Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2006 Archive Jul

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"wikihow"

An article I'm watching just got a link to "wikihow.com". It's a commercial site with ads, but seems to have some good information. Any thoughts? (The article is Tomato, link was added within the last few hours. SB Johnny 19:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I think this is something we need to talk about more in-depth. A couple weeks ago I removed a bunch of "wikihow" links because they were spammed (one editor adding wikihow links to multiple articles). However I'm seeing a lot more wikihow links scattered about. Are they appropriate? In addition your observations about the site, we have the question of WP:NOT - Wikipedia is not an instruction manual. Ok, so we shouldn't write articles that are instructions for performing a task. But what about a single external link to instructions?
Just to muddy the waters a bit more, wikihow is a for-profit site (though the information is freely licensed). Also, we have an existing sister project for instructions: Wikibooks.
So, the question boils down to this: are wikihow external links appropriate for articles? Please discuss below. --AbsolutDan (talk) 20:09, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, this case is even more interesting, as the wikihow link was added to a section that already referred to a wikibook (see Tomato#Growing_needs). SB Johnny 00:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Interesting... as ever content is key, and anything which adds to the article content is generally "a good thing", subject to the usual caveats about advertising etc. As for our not-instruction-manual philosophy, I would say that although (because?) WP is not a photo album, we allow links to photo sites on geographical articles etc. Overall, I would not like a blanket include/exclude rule for this site - just allow the ones that really do add something novel that we can't incorpoate into our articles. I think the tomato link is a good one, even if I personally would rather see it in the external links section rather than breaking up the body text flow. Aquilina 01:22, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
The placement there is my "fault"... that section previously had a lot of how-to information, which I transwikied to WB and later removed after organizing the chapter a bit. Seemed like it would be less confusing to other editors to simply leave the link where the tw'd content used to be. SB Johnny 11:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Why should we need external links inline in the article to a for profit site? That just rings of a bad feeling. Kevin_b_er 01:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I'm Jack, the founder of wikiHow. Our goal at wikiHow is to make a large, high quality, Creative Commons licensed how-to manual. wikiHow's creation was inspired by Wikipedia and we often look to Wikipedia as our role model, so I was shocked to see that we us listed in this discussion as a possible spam source on Wikipedia! It is my hope that any links to wikiHow on Wikipedia were added by real Wikipedians acting in good faith to reference a relevant, high quality wikiHow page. I would be disappointed if any wikiHow community members were routinely spamming multiple Wikipedia articles with links to wikiHow articles. If this is a real and recurring problem, please leave a message on my wikiHow talk page with examples of specific pages spammed and I'll see if I can take action to discourage this activity within the wikiHow community. --JackHerrick 17:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll

Kevin_b_er has a good point, but as I'm the one who made the wikibook, I'll recuse myself from moving or deleting the wikihow link. Perhaps a poll for future reference? SB Johnny 11:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Wikihow links should not appear in articles (i.e., consider them spam).
    • Unsure: How-to information on WP is frequently transwikied to WB, where it is frequently speedied by admins on WB because the person who moved it does not improve the book or chapter. (Wikihow might seem a bit "friendlier", and so contributors go there rather than to WB). SB Johnny 11:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Against; should depend solely on information content of each wikihow article in relation to the WP article - if it adds content, link it. Aquilina 14:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Against per Aquilina; probably these should be looked at on a case-by-case basis depending on the value of the linked information. --Alan Au 21:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Depends. If there is no corresponding Wikibooks article or such an article would be impractical for some reason, and the Wikihow link wasn't added by spamming (which would subject it to linkspam removal), then there might be a place for it (to be determined on a case-by-case basis). However, I feel that whenever possible we should try to create/improve a Wikibooks article instead. --AbsolutDan (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikihow links should not appear in the text portion of articles.
    • Support: As far as I'm concerned, external links should only appear in the text when they are links to sources, and another wiki is not a stable source.SB Johnny 11:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Support: fully agree Aquilina 14:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Support as above; I personally dislike using external links as in-line text. --Alan Au 21:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Support per SB Johnny. --AbsolutDan (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The existence of a wikibook on the same subject should have no bearing whatsoever on whether a wikihow link is included.
    • Unsure: Would this mean that wikimedia wikis are proprietary and need protection from alternative wikis? SB Johnny 11:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Encyclopaedic content has primacy - link to whichever of the two has the better content. Aquilina 14:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Neutral. The information there is appropriately licensed, no? While WP is not supposed to be a primary source, I'm not sure if WikiHow can be considered a primary source either. --Alan Au 21:48, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Against. If a Wikibooks article exists or can be created (per my comment above) it should, and the link should go there. As Wikihow is commercial, Wikibooks is preferable all things being equal --AbsolutDan (talk) 17:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Commercial links

It has been suggested that I post a concern that has come up recently on the commercial links on Erik Rhodes (porn star) which link to commercial sites selling pornography. The creator of the page insists that they are legitimate links to reviews of the film and the actor. Reading this project, it seems to me to be just for self linking to personal sites, but it was suggested that I post here. Would appreciate others reviewing this. The subject came up when the article which I originated on the actor Eric Rhodes who performed with Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat and the Gay Divorcee was moved with the creation of this new page. Any insight and review i.e. help from other editors appreciated. Doc 17:36, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

A bit out of my genre, but they seem like genuine reviews. OTOH there were very large amount of cookies I was asked to accept while loading a linked pages. SB Johnny 18:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
So are we not to be concerned with the volume of ads on the page? Also please check out the external links in the Filmography section which actually link to the sites where the pornography is for sale. Thanks Doc 18:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, this is spam, right?

See contrib page for TerraCycle: [1]. The article is about the company, but in the edit notes he keeps talking about "my page".

He's also linking to that article from various articles I'm watching. Nix 'em all? (Putting the ((spam)) thing on his page now). SB Johnny 19:51, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

They're still at it as nearest as I can tell. Lots of internal linking. Kevin_b_er 07:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I took out the links from the other articles (there were no other links there of that vein), but not sure what to do next. Articles about companies are allowed, but it's pretty clear this article was written by one of the owners (Also uploaded a copywritten image by "Steven Germain", which I assume is the user's actual name). SB Johnny 10:34, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Subject is fine, but article could definitely use a hefty NPOV copyedit. --Alan Au 21:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Another request for advice

Continuing the endless task of cleaning up hotel articles... I found this page List of hotels in Sabah and was wondering what the best course of action was.

  1. leave it alone
  2. delete all the external links but keep the list
  3. nominate for deletion
  4. prod

Oh and in case everyone wonders: Sabah is a part of Malaysia. Pascal.Tesson 22:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I've put it up for prod. If that fails AFD. Petros471 22:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I proded it as well and I put a notice up on his user page. Which is optional but a nice thing to do. BJK 00:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Thx to both of you. Pascal.Tesson 00:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

cross-posting about advertisement vs spam

I posted the following on the talk page of WP:SPAM. I'd be interested in getting opinions from project members, thx. Pascal.Tesson 15:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the spam guideline is a bit too narrow in scope and leaves the door open to more subtle forms of advertisement. There is an ongoing AfD debate on ABCOffice in which the user fighting for keep (User:ABCOffice.com) complains that Office Depot or Staples get an unfair advantage because their articles describe, for instance, their policy of "low price guarantee". To a certain extent that latter information can be considered as NPOV but I think that still should be considered as using Wikipedia as a vehicle for advertising. I think the spam guideline should include a section that specifically deals with what is fair game in such cases. Pascal.Tesson 15:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

landofthelegend.net

Might be interesting to check out Talk:The Legend of Zelda series/landofthelegend.net. Also it would be nice to get some actual comments as no-one seems to be watching WP:RFC/ART. — Ian Moody (talk) 20:06, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks for bringing this up! Sorry you have to deal with wikistress caused by this sort of nonsense. Anyhow, keep up the good work! --Alan Au 21:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Is anyone else worried about this?

