advertising). The IP address for both URLs is 82.144.223.6. The affected page is Surrogacy, but they also added to Commercial surrogacy, which has since been merged into Surrogacy. I have not included the diffs, the user IP above links to the contribs page. As can be seen the user has edited only these two articles. The user IP is (not surprisingly) also registered to the Ukraine. It should also be considered whether this user IP is to be blocked. TINYMARK06:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is as a result of a discussion here[39] about the usage of FreeRepublic.com as a reprinting service for a primary source. I was curious to see what other articles linked to FreeRepublic and found a small handful on en and on other languages. In looking into the specific links in article space what I'm finding is that FreeRepublic is often being used in lieu of linking to the actual source [40][41], where it exists in a web archive [42], or just to link to it in the external links section[43]. I'm sure the articles were linked as references in good faith, but given that FreeRepublic is an unreliable source, should it be blacklisted and then whitelisted onto articles related to the site, added to one of the spambots, or periodically cleaned up by hand? --Bobblehead(rants)23:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
FreeRepublic.com is an unreliable source (self-published source) that includes a portion of a site that reprints articles from reliable sources (copyright violations). Most of the reprints actually include links to the reliable source's article, so the only reason they are being included is for traffic. FreeRepublic is itself a notable website, so freerepublic.com itself should be whitelisted, but at a minimum the area for the reprints (www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news) should be blacklisted. --Bobblehead(rants)02:31, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yikes! I'm sorry everybody's overlooked your request. I started to blacklist it just now but discovered there were >1000 links in our articles and talk pages. Blacklisting it without removing the links will lock up those pages preventing editing until the link is removed. This is disruptive and frustrating for our editors given the way the software filter's pop-up notice works: it returns editors to our main page, causing them to lose their edits. Normally we remove the links before blacklisting them.
Is there any evidence this link has been spammed? Or is it just a poor source that innocent editors have linked to out of ignorance? Evidence of spamming would help make your case.
From my own (painful) experience with massive link removals such as this, you may get some very forceful feedback from editors who think it's a useful link. It helps to broaden the discussion as much as possible ahead of time to be able to demonstrate broad consensus if there's pushback afterwards. I suggest leaving notes at WP:AN, WP:CV and WP:VP briefly stating the problem and referring folks to your Reliable sources/Noticeboard discussion.
Once you get a good consensus, I suggest you then round up a posse of volunteers to start removing the links. I suggest using the following in your edit summaries:
remove freerepublic.com link per [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#FreeRepublic]], [[MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#freerepublic.com]] and [[Wikipedia:Copyright#Linking to copyrighted works]]
Where a freerepublic.com link is used as a reference, you'll want to either link to an alternate source or at least leave a {{fact}} tag in its place.
I know it must sound like I'm trying to make this hard for you but I'm not. What I've described actually turns out to be the easiest, least disruptive way to handle a problem like this one.
I think it's more individual users adding it out of ignorance rather than a concerted spammer going out and seeing how many links to the site they can add. So I'm thinking this probably isn't a candidate for blacklisting per your comment above. Sounds like I was trying to use a sledgehammer to resolve the copyright issue rather than a ball-peen. --Bobblehead(rants)19:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done, since it has by now been unlinked in mainspace and linked again and unlinked again ad nauseam. Hundreds of links as a purported source in biographies especially, horribly inappropriate , and I can't see any way of managing this without biting the bullet. Home page whitelisted for linking on Free Republic. Guy (Help!) 09:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Guy, I disagree with blacklisting this many links added by regular editors without more consensus from the community and I am especially disagree with blacklisting them first before cleaning them up. This is going to disrupt probably 1000 pages. A perverse feature of our software filter is that when editors get the screen telling them they're editing an article with a blacklisted link, they lose whatever they were editing when they click on the "return to" link at the bottom. --A. B.(talk • contribs)13:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. It seems freerepublic just recently made the list, and is already causing havok. It is preventing me from making an edit since the link was already part of the page I was editting.
Even though a freerepublic reference isn't in the section I'm trying to edit, the fact that it appears elsewhere on the page has the side effect of literally locking the entire page from edits. I wouldn't be surprised if many people are pleased about this (possibly not) unintended consequence. Ynot4tony (talk) 13:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I think this listing may be a little premature given the number of articles affected. Maybe should be rem'd out to allow cleaning at least? Thanks --Herbytalk thyme13:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the problem with just blacklisting it. Anyone who tries to post a substantial edit without saving it first is just asking for trouble in any case, since all sorts of technical problems can occur which frustrate the process, not the least of which are edit conflicts.
