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Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/To-do/Archive1

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Some articles that need external links trimmed[edit]

Book sources looks OK for now. If you think otherwise, lets discuss. DGG 05:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Suppliers" MAY be removable as SPAM (The nonsearchable/deeplinkable ones especially), but the rest seem legit. 68.39.174.238 01:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that these two articles are outside article space, and other rules may apply. These pages are linkfarms, but with a specific target and thought. When removing the ISBN search capability per WP:NOT#REPOSITORY (not a directory) article space will see more spam which has to be cleaned out. Now both are bad, but at least the list pages outside article space are manageable. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • SOCKS contains a list comprised entirely of external links, with a good part pointing at commercial products that do not have their own WP entries. Alex Pankratov 23:15, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Completely removed the table and links, I don't think its our purpose to be an FTP directory listing (I could easily be wrong though). 68.39.174.238 (talk) 01:06, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Requesting you to put {{cleanup-spam}} tag on these sites -- Anshuk (talk) 02:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe I'm mistaken but the Reed Business Information article and all of its associated magazines seem to just be a giant link farm of pages. There is even this handy link farm template Template:Reed Business Interactive Network on some of the pages. Someone want to take a look at this too and make sure I'm not being overly critical of the pages? pw 18:30, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The links are removed form the main article. The template is already clean. --Anshuk (talk) 03:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have started this. Please come and vote Anshuk (talk) 02:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have nominated the GO articles for deletion. Let me sample the response of the community on this before I go ahead with nominating others-- Anshuk (talk) 02:26, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have nominated all the above articles for deletion; except for List of Jabber library software, List of spreadsheets and List of network management systems. I have personally cleaned List of Jabber library software. I think this thread is closed and can be moved to archives.
  • Laozi contains 2 sites that are directories. 2 sites that have little to no meritable links that require link inclusion (information already available in the article or cross articles of that article with incluse "taoist" classes which is promotional. One link is a link on 2 books with some information on laozi. The only meritable link is the education link with a very extensive article. Since my removal I was accuse of being anti-religious taoist so please someone clean that article up StopTaoSpam (talk) 04:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have started the discussion on the Talk: Laozi page. Please come and comment. -- Anshuk (talk) 20:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Removed the external links from Laozi

Some sites that need investigating[edit]

  • www.lodgephoto.com They have lots of nice photos, sorted by locations, which are probably useful and interesting to people wanting to see photos of those locations. And yet, they are posting here because they want to sell their photos. Or maybe they just like taking photos and selling them is just how they fund themselves. It's a borderline case, but I think it would be a slippery slope to leave them as is. As nice as the photos are, it's too commercial for my liking. PS. Checkout the new template! Regards, Ben Aveling 02:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like we have this covered. -- Anshuk (talk) 10:45, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I may be off-side so I want to have someone experienced with how people creatively spam on wikipedia evaluate this: Template:McGrawHillAnimation. It looks to me like a company, www.maxanim.com, is inserting a GoogleAds dummy page between the science related wiki pages, and the desired flash animations from McGraw-Hill. The trouble is, the animations contain helpful scientific content, but we no longer have the direct links available on the science related wiki pages, only this template which links through MaxAnimations (i.e. the 'spammer', if it is one, replaces something like http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/olc/dl/120078/micro50.swf with {{McGrawHillAnimation|genetics|microarray}} Jethero 18:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've commented out the template code to disable all these thinks. The landing page has nothing but ads. This is totally unacceptable user experience. See Template:McGrawHillAnimation. The user who installed a lot of these User:Arcadian, seems to be a legitimate contributor. I think we've been had by Maxanim. The posted link bait and then switched it out for ads. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 13:53, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I also removed all direct links to maxanim and posted "remove maxanim link bait spam. see Template_talk:McGrawHillAnimation" in the revision comments. JetheroTalk 04:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Study Island, no link spam, but a single IP keeps editing the page and is making it sound more and more like an advert: "According to a 2005 teacher survey of Study Island users, 98% said the software increased student test scores by 12.2%; 95.9% say their students enjoy using Study Island; and 97.2% plan on renewing Study Island next school year. [...] The people 'on the Island' have a passion for education, a strong work ethic, and a commitment to always act with integrity and honesty." — ThreeDee912 21:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • *.ports-guides.com. Ad-supported site that is inserted to city and port articles, from various IP's - usually no more then two or three from same IP. Might be blacklist material. -- Sander Säde 15:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • biographyshelf.com, 61 links; discovered from contributions by 202.155.163.242 (though this is just the IP for the most recent additions). Purely commercial crap: the encyclopedia may be improved by removing any or all of the links. Wareh 17:20, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I checked out many of these links and they seem to be legitimate references, not spam or even hawking anything.DUBJAY04 19:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep going down the list. The last 40 or 50 of the 138 entries are products/items for sale (sometimes sold). But many of the pages on this site have been linked to from 5 or 6 wikipedia pages. With 138 different links to this site, my AGF exhausts. Regards, Ben Aveling 21:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I checked out many of these links and they seem to be legitimate references, not spam or even hawking anything.DUBJAY04 19:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep going down the list. The last 40 or 50 of the 138 entries are products/items for sale (sometimes sold). But many of the pages on this site have been linked to from 5 or 6 wikipedia pages. With 138 different links to this site, my AGF exhausts. Regards, Ben Aveling 21:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • taopage.org - pretending to be a site for taoism related info but is really a site selling online courses, books, etc and does not fall with acceptable external links. The problem is they've been adding their domain there since 2004 and quite frankly after being removed hundreds of times, it's always added by an anonymous user.
Took out the unnecessary links. -- Anshuk (talk) 02:23, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • onlineconversion.com Unit conversion sites are a perennial problem. They may be added by someone spamming for the site, or by a well-meaning editor who doesn't understand that external links are supposed to add to understanding of the topic at hand, and such conversion sites rarely do so. This one snuck in lots of links. I'll get to these eventually, but if anyone else feels like going down the list, which is unfortunately a mix of article and talk pages, feel free. —johndburger 15:41, 24 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Users to check out[edit]