You can remove spam from the main page, and the talk page. But what about the History? I have 'spammed' the history of this page, as an example.

Artbristol 00:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

See WP:POINT -- Donald Albury(Talk) 00:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Apologies. But have you any suggestions on how to prevent it? Artbristol 00:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
No idea how to prevent it per se, but my (limited) understanding is that search engines don't pick up edit summaries, which of course would reduce the incentive to spam there. Can anyone confirm/deny this? --Alan Au 00:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
If worst comes to worst, admins have a means for cleaning egregious stuff out of histories, although I don't know if any of them would use it for spam. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 00:59, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

request for comments

I'm caught in a heated discussion about the content of the Office Depot article. I'm wondering whether I did indeed overreact by deleting two large sections of the article and would very much like to have others weigh in on the talk page Talk:Office Depot. Thanks. Pascal.Tesson 16:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Link spamming in progress

User:Livedive is currently spamming a long list of articles with a commercial link. I'm trying to revert him, but I'm not an admin, and it's slow. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 17:36, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Done, and given final warning. Report to WP:AIV if continues. Petros471 17:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for jumping in so fast. He says he didn't know, and won't do it again, but I will try to watch. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 17:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Scientific American

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics#Massive insertion of Scientific American links. - An IP registered to Scientific American inserts external links to their online articles. There's disagreement whether it's an improvement to Wikipedia, or spamming. Opinions welcome. Femto 18:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I've added my $0.02 there. Seems like spam to me. I also agree with the slippery-slope point. Imagine what would happen if we started allowing every "relevant" magazine article on a topic such as Environmentalism or Global warming. We'd just end up with a lot more WP:SPAMHOLE articles. --AbsolutDan (talk) 04:16, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

65.96.127.125

User 65.96.127.125 (talk · contribs) has added links to necsi.org in 12 of the 14 contribs they have made so far. After looking over the edits & the website it looks like they are borderline spam. What does everyone else think? -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  03:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Eh it's flamebait (someone's bound to say "but they're useful articles!"). But, (you know me) I say they're spam. They don't serve as a citation for any of the content (and no, simply making it look like a reference does not a citation make). Big picture - if someone were truly trying to add useful info here, they'd be at the very least be adding links to different websites. Adding links to the same website across many articles says that you're at the very least biased in favor of that website. --AbsolutDan (talk) 04:22, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, I removed the spam contribs from 65.96.127.125 (talk · contribs) and added the standard spam message to the user's talk page. Thanks again. -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  23:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, as a professor I get repeated email spam from necsi. Pascal.Tesson 01:27, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

user:Robnelsonfilms

Currently adding links to articles leading to the same site. (Judging by the username, I'm guessing he's spamming). SB Johnny 16:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Yep sure looks like it. I think i've seen some spam from explorebiodiversity.com before. Psst... you forgot to sign your post on his talk page --AbsolutDan (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Not sure how to add information to this so that it gets to the needed sources, but I wasn't spamming. I'm new to Wikipedia and I'm not sure how it works. I just tested it out by adding some of my most resourcefull pages to the appropriate sources, considering the links on the pages that I found when I was researching the info for my site weren't all that good. I thought it would help out. I thought users would like to see that.

I realize Wiki isn't a source of just links to good info, but its not encouraging me much to help Wikimedia with treatment like that. Sheesh.

Besides, we're not commercial. We're a collection of 5 graduate students that make articles of biology info. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.101.13.136 (talk • contribs)

Adding links to the same site to multiple articles is considered spamming. Adding links to websites that you maintain or are affiliated with is also considered spamming. Please refer to WP:SPAM (Wikipedia guidelines regarding spam). Besides, external links don't help articles much - what we really need is more cited content. --AbsolutDan (talk) 00:39, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:External links

There are some ongoing discussions at Wikipedia:External links that could use wider participation. The page is currently protected after <biased_version_of_events> odd resistance to a straightforward series of edits </biased_version_of_events> but more eyes would be useful. - brenneman {L} 01:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Zigo1232 & CyLEDGE

I recently became aware of the edits of User: Zigo1232 and the article CyLEDGE and am wondering how tolerated this type of editing is and how to proceed. All of Zigo1232's edits, along with a related anonymous editor (User:80.245.193.114 : edits) use both internal and external links to promote CyLEDGE.

The 80.245.193.114 resolves to an Austrian marketing company, so I presume that all of these edits are being done by a consultant who is paid by CyLEDGE to promote itself on the web. They have produced dozens of redirects, minor articles and links to these articles, all of which end up at the CyLEDGE article, plus many external links directly to the company website.

I've warned both users about spamming. I've proded one related article and removed most of the external links and some internal links. I think CyLEDGE should be AfD'd. What about the minor articles and numerous redirects?

Suggestions? JonHarder 13:56, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I've AfD'd CyLEDGE. Toolkits for User Innovation might be a WP:NEO (could someone research this a bit?). So might be Personal marketing orientation (but he didn't author that). I agree with and have seconded your prod of Configuration System. Many of the redirects point to the toolkits or config. system articles. If they're deleted we can deal with the redirects then --AbsolutDan (talk) 14:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Personal marketing orientation looks OK to me. The original editor produces solid work, no mention of spam on that editor's talk page, etc. JonHarder 16:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that not everything they do is the article itself neccessarily spam. But that what happens is that various articles are 'enhanced' in order to better direct people toward the target article (thus also boosting search engine ranking by the linking patterns). The categorical addition of links that try to lead the reader (and the search engine) into the a certain article for which the company happens to be the main business of are what need to be culled off. I agree though, that stuff surrounding CyLEDGE and Toolkits for User Innovation are piece of spam, however. Kevin_b_er 07:57, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

There is ongoing activity with respect to this set of articles. This is a summary of the players and articles involved:

The team of editors who focus their Wikipedia activity on adding cyledge related material:
Articles created by this team:
Articles still containing cyledge external links: Personalization

At one point the team listed cyledge, with 15 employees, under "largest IT consulting firms in the world" in Information technology consulting. Taken as a whole these edits are not helpful to Wikipedia content; they may be helpful to cyledge (reminds me of silage; I live in farm country) and its fifteen employees. JonHarder 16:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

  • I'd just like to humbly point out that the use of "prod" here strikes me as very jargonish, it took me several minutes and I'm still not sure exactly what it means in this context. Posted up on AfD, maybe? Just a comment, keep up the great work folx! Eaglizard 05:43, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
{{prod}} is the template tag we put on an article to "PROpose Deletion", per Wikipedia:Proposed deletion. It's a bit of jargon we like to throw around. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 10:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

User Amwebb & Cluster Resources, Inc.