I don't see that this is likely to create any problems that local users can't handle, and if one doesn't just blacklist, it means some dedicated users will probably have to go and delete all 1000 entries by hand. Gatoclass (talk) 14:17, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It was a horrible idea to blacklist this. It needs to be reversed immediately. It's disrupted editing on many pages. I'm happy to edit Wikipedia, but I'm not going to bother with the frozen articles if I have to remove VALID citations just because they use a freerepublic link. I'd appreicate it someone would please take care of this soon. Dgf32 (talk) 14:45, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that Versageek. I am not convinced that this should be permanently removed from the blacklist but the disruption is not good --Herbytalk thyme15:00, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, after spending several weeks with no response, today's rather active. Heh. Gatoclass, I don't think Versageek is saying that the site should not be added to the list, but that it shouldn't be listed right now because of the number of links to the site currently.--Bobblehead(rants)16:01, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So we'll just take care of them as we edit. It isn't a big deal; I was editing out some vandalism in Hezbollah this morning, and was greeted by the informative message upon saving. A few minutes of finding the link and either excising it completely or tagging with "citation needed" is all it takes. Tarc (talk) 19:31, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There's a small core of volunteers that handle much of the spam removal and prevention around here. I've always felt that we should do this with as little disruption as possible to our editors that are building content -- sort of like not mopping the school floors in the middle of lunch hour. I'm also wary of blacklisting links that regular editors are routinely adding. Perhaps they're not a good choice, but I don't think the blacklist is a good tool for raising editorial quality; it's a blunt instrument for blocking persistent, bad faith abuse by outsiders, not well-meaning poor judgement by our honest contributors. Besides, as I noted in my original remarks to Bobblehead before all this blew up, the counterintuitive path of least effort is actually to deal methodically with consensus-building and link removal before blacklisting on something big like this. --A. B.(talk • contribs)03:42, 17 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I added the IP address for FreeRepublic to the list so COIbot will start reporting on it. Looks like there is a handful of links to the IP address. I'm starting to do some cleanup on the links, but I can only do a few a day. --Bobblehead(rants)14:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have now finished removing Freep links from mainspace. I also unlinked (leaving the text, just removing http://) from several hundred talk and other pages, for the convenience of others who might edit them. I found many, many reasons to unlink the site: blatant copyright violations was probably the worst and most common, e.g. "publisher foo (requires registration, free version here...)". Some of the links were to Freep threads as a pretended source in themselves, often in biographies. Um, no. Especially when the link amounts to a list of reasons why X is a pinko commie subversive. I think the cirrent Wikipedia term of art is "uninformed wingnut drivel". For anything where Free Republic genuinely offers a compelling, authoritative, copyright-clean source, there is the whitelist. Guy (Help!) 21:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that was a horrible idea to blacklist. A source should not be blacklisted just because it is deemed unreliable by several people. This should be reversed. I posted my notes at WP:ANI.Biophys (talk) 18:04, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can you cite the editorial policy of Free Republic? Can you show the credentials and real world identities of the authors? Can you prove that the material which implies copyright violation actually has copyright permission, rather than being more violations per L. A. Times v. Free Republic? Can you, in short, identify which Free Republic links used as sources sometimes for quite controversial material, meet the requirements of WP:RS and WP:C? Guy (Help!) 18:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Be real, this addition is more politically motivated than anything. I don't see a great push to add Salon.com to a "spam" blacklist. Moves like this do nothing to help Wikipedia's credibility. Equinox137 (talk) 04:23, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Several concerns. freerepublic.com articles do not appear to be professionally written and don't seem to have any sources. Here are the rules which govern this issue:
Fails Wikipedia's core content policies:
”Verifiability” — Wikipedia's core content policy. In particular:
Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in Wikipedia articles. If a specific link is needed as a citation, an etablished editor can request it on the whitelist on a case-by-case basis, where the url can be demonstrated as a "Verifiable Reliable Sources"--Hu12 (talk) 05:12, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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dianaring.com
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I was going to agree, but there was another posting today from an SPA: dif. The added text is a word-for-word copy of Cryellow's version - the only difference being the Cryellow reworded the preceding paragraph while this edit did not. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Barek, thanks for catching this guy at it again. This was a foolish move on the spammer's part.
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mychurch.org
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blog.goo.ne.jp/umineko300 -- opinions wanted
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This Japanese language blog link was used in BLP attacks on Ernst & Young executives in Japan; here's an example. I removed the link and warned the IP adding it. Normally we'd give a domain several chances but in this case, I think we should blacklist it now, given the BLP issues. Also, while I found no evidence it's been used on the Japanese Wikipedia or any other projects, I'm wondering if we should blacklist at meta.
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factualsatisfaction.freehostia.com
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myspace.com/official_toronto_raptors
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iCandy Clothing spam on Wikipedia
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I think this domain, along with hundreds of others, is owned by the Korean Bioinformation Center (KOBIC). I suggest giving it to XLinkBot rather than blacklisting it.
I looked at the BioBook.org history tab to see if anybody that edited the BioBook.org page on AboutUs has also edited Wikipedia. 59.27.17.166 has edited AboutUs.org, ko.wikipedia and en.wikipedia.