  • MorganC123 Hi guys, I haven't got time to chase this one up at the moment but it looks like they are quite active on the external links inserting savvymiss.com everywhere. - Ctbolt 02:51, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Taken care already -- Anshuk (talk) 06:59, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Special:Contributions/Davemckay - This user has been editing pages and creating pages in order to link to his website. For example, he created The Untimely Meditations in order to link to his own website's hosted version of a translation taken from the living translator's website, in possible violation of that translator's copyright. Apparently user needs basically all of his edits reverted (and presumably new stubs deleted?), and a stern spam warning on his talk page. I need some help from you WikiSpam folks if this is going to happen soon. Wareh 17:09, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just now finally finished cleaning out a huge quantity of linkspam. I got rid of linkspam from Davemckay that came from four IP addresses and two user accounts. See my contributions between then and now for the whole long list; see Davemckay's talk page for the IP addresses and other user account. Wareh 03:03, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I checked for all the contribs after 23 feb 2007 and this guy looks clean. -- Anshuk (talk) 07:04, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tomk6 adding http://www.sexinfo101.com. I've been watching most viewed articles where this user is obviously busy spamming. These edits are now reverted, through today, however this user has added the same external link to the same article twice within 10 days. Why couldn't a bot detect users like this?--Chrisbak 04:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Franco Sponziello (talk · contribs) is active on Wikipedia only for adding links on an amateur website about the city of Ostuni he is probably associated with. As you can see on his contributions, he added these links on several articles (not just the Ostuni article itself), and did not care about a warning I sent him. --Angelo 12:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bstewartoh (talk · contribs) - Changing Canton Country Day School back to its original, spammy version. I've changed the article back, but per here, there is an employee at Canton Country Day School under the name Becky Stewart, and the school is in Ohio, thus Bstewartoh. Maybe someone needs to send the school a warning. Cool Bluetalk to me 15:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • 213.240.254.147 (talk · contribs) has (solely) been adding radiotanga.com links to 60+ band and musician articles. Both the 213.240.254/24 netblock and radiotanga.com domain are registered to Konstantin Ternianov (kosyo ternianov com) in WHOIS. --Piet Delport 22:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • 70.179.64.109 - anonymous user adding links containing mostly advertisements to various city articles (added www.seebaltimore.net to Baltimore, Maryland; www.seephiladelphia.net to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; www.seewashingtondc.net to Washington, D.C.; www.tour50states.com to U.S. states). Content on the linked sites is mostly google ads with very little actual content. User warned on talk page. Dr. Cash 21:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • [FirstMention.com] has been repeatedly spammed by User:Dsarokin (contribs) inline in many many articles. Over the course of a few days he made almost 100 edits that included this site name (often bolded) which failed to get quickly reverted as he attempted to blend his spam with the article. (see this diff for an example of sneaky tactics). aliasd·U·T 04:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not linkspam, but Devoninspiration is creating articles like crazy, all related to a UK publishing company called PaperBooks. Apologies if this isn't the correct place to report this sort of thing, I'm about to get off work and am kind of doing this in a rush. Precious Roy 21:14, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
DevonInspiration is in fact a marketing company working for PaperBooks. Some articles are already tagged for deletion, I've tagged many of them with COI. —johndburger 01:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I checked out the link and it did violate WP:EL. Removed and left warning with user. -- Satori Son 07:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Certainly link spam. I reverted all of the IP's changes and left a 4im warning on the IP's talk page. If the IP does it again, we can refer to WP:AIV. LightAnkhC|MSG 19:15, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • User:Neriad (contribs) - Adding spam links to all bird-related articles, sending traffic to www.birdhouses101.com - Ageekgal (talk) 15:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • 72.8.104.107 has been adding links since September to various telecom/network technology articles to subpages of www.yougetsignal.com, which seems to sell provide flavors of software (with Google sponsored ads prominently displayed) related to tracing routes, port forwarding, etc. I removed all the links to the company I could find and left a level 2 warning on the IP address's talk page. I also added the {{Cleanup-spam}} template on a couple of those articles; they had links that might have been spam, but I'm not familiar enough with the subject to be able to tell. I have the articles on my watchlist now; the spammer was active just a few days ago. Doonhamer (talk) 19:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]