This looks very similar to the above case. User:Amwebb (contribs) created Cluster Resources, Inc. and then proceeded to load numerous articles with links to this article and also with external links to the corp's website (try searching for Cluster Resources, for example). I'm just starting to look into it now. Since this was done a while ago, I suspect a lot of the spam has since been cleaned up. Should Cluster Resources, Inc. be AfD'd? JonHarder 23:05, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. I prod'ed the article. I'll see what comes of that. Kevin_b_er 07:41, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Comment. I agree that the language and emphasis of Cluster Resources, Inc. sounds somewhat like advertising, but I think it's probably worthwhile to keep and allow it to be cleaned up further. Their products (such as Maui Cluster Scheduler) are fairly well-recognized within the grid and cluster computing space. -- Bovineone 02:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

chainki.org links

I invite you to a discussion which has spam considerations on:

Wikipedia_talk:External_links#chainki.org_links

Brusselsshrek 21:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Terrorism

I replaced the External Links section with a link to dmoz; however, I found that an anonymous user was contributing links to specific religious sites. What should I do? His/Her IP address is: 67.71.47.41

Foxjwill 22:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

He added 27 links to one article! [2] Most of them to the same site too. Revert any other similar spamming on sight --AbsolutDan (talk) 00:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


Strange New Spam?

Hello all, great work, great project, thanks so very much! I just want to point out a new thing I came across tonite[3]. Here, you can see this user adding 15 or 20 commercial links into articles, but doing so within a DIV STYLE="Display:None" element, so they don't actually show up when you view the page. There's even a sad little note included in comments: [We are delicate. We do not delete your content.] An apology, of sorts, I suppose.

It's not clear to me what end they hope to achieve, but it is clear that this can't be any better for us than any other spam or vandalism. I brought this to User:JesseW who suggested I mention it here, as well as over at Vandalism, to Tawker, CVU and Lupin, all of which I'm doing now. Anyone else? Pls let me know, but I think that should be enough ppl who care about this sort of thing. Hope this helps :) Eaglizard 05:52, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Just trying to hide the link in hopes we won't see it, I guess. As I and, I believe, many other editors work our watchlists by looking at diffs rather than the pages, we will generally find such things pretty quickly. Of course, if an article isn't on the watchlist of someone who regularly looks at diffs, these things can sit around for a while. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 11:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
This is done to stack the websites for google searches (i.e., the more links there are to a site, the higher the site appears on a google search page). I wonder if this shows up on a wikisearch though (since the "text" of the url doesn't appear in the "text" of the page). This IP should be blocked permantently, as this could potentially waste a lot of server space if it goes too far. If the spammer is saavy (which he certainly appears to be), this could spiral into a large issue rather quickly, especially since there are a lot of arcane articles floating about without a lot of people watching them. SB Johnny 11:41, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
By the way this is the whois result for that IP. Pascal.Tesson 17:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
That IP has been blocked. If we see more instances of that bot at work, we should probably add those links to the sitewide blacklist. OhNoitsJamie Talk 17:39, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
The thing that worries me about this is that there were multiple sites, and this could be a test by a professional linkspammer (in this case he told us he was a spambot, and may have been waiting to see how long it took us to catch him). If that's the case, blocking particular websites might not be effective over the long term, as he will presumably acquire new clients. I own a couple websites, and get at least 1 spam a day asking if I'd like to be at "the top of the google search page". SB Johnny 09:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Thinking about it, I agree it was probably just a test, to find out if the links would show up or affect ratings if they were inserted like that, and how long they would last. It looked like a deliberately "by-hand" random selection of obscure articles in a misguided attempt to evade detection. What are the chances of anyone editing Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, or having it on a watchlist?? Not remote enough, apparently. :) I think we can be heartened by the short time it did take to remove them (it always amazes me, that). In the long run tho, I'd think this is the sort of think bots are best suited for. There's zero reason I can think of to have any text in a display:none tag. I did post a notice of this to Tawker's tawk page, anyways. Eaglizard 09:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I tend to agree with Eaglizard. It's also useless, since most if not all search engines do not assign any value to hidden or white-on-white text or links, so I don't think they will insist. -- Sergio Ballestrero 11:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Second opinion