One of the links 59.27.17.166 added on en.wikipedia was to psimap.org. Curious, I went to http://psimap.org and clicked on the "About Psimap.com" tab and came up with what looks like a total spam page:
AC-Baidu helps foreign business to do online and offline marketing in China. Our primary services are to help foreign business to run pay per click campaign on Baidu.com, which is the leading search engines in China, with more than 70% online search market share. www.ac-baidu.com/about_us.php
Concerted ongoing effort by the same spammers with wide-ranging single purpose IP's to insert adverts into the Registry cleaner article. fixerror365.com was blocked recently, so they've simply switched to another of their domain names and continued the same activity as before. Registry cleaners typically fall under the umbrella of scareware or have malware payloads - this one is the latter. Please note the other domains associated with this software that the spammer can switch to if errorremovers.com is blocked:
Specific pages can be whitelisted in the future as required and affiliate stations can just wikilink to one or both of the articles above. --A. B.(talk • contribs)23:23, 21 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Can this website be blacklisted? It's been spammed in tenth of articles by User:122.164.243.0. Since it's an IP, the abuse filter can't be used and User:XLinkBot wouldn't help either since the website doesn't provide any useful contents (pagerank = 0). Laurent (talk) 10:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the current domain-owner appears to be a domain-squatter; if Vasanth & Co subsequently secures this domain, we'll want to remove it from the blacklist.
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The commentary made regarding this request referred to a user who was blocked for a year in 2005! It had nothing to do with any specific website. The website is a perfectly legitimate one which I have found to have many interesting and useful articles and research on this topic. I have seen it referred to on many discussion boards around the internet on this subject. I can not understand how it could be 'blacklisted' otherthan the pressure exerted by the editorial pack who seems to feel that the Freemasonry article on Wikipedia is there personal private property. I wish to make edits to the Freemasonry article and to be able to use this site as a reference in some cases, which I will not be able to do if it is "blacklisted". I don't think it is right what is going on here and would like this matter looked at a little more broadly. Thank-you. Davinciscode (talk) 14:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Refer to my previous comment on this suggestion - It is anything but a good reference. Refer to the request for putting it on the blacklist in the first place. And for the record, Lightbringer have been permanently banned for sockpuppetry and vandalism. See WP:LB for more on that case. WegianWarrior (talk) 15:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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My above web site has been blacklisted locally. I don't know why the site has been black listed. It appears that it has been done in error. This is a content rich site dealing with health related subjects such as cholesterol, warning signs of diseases, weight loss, diabetes, home remedies, beauty recipes and vegetarian recipes. Its content can be used and cited in many related articles. Please remove the link from the blacklist.
pcm19 (talk)
Here's the history of this and related domains on Wikipedia:
October 2007: report of large-scale spamming by multiple related accounts::
In spite of requests, warnings and link removals then, this spam continued with new domains and new accounts, leading to a re-analysis in December 2007, at which time these domains were blacklisted.
In January 2008, you requested two of your domains be whitelisted, but the requests were declined:
"Typically, we do not remove domains from the spam blacklist in response to site-owners' requests. Instead, we de-blacklist sites when trusted, high-volume editors request the use of blacklisted links because of their encyclopedic value in support of our encyclopedia pages. If such an editor asks to use your links, I'm sure the request will be carefully considered and your links may well be removed."
"Unlike Wikipedia, DMOZ is a web directory specifically designed to categorize and list all Internet sites; if you've not already gotten your sites listed there, I encourage you to do so -- it's a more appropriate venue for your links than our wikis. Their web address: http://www.dmoz.org/."
I don't see any reason to change that guidance.
I will note, however, in researching this request, I discovered we previously overlooked 4 related domains that would otherwise have been blacklisted:
Request unlisting of petrsoukal.profitux.cz/dnepr.htm
there is a lot of quality pictures from all around the Ukraine.
I did the pictures myself. kind regards. thanks petr soukal petr.soukal@inmail.sk —Preceding unsigned comment added by Autorizace (talk • contribs) 22:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Request unlisting of aceshowbiz.com/celebrity/meagan_good
It gives critical information on her heritage and is of great help since finding information on heritage of multiracial actors is quite difficult i.e. Jada Pinkett Smith is part Cherokee however this is hard to find since it isn't posted on the internet.Thank You Mcelite (talk) 16:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)mcelite[reply]
The domain has established notability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:HubPages). We should be able to link to the domain's main page "www.hubpages.com" on the article concerning it. It feels pretty straightforward that we want to have an external link to the subject at the bottom of the article.