While I give this user credit for following instructions on the page and requesting permission to add a link to the Ajax article, I saw that Sugarskane (talk · contribs)'s contribution pattern suggested that he was using Wikipedia to drive traffic to his personal site (which uses Google adwords). I reverted the links to the 15 or so articles he'd been added links to. The editor is arguing (in a very thoughtful and civil fashion) that the links he's added have all been exteremely relevant to the articles. I thought it would be fair to get a second opinion here. OhNoitsJamie Talk 16:38, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I have given my opinion on the Ajax talk page but let me expand on it here. First, the user admits that he is indeed the owner of the website which of course gratuitously sets off the spam radar. Of course, that in itself is not so bad given that the content appears to be indeed of some relevance (although it would be of course much better to have someone else do this evaluation and add the link). However given the edit history which is clearly spammish and the insistence of the user to continue adding links to his own website after the initial spam warning, I think the wiser decision is to delete all ELs to celtickane. Wikipedia needs to stand firm against spammers. Pascal.Tesson 17:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I've thought about proposing an informal "law" (ala Murphy's Law) that states something to the effect of: The liklihood of an external link being appropriate diminishes in proportion to the link adder's/site owner's degree of objection to its removal. I.e., usually objections to the removal of links stem from concern over the loss of traffic and/or Pagerank OhNoitsJamie Talk 17:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Most people who add links to sites that they run claim that the information is relevant to the articles in question. Relevance is not the sole criteria for inclusion of a link, it's not even a major critera - it has to be much more than relevant. I agree that these links should not be there, and I would also point out to him that adding links to your own site is not allowed by the External Links guideline. So, he's out of luck all the way around- Trysha (talk) 18:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I've responded on the talk page for Ajax -- I think a fair compromise is to both add content relevant to the topic, but to also, when relevant and necessary, cite my link as a reference, rather than an external link. --Sugarskane 00:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Personal websites are not considered a reliable source and shouldn't be used for citations. If you feel that your link is useful for a small number of articles (read: one or two), please mention it on that article's talk page and allow other editors (who are not affiliated with your site) to decide whether or not to add the link. Please don't add links to your own website to multiple articles. --AbsolutDan (talk) 01:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I am the owner. The content is just as relevant, if not more, than the existing external links, which provide no content to the article. I am proposing that I do add content to the article in the form of source code. Should a Wikipedian desire more information about the source code, I think it would be reasonable to offer a reference link, which would be properly cited, according to the Wikipedia guidelines. The initial spam warning advised me to add content to articles, which I did ([check washing] article), and it was promptly removed. It seems that your argument is that because I've added external links without content in the past, any future contributions I have must be spam. I would argue that you need to review each article on a case-by-case basis, and not jump to assumptions based on my past contributions. Wikipedia does need to stand firm against spammers, but not against people who are trying to improve Wikipedia by adding relevant content, which I am.
I am fighting to add/keep the links because I feel they are important to the articles, not because they drive traffic to my site. I don't believe I've had my links up for a significant period of time -- so I neither lose nor gain a significant amount of traffic to my site. Please keep in mind, your Murphy's Law example is a generalization, and not all generalizations are accurate. If I was extremely concerned with my page rank, and I was a spammer, I would have added more links, and I would have added them to non-relevant pages. I have not done so -- 15 pages out of the millions of articles available is not a blatant misuse of Wikipedia, and I believe that it shows that I have a genuine interest in improving the usefulness of each article I posted on, not just an interest in my website.
Trysha, in the External Links guideline, it cites that personal, external links should be avoided because of "point-of-view and neutrality" reasons. I do not feel that either of those criteria have been violated by the subject matter that I have posted. I have already discusssed the WP:EL and WL:SPAM links in the Ajax talk page -- I do not feel that I have violated either of the guidelines, and I went point-by-point within the Ajax talk page to prove myself.
In deciding this, please keep in mind that we're trying to improve Wikipedia's articles and content to make them more useful to people, not to crusade against people that "raise red flags" and crush them -- just because a red flag is raised doesn't necessarily mean that there is something wrong or bad.
As far as reliable sources go, I believe every article I've posted to is extremely non-political, in the sense that it is difficult to put a spin or be unreliable/reliable. Things like Ajax, Parallettes, check washing, etc. etc. are not exactly hotly debated topics. To my knowledge, I don't present any opinions in any of my links, only hard, mathematical-like material. If I post to the talk page, and have someone else add the content/link, is that not the same for the end-user? I guarantee you that anything I post to any page in the next few months will be examined extremely carefully because of my discussion about spam -- being that any article I post will be examined, wouldn't that qualify as a peer review that ensures the quality? It seems that the general theme of Wikipedia is that any content is quickly reviewed by others to ensure accuracy -- why does it matter who adds it?
--Sugarskane 01:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
The crux of the issue here is that personal websites are not reliable sources. If your website was the NY Times or Popular Mechanics, then yes you would potentially have a valid argument regarding the use of your links. However, we are writing an encyclopedia here. Information must come from reliable sources, and as such the citations must be to reliable sources. --AbsolutDan (talk) 01:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Sugarskane: one key aspect that you seem to forget about is that adding external links to your website are a form of vanity edits. With all due respect, your personnal website cannot be reasonnably considered as a reliable source. The whole point of the wikipedia framework is to insure that through constant peer-review and editing the information provided by wikipedia is accurate (or converges towards accuracy). A link towards a non-authoritative source goes against that spirit. If your personnal webpage is so incredibly enlightning on a particular topic, let someone else notice it and argue in favor of an external link to it. In the meantime, please do share your knowledge by adding content to Wikipedia but spare us the task of periodically removing your links. Pascal.Tesson 02:11, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps we could examine specific pages. Could you point out, in any of my contributions that have been removed, where I've been unreliable, or even have a possibility of being unreliable? My ajax library (Ajax article) is simply a tutorial on how to build one's own Ajax library -- there is no possibility for being unreliable. I posted links, on relevant pages, on how to build a homemade rocket, and how to make a pullup bar without using any drills or holes. These projects are relevant to the articles they were posted on, and are extremely objective. There is no room for opinion when describing how to build a pullup bar. If someone were to visit the pullup bar article, however, they might inquire as to how they could get a pullup bar. If my link was still posted, it wouldn't be an issue, and the reader would quickly be able to access the content they want. It seems that you are putting the red tape ahead of a greater issue -- the need to have articles that are useful to the reader. Again, please explain to me where there is an opportunity for unreliability in anything I've posted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sugarskane (talk • contribs)
Please reread the policy WP:EL on adding links to a website you maintain. This is not considered as acceptable practice, whether or not your content is relevant. Although we assume good faith, it is necessary to disallow this in order to prevent the abuse of Wikipedia. Any external link on the pullup bar article on Wikipedia will in a matter of weeks see a dramatic increase in traffic and pagerank and if these policies were not in place we would soon have 30 external links to personnal web pages just as informative as yours. If your intent is to gratuitously share your knowledge on how to build a pullup bar, I suggest Wikihow. Pascal.Tesson 02:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I have mentioned this a number of times...perhaps this time I will get a direct answer. In reading WP:EL, you've neglected to read the rest of the line that you're citing. After saying that adding a website I maintain is normally to be avoided, it says: This is because of neutrality and point-of-view concerns. The problem of pagerank and traffic is not mentioned, and is a concern that only you are presenting -- it is not a concern mentioned in a Wikipedia guideline. Neutrality and point-of-view are, as I've mentioned, not an issue with the type of articles I've posted to. What would happen if 30 external links were added? Believe it or not, they would be peer reviewed for quality, and only the best, unique, relevant, and necessary links would make it. Would it be a bad thing if Wikipedia contained relevant external links that were useful to readers? You're confusing Wikipedia's guidelines on neutrality and POV concerns with your desire to simply not allow my external links because you think it will drive too much traffic to my site. Your role as a peer reviewer is to look at the content I've presented, and evaluate that. Please stop convoluting what's written in WP:EL, and read the rest of the the "Links to be avoided - #3". --Sugarskane 03:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Putting aside other disagreements for a moment, I believe the issue at hand here has reached a reasonable compromise at Talk:Ajax (programming). As inclusion in ELs is oftentimes determined on a case-by-case basis, if Sugarskane adds his link to an article's talk page and allows other established editors to determine the value, I believe we can trust consensus to make the appropriate call each time. Note that this will work only if done reasonably - if dozens of article talk pages suddenly have link addition requests added to them even that might be considered spamming. I hope this will settle the matter --AbsolutDan (talk) 03:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I cannot stress enough the importance of the caveat "if done reasonably". Sugarskane's edit history indicates a willingness to propose such links on multiple topics (seven make that thirteen in the half hour since you wrote this message). Which means lots of meaningless discussions. I do believe there is a considerable vanity concern that we are avoiding here. Pascal.Tesson 03:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Sugarskane: please slow down a bit - consider perhaps adding other content to articles or doing other work here. Let the discussions you've begun take their course. There's a lot of things we need help with here, you might find something else to spark your interest that would be a great help to the project. Check out the "to do lists" at Wikipedia:Community Portal --AbsolutDan (talk) 04:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
If it's your own site, there should be no reason to add a link to it, since presumably you can simply add the relevant information to the article (as opposed to making a "teaser stub" here and sending readers to an external commercial website). Using your own site as a reference is both a problem with WP:EL and a posible violation of WP:NOR. SB Johnny 09:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
A proposal of links on multiple pages, on the talk page, is not a meaningless discussion if the links were already on the article page before. Why do you consider it a meaninglesss discussion? I added a request for an external link on the pages in which I had links removed -- and I haven't done anything else regarding the issue. I haven't readded any EL's to any articles. If you're concerned about a vanity issue -- that's fine -- but the entire point of posting to the talk page is so that other users, should they decide that my EL is relevant and useful, can put the EL up... Since I wouldn't be putting it up myself, wouldn't that meet your criteria for an EL, especially since it was discussed in the talk page before making any changes to the article? Johnny, I agree that anything from my site cannot be used as a reference, as much of it is a first hand account...however, a lot of the links I've created cannot be added to the article. My ajax post linked to a javascript/PHP/server-side library -- the source code seemed too complicated for a background article on Ajax. In the Blood-Alcohol-Content post, it linked to a javascript calculator, based on the US Department of Transportation's own calculations. To my knowledge, you can't do something like a javascript calculator in a Wikipedia article. I do not have a commercial website -- I don't sell anything, and the google ads I have only cover the $5/month webhosting fee. As I've said before -- I do feel like the entire matter is resolved if we just let people decide on their own on the talk pages, and add my EL as an EL rather than a reference. This solves the problem of me (myself) adding it, and also the problem of my EL not being a valid reference. --Sugarskane 12:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the blood alcohol calculator; a quick web search yields numerous similar calculators on .edu and other no-ad sites. Examples: [4],[5]. OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
The linked BAC calculators you mention are not comparable to the calculator I've created. [[6]] doesn't take into account gender (which is extremely significant), tolerance, and does not allow the user to type in their own statistics (a list is presented as a series of dropdowns, which may not apply to all readers). For example, anyone that weighs 240+ pounds is not included in the calculation. It is innaccurate on the basis of gender and tolerance, and should not be selected before [[7]]. As for [[8]], it doesn't do any calculations for the user in terms of the total alcohol consumed, it doesn't allow for drinks of different percentage of alcohol, and just like above, doesn't take into account gender and tolerance. The [[9]] calculator uses the information provided by [[10]], which outlines the importance of tolerance and gender. While you have found BAC calculators, they would not be nearly as accurate as the one I am proposing. --Sugarskane 16:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Which makes your link a violation of WP:OR... Pascal.Tesson 03:27, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
No, actually that makes my link a secondary source, as it cites the US Department of Transportation, which is a credible source. The only difference between the US Department of Transportation's website and mine is that I put their calculations into an interactive calculator. There is nothing original in the calculations I've presented -- only the way they're presented. --Sugarskane 03:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I just found this today and I couldn't help myself: [[11]] -- Pascal, how much of your arguing is to be argumentative and stubborn, and how much of it is actually helping to improve Wikipedia's quality? Of all people, I think you should be the one to re-add the BAC calculator link to the article. I've proven that it's certainly the best calculator that has been presented, it uses a verifiable source, does not present any new information from that source, but instead organizes the information from the reliable source into a medium that is easier for a user to handle. Unless you have some pressing issue that I've overlooked, I'd love to see you add the link back to the BAC article. --Sugarskane 04:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Once again, I'm left wondering....why is it so important that Wikipedia links to your personal site? Good site content will attract attention on it's own. From what I've seen of your past site stats, it seems like you are intent on using Wikipedia to drive traffic to your site. OhNoitsJamie Talk 04:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Oh no, it's Jamie... again =) Why is it so important to you that Wikipedia avoids links to valuable, personal sites? If 100% of my traffic was driven from Wikipedia, but I provided a valuable external link, what would your decision be? I would like to think per [[12]] that you have a focus on the content of Wikipedia, not the rules of Wikipedia. Are you still arguing about this because you honestly feel like the BAC link is of poor quality, doesn't provide users with a valuable resource, or is misplaced/not-relevant to the article? Perhaps, and more likely, you're arguing because you are stuck on the red tape of things, and you don't like the fact that it would drive traffic to my site. The fact that it drives traffic should be irrelevant, as every external link drives traffic. The entire purpose of this discussion is to determine whether it's a good link to have, not my intentions, or the possible side effects it might have on my own personal site. --Sugarskane 04:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm quite familiar with the "ignore all rules" and it's corollary, WP:SNOWBALL. Trust me, I'm not hung up on rules. I'm hung up on people using Wikipedia to promote their site for financial gain (or vanity). I'm a tech guy, like you. I know about PageRank and that stuff. Wikipedia is an easy target. I'm not going to write four paragraphs about why I feel this way because I know that their are numerous other members of Wikiproject Spam who are as militant (and often more militant) than I am about it. Check my talk page; you can easily find cases where I've been talked out of EL removals or AFDs if a good enough argument was presented. In this case, I remain skeptical. OhNoitsJamie Talk 05:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I know I've mentioned the following time and time again...but you haven't directly answered. To aid in this, I'll just make a list:
  1. The page uses material from a credible source
  2. The page's use of the credible material increases said material's usefulness and accessibility to the end user
  3. Based on the number of hits that you like to mention, it's clear that Wikipedia readers find the link attractive and useful
  4. Your basis for not re-adding the link to the BAC calculator is because it would promote my website, and drive too much traffic there. This is not valid reasoning -- your reasoning should be based on how the link would affect Wikipedia's quality of content, not how it would affect my own personal website.
  5. Excluding the fact that you hate that a link would drive traffic to my site, do you have any reason to not re-add? More importantly, do you feel that the link would detract or add to the overall quality of content of the article? Would the average user say "Hey, that's a neat link...and I actually used it", or would a user say "Wow, that was a piece of trash. It was covered in ads and had no practical value whatsoever"
  6. Please consider the list I've presented -- it would be easiest if you just responded to each point by number. --Sugarskane 05:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Ohnoitsjamie has been carrying this debate by himself for a while, but it is a general consensus in Wikipedia that we don't want external links to sites such as yours. You can argue all you want, but unless you can convince enough of us differently, your links will be removed, and if you persist in adding them against consensus, you will probably be blocked from editing. I might add that your persistance does make us suspect that you are pursuing this in order to promote your own site, and not from any desire to improve Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 10:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, WP:IGNORE does not even come close to trumping WP:CONSENSUS. No matter how wonderful your site might be, it's still your site. Making an exception for User:Sugarskane starts us on a slippery slope. What happens later when User:BigTimeSpammer starts adding links all over to his blog, and says "it's useful information, everything on there is cited, etc.", and points out that User:Sugarskane's site is linked all over the place and that his site is at least as useful as that one? SB Johnny 10:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Instead of just saying 'no' -- could you please comment on the numbered list I have written above? I believe that it IS within guidelines as long as I don't add it myself. I have not persisted in adding them -- I've persisted in discussing them. My persistence is caused by the principle of the matter -- I believe that links were unfairly taken down, and that further discussion of those links has not coincided with typical Wiki policy. I've been very, very clear in reading the policies on Wikipedia, and I've demonstrated many times over WHY the BAC calculator is a valid link. Please respond to my list of reasons why it should be added. The slippery slope argument is invalid, as that would apply to adding any external links. Until someone directly disputes the points I've written above in the list, I can't continue this argument. Perhaps you could locate a BAC calculator online that is better, more useful, more accurate, etc? I do feel that many of you are looking at this argument and saying "An external link to his site? No way -- spam!" -- please remember that I'm using the discussion pages to have someone else add it, and the EL I want added is extremely pertinent to the article. The article does not accurately estimate a BAC level whatsoever, and it's difficult to estimate such a thing unless you use something like a javascript calculator. Are you guys really arguing for the best interest of the content of the article? --Sugarskane 12:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
The above discussion is precisely why WP:EL discourages people from adding their own links: "neutrality and point-of-view concerns". Who is arguing that the BAC calculator is useful? Has anyone else written about your BAC calculator? Sugarskane: you may not see it, but you are most certainly biased in favor of your site. That doesn't really help the WP project. External links themselves also don't really help an article much - partly because Wikipedia is aiming for a print version, in which external links would be mostly useless. We need more properly cited content, not large amounts of external links.
I believe the compromise allowing you to post your link to article talk pages is quite generous; I suggest we leave it at that. You've posted to quite a few, so why not move on to contributing content cited from other websites, and "let the chips fall where they may" on the talk pages you've posted? I recommend refraining from posting your link to any further talk pages, as I have not yet seen any other arguments in favor of your links. --AbsolutDan (talk) 13:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
The BAC EL would make three total external links to the article -- I wouldn't consider that a large amount. I don't have any links on other talk pages that I need to be posted -- the purpose of this portion was to convince OhNoItsJamie (or anyone else for that matter) that they should revert the link back. I'm not arguing that I should add it back, but I'm arguing that someone else (ie - the person that originally removed it) should reexamine the link. Would a valid compromise be to create a new article, say 'blood-alcohol-content calculators', that explained some of the math behind typical calculations? Would you agree that a side article like that would be acceptable for the EL I posted? It adds even more content, and it seems that pank rank is an issue with some people -- a side article would receive far fewer hits than the primary article. If I spent the time to create such a page, assuming that the quality and content was acceptable, would you be willing to not only concede that the link would be properly placed, but post the link yourself? I would love to find a common ground here -- out of all the 'spam' that was removed, I really feel that the BAC article was the least applicable for removal. --Sugarskane 13:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not appropriate to "bargain" for link placement. I believe you're approaching this from the wrong angle - you're trying to find homes for your links. Instead, you should be looking for articles that are in need of improvement and finding the best resources to do so - resources that may come from websites besides your own. The question of whether an article should exist for BAC calculators is one best asked elsewhere, such as the talk page of the Blood alcohol content article or at the applicable WikiProject (if one exists). --AbsolutDan (talk) 16:52, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Sugarskane: I think it's important for you to calmly accept the obvious fact that there is a clear consensus against your willingness to add those links. Let's count'em if you wish: that's Ohnoitsjamie (talk · contribs), Dalbury (talk · contribs), Trysha (talk · contribs), SB_Johnny (talk · contribs), AbsolutDan (talk · contribs) (although he has a more moderate opinion on the matter), Phr (talk · contribs) (on the DES talk page), Rufous (talk · contribs) (on the Ajax talk page), Styxman (talk · contribs) (on the WYSE talk page). Meanwhile, no one seems to have supported the addition of your links in other talk pages (in all fairness, many of these pages probably haven't been read since). As for your list of points above, let me take them one by one.

  1. The page uses material from a credible source: If the page is built from good resources then please cite those credible references here and add the content of your web page to the Wikipedia article.
  2. The page's use of the credible material increases said material's usefulness and accessibility to the end user. Same comment: if it's useful content please add this content to Wikipedia. If that content is verifiable and built from solid sources please add the link to those sources, not to your work.
  3. Based on the number of hits that you like to mention, it's clear that Wikipedia readers find the link attractive and useful although you argued earlier: The Statistics page was recently reset when I recreated the site -- I do get hits from Wikipedia, but usually not to this amount. I believe a good number of them have accumulated because of the recent debate. that you don't really get significant traffic from Wikipedia. The fact that people click on the external links certainly does not reflect on how good they think your content is...
  4. Your basis for not re-adding the link to the BAC calculator is because it would promote my website, and drive too much traffic there. This is not valid reasoning -- your reasoning should be based on how the link would affect Wikipedia's quality of content, not how it would affect my own personal website. Please see once again the policies WP:EL, WP:VAIN, WP:SPAM. These clearly state that your ELs are unwelcome.
  5. Excluding the fact that you hate that a link would drive traffic to my site, do you have any reason to not re-add? More importantly, do you feel that the link would detract or add to the overall quality of content of the article? Would the average user say "Hey, that's a neat link...and I actually used it", or would a user say "Wow, that was a piece of trash. It was covered in ads and had no practical value whatsoever" Once again, this is a matter of Wikipedia policy against spam. If your site has useful content then by all means feel free to add this content to Wikipedia. Wait, you might not want to do that because then you would not actually profit (in monetary terms or simply the vanity of looking at your traffic stats) from the hard work of putting this info together and writing it here! Why should you go to the trouble of contributing if no one recognizes how good your work was? I suspect that you have asked yourelf that question many times and this is not what Wikipedia is about.