Rectified potential problem behavior
While people used wikipedia to promote their own hubs in the past, this behavior is reduced since HubPages has hired additional staff to remove overly promotional hubs. Furthermore, the chronic problem of site members incorrectly adding their links to wikipedia articles can be prevented on a case by case basis. After all, some hubs constitute relevant verifiable research.
mroconnell (talk) 17:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While it may be encouraging that hubpages is attempting to controll content, it is not a reason to delist at this time, Not done. I have however whitelisted the root (main page) page (www.hubpages.com/index.php) for use in the article HubPages. If a specific link is needed as a citation, an etablished editor can request it on the whitelist on a case-by-case basis, where the url can be demonstrated as a "Verifiable Reliable Source" (in an appropriate context) when there are no reasonable alternatives available. main page whitelisted Done. thanks--Hu12 (talk) 18:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whitelisting the main site is a good idea which I didn't realize was possible until after posting the request. Thanks for gathering all the policies for me and explaining things lucidly.mroconnell (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Request asiafanclub dot com to be removed from blacklist
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Dear friends, I respectfully ask you remove this address from the blacklist, it was listed there on faulty information and a misrepresentation of what occurred that day. According the wiki policy, the link was just and was in the article for a long and this explained below. I kindly ask with all respect that you read the case I presented, and what really happened with this unfortunate situation, please click link below![64]
Sincerely,70.188.184.84 (talk)AP
"I have 20000 fans in my newsletter that will come here to edit this. If we meet any resistance we will file a lawsuit for emotional stress and discrimination and deformation (as it was reported that we loaded SPAM by loading the Authorized ASIA Fan Club to Wikipedia) and sue personally those who edited out this important authorized site and this will go to the Arbitration Committee"[65]
Fails our External Links and Reliable Sources guidelines and clear evidence violating WP:DISRUPT, WP:POINT, WP:SOCK, WP:SPAM, WP:CANVASS, WP:NOT and WP:CIV. Multiple spam attacks, edit warring, sneaky attempts to subvert wikipedia policy, creating False consensus through use of mutiple IP's, attempting to circumvent blacklisting by creating asiafanclub.4t.com and worst of all the legal threats made by "Asia Fan Club President". This is a clear case where wikipedia is being terrorized in an attempt to advance a site owners agenda. Declined as the site is inapropriate for inclusion. --Hu12 (talk) 01:24, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The evidence showed I was falsely banned for 2 months for that, here is the OFFICIAL investigation report that cleared me of that, there is no rule that one has to use the same PC throughout the day,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Mondrago sockpuppet means to pretend to be someone else, I never did. The 3rr rule got me banned for 3 days, twice during that edit war, so I paid the price for that then, The legal threat was way at the start of the heated edit war, I didn't know the rules then, so I read them and wiki mentions the withdrawal of the leagal threat, I did withdraw it as wiki says to do and I apologized a long time ago for that sir. Yesterday I made a post that described I was banned for 2 months for reason of sockpuppet/modrago, and I was not him. I was also falsely accused of COL, COL is Citing oneself, Financial, Legal antagonists, Self-promotion, (the ASIA Fan club does not promote the private or commercial interests of the editor) & it is not promote otherwise obscure individuals by pointing to their personal pages. Falsely accused of SPAM & other bogus charges that I explained above are false and were thrown out there just so the ASIA Fan Club is not inluded in the article. Even if they were true, & they are not, that is not judging the link on the merits of the wiki external guidelines policy, What I did wrong was lose my temper a long time ago and engaged in an edit war and I was banned for 3 days twice at that time, I am human, was banned for 3 days then and apologized for that. Since than I did not edit anything in the external links section, but wish to discuss this with those that oppose me in an adult type manner. This page was locked to grandfathered users for like 2 months, so I was unable to state my side here. The IP you banned was 70.188.184.84. Please reverse it, no hard feelings
The ASIA Fan club was part of the article for a very long time, actually was #2 in the external links section. I noticed it was moved to #4, so I moved it back to the #2 slot where it had been for a while ( I was requesting a 1st in line should hold it's spot thing. A user with just an IP address not identifying themself in any manner, from Canada, removed the long time link. I replaced it back, after about 2 hours of going back and forth, this IP address then removed the myspace link. After another hour this IP address wrote certain administrators and told them I was adding spam to the article. The administrators thought they were acting accordingly to one adding spam. So they banned me twice for the edit war, and then blacklisted the site. They acted under the impression that I was adding something new that day. They now know that I did not add the link, I was replacing it, it was there for a long time, but they made their call before they got the entire story. What I should have done was not engage in the 4 hour long edit war, but should have wrote an administrator to say that someone is removing a long time link that was in the article. The IP address I was in the war with wrote administrators, beat me to the punch, twisted facts to make it sound like I was adding spam. Now that they know what happened, but after all hell had broken loose, and they wish not reverse their call. I stated this before as you can see above, and CIreland took my side and removed the site from the blacklist, he even tried to reinstate the link, but we couldn't understand why the warning was lighting up. Being told it was removed from the blacklist I added another page of the website until it cleared up. I was then accused trying to cleverly revert a blacklist site or something to that effect. That is not true. History proves it is not the case, you can see when I added that, I was told it was removed from the blacklist, I even mentioned what I did about the other link in the open until the glitch, which we thought it was, cleared, I was open about it and did nothing in hiding. See it here! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Asia_%28band%29#Fan_club_link_blacklisting What happened was as soon as he removed it from the blacklist, someone re-listed it, and we had no idea. Yesterday I asked hu12, about the myspace links, if they are not allowed, why is one on JP wiki page he responded "As much as I agree with you, AP, that wikipedia is not the place for Any myspace links (repeat...any!), it is an official page of the articles subject and John Payne's personal myspace —and isn't prohibited by restrictions on linking. Unfortunately john Payne official myspace does belong on his specific page (any other page would be inapropriate). See the External links policies first statement within Wikipedia:External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided section.. ("Except..." )". So this is valid under the except clause. I agree. We were also told there is to be no fan clubs. However, there is one on Tom Pettys wiki page and one on Barry Manilows wiki page in the external links section. If mine was a violation and it was reported and removed, why are not these fan clubs removed from the external links section, I have officially reported them. I don't believe they should be removed, I'm making a point. Please be fair across the board and judge my link on the wiki policy, and treat the ASIA wiki page fairly like every other artists page and treat the ASIA authorized club like those of other artists on wikipedia. Based upon the wiki policy, the "except" clause that hu12 and Bondegezou agrees validates a link to be included in the external links section. Please judge my link fairly and honestly and address each point with reason as to it's relation with the wiki "except" clause for the inclusion of a link. 1. It must be from a an authorized source, and contain relavant material that would not normally be included in the wiki article. I provided the evidence that my site is a management authorized site and is in the official biography. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Soles/ca1200_sm.jpg 2. It must contain such material such as reviews and interviews. If you go to Asiafanclub.com we have official interviews with band members that are not and would not be included in the wiki article. 3. I have a management authorized reviews that was sent to me by management for publication. See the Trump Marina Press Release on the main page! 4. We have exclusive news, such as the announced Carl Palmer interview today on New Jersey's Own Rock Radio - 105.5FM) only I announced this! This was important for ASIA fans, ask yourself, are you hurting ASIA fans by withholding this information from wikipedia readers? 5. We had an exclusive live chat in the fall of 06 with John Wetton & Geoff Downes authorized by management, ask yourself, are you hurting ASIA fans by withholding this information from wikipedia readers? 6. We have exclusive professional photos that are authorized for my club that can't be found anywhere else that illustrate, what the ASIA article speaks of. Those photos can not be included in the article, remember, wiki says it must be relevant material that would not normally be included in the wiki article. Took a look at this example http://pub18.bravenet.com/photocenter/album.php?usernum=1471820109&album=49939 ask yourself, are you hurting ASIA fans by withholding this information from wikipedia readers? 7. We are a non profit authorized organization, we have given out at my cost, concert tickets, DVD's, rare videos, & two winners of the CD. Yea there were many misunderstandings, I did engage in an edit war and for that I apologize, I am human and lost my temper. It was proven as you see above I was not modrago, but was banned for 2 months for it. Ask yourself if this is relevant exclusive authorized material. If no fan clubs are allowed, then take the same action against those I reported as you did mine when it was reported. Thank you all for your time. A mistake was made here by false report and the twisting of facts, and actions were made after hell broke loose, now that we all caught our breath, look at everything for what it really is and what really happened. Please remove this site from the blacklist and put it back where it was for a long time, in the external links section. Hu12 & AB are the ones that banned me I ask for a neutral opinion that in unbias an uninvolved in this case70.188.184.84 (talk) 01:59, 16 April 2008 (UTC) ASIA Pres.[reply]
With respect, Hu12, it sounds like most of your reasoning has to do with the site owner / user requesting it, not the value of the link itself in the context of the article. Shouldn't those be considered separately? Either way, he's made amends for things like the legal threat (withdrawn) and explained the multiple IPs (there was no sense of false consensus, it was evident posts came from the same user on different computers)... and honestly, "terrorized" is a bit over the top...
The value of the link itself has been made clear as a reference to the article. In compliance with External Links policy, it is not "self-published", it does provide a unique resource, and contains material not found elsewhere. It's also an officially authorized fan organization as has been demonstrated in discussions, and its value is confined to this one article about Asia. Shouldn't it be considered on the basis of the content? --Shubopshadangalang (talk) 02:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Siren Artist Management (ASIA's Band management company), states the Official Asia Fan Club site is originalasia.com.