Pascal.Tesson 17:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Just an additional comment on "3": at least a few of those hits have been from me and others checking out what the hubbub's about (you kinda did ask us to do that). SB Johnny 23:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Pascal -- thank you for going point by point for me.
  1. (uses a credible soure) - I will add the content of the credible source to a new wiki article. This content, however, is not extremely useful in its raw form, as it goes through an 8 step process to calculate a BAC, which takes almost a page of math to complete. To resolve the math problem, the calculator I've created will be included in the article -- it will contain the exact same information as the credible source, but it will not be as cryptic. A single calculation will take seconds and require no math, which is a stark contrast to the credible source.
  2. (better for end user) - a new article will be best for Wikipedia
  3. (interest in link's content) - I think clicks show a solid interest in an 'interactive bac calculator', which was the wording used
  4. (EL, VAIN, SPAM) - We've discussed all of these before...unless you're citing something specifically, I'm not going to waste my time to go through each one and re-defend point-by-point.
  5. (vanity, add content, etc. etc.) - I'm about to go add new content. Of course there is some pride in the calculator, but that is trumped by the fact that I find the calculator so useful. You keep going back to vain, EL, SPAM, etc. -- the fact of the matter is, however, that no one has presented a better BAC calculator. To the end user, it shouldn't matter why a link was added -- just that they found it useful.
--Sugarskane 23:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
There's a lot of "shouldn'ts" - primarily, people shouldn't be here primarily to promote themselves or their websites. Editors should put aside their own personal work and approach Wikipedia as a volunteer, aiming to improve the project. Whether or not you feel that it shouldn't matter why a link was added, the fact is that it does matter. As long as WP:SPAM and WP:EL govern the inclusion of external links, the motivation of the "linker" will matter. --AbsolutDan (talk) 23:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Neutrality and point-of-view

I don't know if this has been answered because I can't be bothered to read through such a huge ream. (I've read it now, and it wasn't quite addressed.) As far as I read, though, I see that Sugarskane has made one of the common mistakes about the external link's policy and why it cites "neutrality and point-of-view concerns" for why editors ought not link to their own sites. So, here is the answer:

Surgarskane, you are misunderstanding what the neutrality and point-of-view concerns are. The neutrality and POV of the linked-to page is not the concern—that's taken care of by any number of other policies and guidelines. What the external links policy is concerned about is the POV and neutrality of the editor who is evaluating the link's worthiness for inclusion. You, being the maintainer of the site, cannot make neutral editorial decisions regarding links to your site. As such, you are expected to refrain from attempting to make such editorial decisions on Wikipedia's behalf, and allow other, neutral-regarding-your-site editors to make this decision on Wikipedia's behalf.

The editorial integrity of Wikipedia is important, and I hope you understand that even small editorial decisions such as what links to include in an article affect the integrity of Wikipedia's editorial process. I hope you can respect this rule as a responsible editor, even if you think you can be impartial in the evaluation of your own site. Sometimes, being neutral means removing yourself from a particular decision-making process. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Fused Solutions

User:Fused (contribs) and User:209.23.99.100 (resolves to fusedsolutions) are adding articles and links in order to promote "Fused Solutions." Articles created so far are Fused Solutions, KnowPlex, Cosource and Cosourcing. JonHarder 18:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

That was taken care of quite hastily! All of those contributions have been reverted and all articles created have been double-proded... Pascal.Tesson 21:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Institute of Physics Publishing spam

IOP is a big respected publisher, but it looks like one their staffers could be going a little too far using an anonymous IP address. See the comments I put on his/her talk page.

On closer examination, it's possible this could be the tip of a big iceberg (218 links). That's even asssuming 75% of these are legitimate links posted by non-IOP users to specific papers.

I'm open to others' advice and help.--A. B. 18:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Good work to pick that up. There were also some more subtle things in his edit history like adding Physics World to a list of Science magazines. As for the iceberg, I don't think that's a concern. I've looked at a good number of those links and removed a few dead or unnecessary links but there does not seem to be a large-scale intention of spam. As far as I can see the rest appear to be legitimate references to research papers and I would assume that those which are irrelevant will be removed by specialists patrolling those pages. Pascal.Tesson 22:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

3RR and spamlinks?