Originalasia.com is the band's official site (not a fan club). Anyway, that Siren site is clearly outdated. As demonstrated in discussions, the band's official biography links to asiafanclub.com. Are you saying that asiafanclub.com is selling photos or other copyrighted work illegally? --Shubopshadangalang (talk) 02:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Siren is no longer their management (didn't you notice that site referring to the band having almost an entirely different lineup and that their new album will be releasing in 2004??) Their official management (as was John Wetton's before the reunion) is known as Qedg (Phil Carson and Martin Darvill, assisted by Valentina Pianezzi: qedg@btinternet.com). This is according to originalasia.com, and is also consistent with information on asiafanclub.com --Shubopshadangalang (talk) 02:36, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, just so you don't have to dig through the discussion to find this again - here's the link (which was posted by "Asia Pres" originally) to the page from the band's official bio which shows asiafanclub.com on the list of internet resources: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v71/Soles/ca1200_sm.jpg
Obviously I have no way of verifying what document this page is from, and it may help to see the entire document in context, and an official source for the document itself somewhere online. But, I, for one, am convinced this is legitimate. --Shubopshadangalang (talk) 02:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hu12 you're going to make me laugh, the notice about criminal offences I remember, it was sent to me to post as well as an official release, and I had it posted. I just remove older stuff and Dave keeps things logged on multiple pages, I don't. That was about illegal compilation CD's, I was sent that official press release too. Find out what's going on. All of the music clips, official photos, banners, are sent to me in my mail box to post as an authorized affiliate.
I did invite some of the Yes fan over because of the Steve Howe interest a long time ago the site owner contacted me about it, I said I was sorry, it was over, I never went back. That was between us and it was settled in an adult type manner.
As far as my link it is listed in the official biography, as far as why it is not on the website, there are reasons for that that I need not tell you, but it did link to me the day of the chat with John Wetton & Geoff Downes ... that I can't mention, but if you go to Lionell Ritchie's wiki page you will see his official site and his official fan club. The official fan club is also not listed on his official site. But I am in the official biography as an authorized media resource. Hu12 I have the managers links plastered all over the site I was with him a week & a half ago. Why do you hate me man? 70.188.184.84 (talk) 02:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)AP[reply]
hu12, We are not under Siren, that is old, I was not authorized then, this is a different company, you really have no idea what is going on, I don't mean that in bad way, but it's true. It's a new team now, and ASIA is seperated into two seperate branches.70.188.184.84 (talk) 03:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)AP[reply]
It realy doesn't matter. Asiafanclub.com is simply a privatly run site which obtains any 'official' content from the Official Asia Fan Club site originalasia.com. It is neither owned by or qualifies as ASIA's official site, and even if it did, the many, many months of relentless and extensive abuse of wikipedia is enough to no longer welcome further discussion. Wikipedia is NOT a "vehicle for advertising" Declined--Hu12 (talk) 03:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Request unbias opinion for removal of asia fan club from blacklist
The following discussion is an archived report. Please do not modify it. Subsequent reports should be made in a new section.
Once again you have your facts wrong, I get official news, photos etc, by managment in my mailbox along with about 7 other authorized affiliates. I also have some exclusive material not found on the other sites as I pointed out. I'm not not some Yahoo club who is runiing over copying stuff off Daves site, I am part of the trusted bunch.. You have no idea, who or what we are & made it clear that you were uninformed about the change of management hands.
We are not advertising, it belongs because it contains relavant material, and the facts above show why and how it was removed that day along with the myspace page.
If it didn't matter why did you bring it up? Now that your facts were wrong you wish to say it doesn't matter. The site is authorized and contains exclusive material that is not found anywhere else, such as tour pix, review and interviews & chats with band members, that is relavant with wiki policy external guielines. You just want to to win this like I'm battleing you & I'm not. Even if my site was private & NOT authorized, (and it is) all it has to have is material that is releavant that wouldn't normally be included in the wiki article to be included in the external links section & you know that. The chat with the band members for one, do you want to with hold that info from wiki readers that read about ASIA, it was my site that had it & we may have more once the tour is over. It was my site that announced the Carl Plamer interview exclusively, we have exclusive tour photos, you have a grudge against me sir and won't move from your position. Please allow other people that are uninvolved in this case to judge it from the outside, you have been against me from the start and that is why I came here, to have unbias administrators judge this. I came here to appeal to people that were not involved in this and did not have a grudge against me, to judge it fairly. I have nothing against you. But can a neutral administrator please step in rather than this individual who has an obvious bias against me and this club. Sincerely, would you like me to request an official statement from the manager to prove it to you that I am authorized? Would that settle it? Please answer.70.188.184.84 (talk) 03:51, 16 April 2008 (UTC)AP[reply]
Declined But if this tirade continues, I'll enforce another block. Pointless bickering gets you nowhere, and your history (and many socks) proves that this account is here not to constructively contribute, but to spam a web-site about. As an uninvolved administrator who holds an unbiased opinion, your site is spam, plain and simple. I'm endorsing the blacklisting of your web-site. seicer | talk | contribs04:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Request unlisting of toyotapriusbattery.com
Having made the site for Prius enthusiasts, TPB was recently blacklisted from wikipedia. Links to Prius articles about longetivity are allowed to remain, but this site was not..why? It provides valuable information about the Prius Battery, including specifications from model to model, a FAQ about how long the battery lasts, is under warranty, etc. and articles about future improvements as well. I don't believe the site deserves to be blacklisted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guarius (talk • contribs) 13:50, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
the spammer's response: "Understood, my apologies" ... but continued to spam anyway.
Usually we blacklist after 4 warnings; it looks like we were unusually patient with this spammer.
Typically, we do not remove domains from the spam blacklist in response to site-owners' requests. Instead, we de-blacklist sites when trusted, high-volume editors request the use of blacklisted links because of their encyclopaedic value in support of our encyclopaedia pages. If such an editor asks to use your links, I'm sure the request will be carefully considered and your links may well be removed.
Unlike Wikipedia, DMOZ is a web directory specifically designed to categorize and list all Internet sites; if you've not already gotten your sites listed there, I encourage you to do so -- it's a more appropriate venue for your links than our wikis. Their web address: http://www.dmoz.org.
List clutter is not really an issue and I see no compelling reason to remove these from the list.[66] It's possible the blog-owner might reactivate them.
I added countingcrowsnew.blogspot.com, freemodlife.blogspot.com, and googlepackdownload.blogspot.com to the blacklist. I made a previous report about the blogspot sites and they're being spammed by the same blocked sockpuppet who I filed a report about here. Spellcast (talk) 22:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I've also added b5050-raffle.blogspot.com, gpd2008.blogspot.com, and itsleaked.blogspot.com. They were being spammed by the same blocked sock in that report. Spellcast (talk) 05:18, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
From an en:Wikipedia mission perspective (though possibly not your personal perspective:) a bigger issue than the flak that will be generated is the disruption to editing. I believe a lot of pages, particularly biographies of living people, contain legitimate links to the subject's blog - many of which are hosted on blogspot. Simply blacklisting and then waiting for whitelisting requests will likely
overwhelm the whitelist page here and on meta (which given you are one of the most active admins on both, may not be ideal for you!)
be confusing and frustrating to a lot of editors especially newbies, but also any who are not familiar with the blacklist/whitelist set up
lead to a loss of legitimate links and legitimate edits as people struggle to work out whether to keep their edit and lose the link or the other way round while any whitelist request is ongoing.
I think a move like that will take some careful planning and preparation to avoid these issues (might also help cut down some of the heat). One way or another, I think we need human editors to assess the current blogspot links on article pages and enter appropriate ones on the whitelist before the blacklisting goes into effect. I don't think such a move will cut out most of the flak though, so we might want to ensure there are other admins involved to help spread the weight, and a nicely presented page of evidence of the issues the domain causes to point people to.
Blogspot certainly gets spammed a lot more than most domains, and I support blacklisting. But It's still a domain that has a lot of good links and I think it's important to think through how a move like that will impact people, and to adjust to the situation. -- SiobhanHansa13:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There are many, many legitimate links to the domain, not only to blogs belonging to article subjects but to blogs belonging to Wikipedia contributors. Better to blacklist individual blogs as needed. --bainer (talk) 16:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure why Wikipedia contributors would be adding their own blogs? A very limited number of blogs actualy meet WP:RS and even fewer still meet the requirements of WP:EL or are a blog that is the subject of the article or an official page of the articles subject. There are currently 32,916 blogspot.com Blog links on Wikipedia, if whitelisting even a thousand "legitimate links", its worth it.--Hu12 (talk) 17:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You've presented some convincing reasons to leave certain blog links out of Wikipedia, but not a reason to leave all blog links out. Wikipedia contributors might want to link to their blogs because, you know, it is possible for said contributors to frequent websites on the internet other than Wikipedia :P See WP:COMMUNITY. There is also a performance cost to whitelisting and blacklisting; as far as I can tell, 1000 whitelisted entries costs more computationally than 1000 blacklisted entries (instead of using one large regex, which is how the blacklist works, you're doing 1000 individual regex replacements). GracenotesT§18:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was under the impression server load was something we were supposed to leave up to the developers to worry about. If they see an issue and ask for a reassessment that would be one thing, but its not a good argument against a tactic without their weight behind it.