I removed some spam on Baby carrot (link was to the main page of a comm. site), it was readded, and I then removed it again, as well as on the Orange juice article which the ip user added the link to as well. This link was also added by an apparent sockpuppet on the same article, and previously to carrot some time back (twice, if I remember correctly, by yet another user). 3RR doesn't apply to blatant spam removal any more than it does blatant vandalism reverts, right? SB Johnny 00:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Not as far as I've been told. Spam is a type of vandalism, and simple vandalism removal doesn't count towards 3RR. --AbsolutDan (talk) 00:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
That's what I figured. (I've been commenting on a lot of RfCs lately and am perhaps getting the spamfighter's version of medschoolitis). SB Johnny 00:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Say SB Johnny, how the heck do you manage to pick up spam on Baby Carrot within two hours?!? That's pretty impressive. Pascal.Tesson 00:47, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I have a long watchlist, mostly articles that don't get much editing, but occaisional spammers and/or vandals. -- SB Johnny 10:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Heh, I know what you mean. Some of us just feel a weird attraction putting off-mainstream articles on their watchlist, such as Brazil nut effect, Chicken sexing, Ha-ha (garden), Hairy ball theorem, Hexamine fuel tablet, Interrupted screw, Jigsaw puzzle (a particular spam magnet), Manhole cover, Petri dish, Rolling pin, Visco fuse, Wooden spoon... Even if you've never edited them and won't follow each and every edit, little articles like those are more fun than work to watch. And they need just as much relative attention IF they get an edit. Femto 17:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
According to the talk of WP:3RR, the "spam" distinction was removed in a cleanup, because it's redundant with the definition of vandalism. But the definition doesn't seem to be all that clear to me.
Similar to your case, suppose an editor (re)adds several links to a commercial "information" website. Their links were removed before, and they've been asked to seek consensus on the talk pages. But they insist that every one of these links is relevant, helpful, and it's their right to add them. It should clearly fall under the definition of blatant, reversion-worthy spamming. However, some may argue this doesn't count as simple vandalism, it falls under the "stubbornness" exception of what vandalism specifically is not.
Revert linkspam from four different editors in a row (each get only mild first spam warnings, saying they vandalized is not justified) and you technically broke the 3RR? Spamming isn't simple vandalism, it's spamming in its own right, we don't give vandalism warnings to linkspammers but spam warnings. The current equation of "spamming" with "simple vandalism" isn't really helpful, it's over-generalized. Inappropriate edits are too easily protected as content disputes from reversion, where the guidelines could be more specific. Anybody up to get them changed? Here's my support for what it's worth. Femto 17:19, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Laser Tag and WP:EL

It would be nice to hear someones opinion from this project on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Laser Tag and WP:EL. Cheers! -- moe.RON talk | done | doing 18:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Adding Chamber of Commerce websites to towns

Is adding links to Chamber of Commerce websites considered spam? See here for an example of my question. I'd appreciate your opinions. Picaroon9288 17:09, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I've never had any objections to chamber of commerce sites, since they often has a (quasi) official status in regard to the locality. On the other hand, I often delete "portal" links or sites purporting to represent that town (i.e., "Comprehensive Guide to All Things San Diego!") unless the site in question appears to be quite notable. I'd be curious to hear how others appoach that issue. OhNoitsJamie Talk 18:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
My 2 cents: Chamber of Commerce sites are in my mind just at the limit of what is acceptable because their responsibility is to promote the city in a slightly chauvinistic yet more balanced way than commercial portals. Pascal.Tesson 18:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd say it would depend on the content of the site. If it's just a web page with a mailing list, probably not. If it announces events, discusses history, etc., then it's useful.SB_Johnny | talk 10:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, SB_Johnny's suggestion is smarter and less arbitrary than the blind "accept all" that me and Ohnoitsjamie were suggesting. But in general, I think Chamber of Commerce sites should be given the benefit of the doubt, moreso than other commercial pages. Pascal.Tesson 13:53, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Concur re: giving chambers the benefit of the doubt. My opinion: CoC links should be to either main page or a factual sub-page with city overview (whichever is more NPOV). CoC links on other articles are probably spammy (for instance, if a port city added a CoC link to an article like "world shipping") --A. B. 15:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, all, for the opinions. Picaroon9288|ta co 03:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

New template needed?

I think that a new "invisible" template should be added in the Externall links section of articles where spamlinks are often added (like Humour). On the Polish wikipedia there is an interesting "Linkownia" template added at the top of the Externall links section in frequently spammed articles. The translation goes as follows: "DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF LINKS
If you think that your link might be usefull, instead of placing it here put it on the article's talk page first. Links that have not been verified will be deleated." Comments? Mieciu K 18:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. Seems to me the dirty laundry should be kept on the talk pages, not on the article (since it's about editing and contributing, not about the subject of the article). If external links sections were standardized, might it be possible to have this warning appear when someone edits that section? SB_Johnny | talk 10:25, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
You can just add the following block immediately under the heading:
<!-- DO NOT ADD MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A COLLECTION OF LINKS<br> If you think that your link might be useful, instead of placing it here put it on the article's talk page first. Links that have not been verified will be deleated. -->
Nothing of the message shows until you open the edit window. See LOL (Internet slang)#Variants and translations in widespread use for an example of how it would work. -- Donald Albury(Talk) 23:49, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I like what they did at LOL. With minor variations, that notice should be used more. (On another note:achtung means...stop?) Picaroon9288|ta co 03:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
"Achtung" is German for "attention". -- Donald Albury(Talk) 12:51, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

User:Mmsarfraz

Hi. The above user has created an article on the company that he works for, and a link to the company website from the WiMAX page, suggesting both vanity and advertising.

I have reverted the link on the WiMAX page with a warning on his talkpage. I reckon the DANCOM page should be tagged for deletion. Can some of you take a look to verify that I am right on this before I actually do it? Thanks. Nelson50 22:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Why should it be tagged for deletion? Unless it contains incorrect information, it sounds like the company is big enough to at least be a stub... --Sugarskane 22:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Sugarskane on this one. There is a legitimate concern of NPOV and advertising on the page but if the information is correct then it should indeed have encyclopedic value. This is a typical tricky situation: we should not delete it just because it's currently advertising but rewrite it and expand on a NPOV way, but because there are few editors that are able to garner sufficient quality information on a Pakistanese company this is non-trivial. I suggest you tag the article with the advert template, remove the most blatant POV statements and wait to see if someone is willing to rewrite it. In this case, at least for now, I am ready to assume good faith of the creator. It must be one of my good days ;-) Pascal.Tesson 00:02, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and tagged it with {{advert}} & {{unreferenced}} --AbsolutDan (talk) 21:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Aaron Kaplan

Hi, this user sees that his site is similar to other external links but does not appreciate that adding his own links is spam. I left notes on his talk page related to his edits to Wireless mesh network and he seemed to accept this, but re-started today on Mesh network. I have reverted the link, but just so the warnings are not always coming from me, can someone else take a look? Thanks. Nelson50 23:22, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Mesh network itself needs to be cleaned out. At first glance, the links there look like junk. Kevin_b_er 00:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Added my two cents on his talk page. Pascal.Tesson 00:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I cleaned out Mesh networking but he's back adding his own site again. Can some of you keep watching this? I don't want to be the only one. Nelson50 12:49, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

A new spammer

Angeltsang (talk · contribs). I have taken care of his edits for now, but just thought I'd let everyone know. Pascal.Tesson 05:40, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Update: anon 202.85.41.38 (talk · contribs) has picked up where Angeltsang left off and introduced multiple external links to www.foodeasy.com. Be on the lookout for other users adding those links. I used the EL locater tool to remove a number of these yesterday. Pascal.Tesson 15:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

heavy traffic spammer

IP user 65.211.193.185 (contribs) seems quite prolific with myspace spamming. SB_Johnny | talk 20:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The user received a 3 hour block. We'll see if he/she comes back afterwards --AbsolutDan (talk) 20:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Not to be a spoilsport, but how is an artist's official MySpace page linkspam? Particularly music artists, of course. --Dhartung | Talk 00:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
There's disagreement about whether artists' myspace pages should be included at all - not in small part due to the fact that it's often difficult or impossible to determine whether the myspace page really is the group's official page. --AbsolutDan (talk) 00:14, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
If they have up-to-date tour data, that's usually a strong indicator that it's not just a fan fakester. If they have downloadable music, that's another -- MySpace does enforce the DMCA. I don't think they do pre-emptive verification, though. --Dhartung | Talk 01:07, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


Reverent.org persistent spammer

Just a request for some extra eyes to keep a watchout for links to reverent.org. The site has a number of non-encyclopedic quizes, typically comparing the work of a literary figure, artist or musician to random nonsense. There is a fairly persistent spammer who keeps adding these links to articles such as Amadeus, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton and Musical Instrument Digital Interface. They have been at it for over a year now.