The suggestion isn't that all blogs should be banned. the suggestion is that this particular domain gets spammed so much it would be beneficial to the project to blacklist it and only white list the ones that are appropriate. -- SiobhanHansa18:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hu12 I think it's important not to overstate the case here. Not all of the ~32,000 links (assukming the 1K of good links estimate) that are not legitimate external links or citations will actually be harmful to Wikipedia. While editors' own blogs on their user pages aren't necessary to the project, in the vast majority of cases they do no harm and may help editors fell a bond that connects them to the project. Many more will be links from discussions and projects. While I don't think that's a reason for keeping a domain that is also being spammed so much - it's not the case that we do 32,000 links worth of "good" by removing them. For the most part we only really benefit from the spam and poorly placed article links that go. -- SiobhanHansa18:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The rule \bblogspot\.com is (currently) not on COIBot's monitorlist. Some of the sub-domains have been added via WT:WPSPAM, or have been caught by the automonitoring of COIBot (mainly because the name of the editor is the same as the name of the subdomain on blogspot.com).
Still, a linksearch on the resolved IP of blogspot.com (72.14.207.191) results in a mere 118 results (all COIBot linkreports)! Often the multiple use of the single subdomains is not a cause for blacklisting, as they may only have been used once or twice. Also, I suspect there are tens of thousands of blogspot sub-domains out there, but these are only the links that are caught because the wiki username overlaps with the domainname of the subdomain (or have been reported here). Would this cumulative behaviour warrant blacklisting of \bblogspot\.com .. here, or even on meta? --Dirk BeetstraTC12:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Appropriate links may indeed be a problem, though the majority will fail some or many of the policies and guidelines here (or don't even have to be a notable fact, or do not need to be a working link while being mentioned; "Mr. X has a a blog on Blogspot.<ref>primary reliable source stating that the blog is the official blog</ref>"; we are not a linkfarm), and I would argue that the spam/coi part of the problem becomes a bit difficult to control... --Dirk BeetstraTC14:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please try to remember how frustrating generic, unexpected spam blocks can be for new and incautious editors. Last time I "checked", if you make an edit with Internet Explorer and you post it directly without preview (two things you should never do), then if the spam blacklist comes up your text is gone. Back arrow gets you the original text of the article. Edits that die that way may not get remade, and they may sour the editor on further contributions. I don't think there should be any blocks on top-level domains or large general purpose Internet sites. 70.15.116.5923:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have to disagree in this case - there's concern that the dynamic IP spamming it is using it to perpetrate scams or send out computer bugs. -Jéské(Blahv^_^v)04:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There's no way we can realistically do this. blogspot has an Alexa traffic rank of 12 - it's higher than Amazon.com - and has well over 30,000 links on en.wp alone. Adding this would be incredibly disruptive to thousands of articles. Unless someone wants to go through all 32,000 links to find the ones that can be kept so we can whitelist them, there's no way we can do this. The ones that are spam should be removed and blacklisted, but WP:EL and WP:RS are not very good reasons to completely forbid links to a domain. Mr.Z-man16:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Though I agree that Wikipedia has a big blogspam problem, I also have to concede that there are too many legit blogspot links (e.g., bio subjects own blog) as SiobhanHansa noted. OhNoitsJamieTalk17:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
(unindent)blogspot.com is currently on User:XLinkBot's revert list. XLinkBot is designed to revert only non-autoconfirmed users, and will only do so a limited number of times. Assuming we emerge from our trial period, I think this would be an effective way of stemming the influx of inappropriate blogspot links. Established editors would still be able to add blogspot.com links and only new or changed links would be reverted - so it wouldn't interfere with non-autoconfirmed users editing pages that already contained a link. --Versageek18:33, 3 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Its not obviously trying to sell something, so it would depend on how its being used. Depending on who writes it though, its probably not a good source to use as a reference. Mr.Z-man15:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The references was added by an 63.164.145.198 (talk·contribs) and I am not sure how to judge its autheticity?
tinyURL
Per User:Viridae's suggestion here, is there any reason not to block the entire tinyurl service? Equazcion•✗/C •11:53, 25 Mar 2008 (UTC)
And others like it. Ie snipurl etc. They serve no purpose that I am aware of and potentially expose our readers to malicious links that would otherwise be visible or be picked up by the spam blacklist. ViridaeTalk11:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For those who are unfamiliar with this site, the intent is to post a really short URL which tinyurl then redirects to a much longer URL. It's useful in some forum settings to copy-paste a tiny link to some website or video or whatever. In the context of this project, though, the only possible purpose for using such a site would be to obscure a link that would otherwise trigger the blacklist, either for spam purposes or something more malicious, as noted above. I think a general policy of blocking such sites would be justifiable both under WP:EL and WP:V (as we can't verify what the link is without clicking). In the interim, though, tinyurl should definitely be blacklisted. UltraExactZZClaims~ Evidence12:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok on further inspection the problem site in this case was actually azqq.com, a tinyurl-type service. Please blacklist that. Thanks. Equazcion•✗/C •12:52, 25 Mar 2008 (UTC)
And now that I actually took the time to read your comment, zzuzz, I'll go over to meta :) Thanks. Equazcion•✗/C •12:54, 25 Mar 2008 (UTC)