These days the spammer is using a dialup account to get a different IP address for each link insertion (currently in the range 4.246.253.*). I've left some more spam warnings for them this morning - there is no guarantee that they will see them, but they have been warned before. I may have to move on to a range block. -- Solipsist 10:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

collegeview

This is a case were User:66.195.135.194 (contribs), which resolves to collegeview.com, is adding links their own site. I've notified that IP. Perhaps all of these links need to be cleaned up. JonHarder 16:17, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed most of the links. 15:50, 26 July 2006 (UTC) was the last edit by the IP, then Steveperry500 appeared and started adding them at 15:53, 26 July 2006 (UTC). They are likely the same person. Kevin_b_er 07:20, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

"North American Union" category spammer

NWO-Wolfpac (talk · contribs) has created category:North American Union and spread it across a very broad spectrum of articles. He seems to have categorised anything to do with NA politics or physical infrastructure with the tag. I have asked him not to category-spam on his talk page and am about to start removing the cat from all but the most overwhelmingly-relevant articles. I'm leaving the category itself alone for the category-maintainers to deal with as they see fit. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:48, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Outside views, please...

A fairly new user (user's talk) has been adding links to various gardening blogs, mostly to the article Gardening blog, which he/she started. It's clearly (to me) a good-faith effort so far as wanting to make a positive contribution, but a bit over the top when it comes to WP:EL (or possibly WP:SPAM, but I don't think the intention is there in this case). Any thoughts? The user has already accused me of biting, so I'm recusing myself from deleting the links on the article for now. SB_Johnny | talk 21:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The links are definitely outside of what WP:EL and WP:RS allow on the pages other than Gardening blog, and there I believe that WP:NOT (a links directory) applies. Gardening blog itself looks like it can be a useful article, quite apart from the links issue. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:09, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think the issue on that page it the NOT issue. I get the feeling the user genuinely meant "this is what a garden blog is, and here's some examples". SB_Johnny | talk 22:54, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
That's my impression too. I already left a note on the article talk page that I'll be removing the links soon unless there is compelling reason to keep any of them. — Saxifrage ✎ 00:18, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Article is now AfD, as of yesterday. SB_Johnny | talk 10:36, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Achievement.com links

Sspillers has been adding a significant amount of external links to many scattered bios. Along with the links are quotes that person made. I don't think these quotes are important to include, as they don't seeem to be famous quotes from that person, just quotes made in an interview with the website of the organization these links point to. I don't have time right now to examine this in closer detail though, so I leave this one in the project's capable hands. Thanks --AbsolutDan (talk) 23:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm for removing these, but I'd like to see if someone else agrees with me. It looks like a link used to exist to that site on several of these articles, but I see no reason to have 3 links add to different pages for the same site (making 4 for each article). The 4 links seems excessive. Kevin_b_er 05:24, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
One link is sufficient to this site. It is very easy for someone to navigate to the other links. These other three should be removed. -- Dcflyer 05:32, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I would remove the lot myself, since this bears all the hallmarks of vanispamcruftisement. Just zis Guy you know? 13:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I have a bit of time to work on this now, but a thought occured to me - maybe the quotes should be transwikied to Wikiquote (of course minus the excessive links)? Thoughts? --AbsolutDan (talk) 03:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. -- Dcflyer 03:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

blogspot.com guides

This spam is obviously related. Seen any others? Femto 13:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

No way to tell... though there seem to ba a lot of pages with multiple links to blogspot: google result. SB_Johnny | talk 13:26, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

129.176.151.x & mayoclinic.org external links

Today we I have reverted spam edits that added external links to mayoclinic.org web pages on several articles. All of the edits were made from the 129.176.151.x ip range, which is registered to the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. So far I have identified 129.176.151.6 (talk · contribs) and 129.176.151.7 (talk · contribs) as contributing to this, but their may be more. Anyone interested in helping with this? Apparently this happened last summer too. -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  16:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, I think I got it all for now, but just one more thing to keep an eye out for. -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  02:20, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Wilsoncenter.org spam cleanup issue with spam1 template

I'd be interested in any thoughts this group has about this conversation reguarding wilsoncenter.org spam that I cleaned up recently. To me it appears that WAS 4.250 (talk · contribs) is just nitpicking, but I could be wrong. Does anyone else agree with his/her position, and if so does the spam1 template need to be revised, or a seperate spam1a message be created? Thanks again! -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  02:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

That argument is the one most frequently made to me when I revert linkspam and use spam1. I think both positions are correct - saying "but my link isn't commercial!" is nitpicking, but also I have thought for a while that a rewording or separate template is in order. Spammers often look for loopholes to justify their content's existence; if we close this one it would certainly make our tasks easier! Just my $0.02... --AbsolutDan (talk) 04:12, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, those template messages should be rephrased to reflect a wider definition of spam, such as non-commercial promotional links or an excessive number thereof. Femto 13:13, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
Just to be clear I do not in any way classify WAS 4.250 (talk · contribs) as a spammer; he seems to be a conscientious editor, and from the discussion it would appear that I have not done as good a job of communicating with him as I would hope. One of the reasons I edit here at Wikipedia is to work on my writing skills, and it bothers me that I apparently couldn't get my thoughts across to him clearly. Is my last edit better? Critiques would be very welcome at my talk page. Thanks again! -- Argon233 T C @ ∉  19:00, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

please block this IP

IP user 68.185.174.246 contribs is a "slow spammer", coming by once in a while to add the same links to the same pages. SB_Johnny | talk 15:39, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

No one's warned him yet, so I've left {{spam-n}} on his talk page. Let's see if he continues to add the link --AbsolutDan (talk) 15:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

DataSynapse

Folks here might consider placing articles such as List of United States companies on their watch list to see what is added and why. The most recent example is DataSynapse. A check of the history shows that User:165.254.107.3 (resolves to DataSynapse, contribs) did much of the initial editing. Then the editing switched to User:Shigdon (contribs) who has an almost identical pattern (many small edits, no edit summary). Besides the article, there are many external links to the company. This needs to be cleaned up, but I can't get to it immediately. JonHarder 12:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

GridServer & FabricServer {{prod}}'d Some external links removed from generic articles related to it. (Need links about what it is, not about who sells it) Application_Virtualization reads like an advert, tagged it as such (May need expert attention to properly clean up). Depending on how the prod's go, may tag the company's article for deletion later. Kevin_b_er 00:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I initially removed some of the DataSynapse links, but User:Shigdon disputed the issue on my talk page and re-added the links. I didn't want to get into an edit war without a clear consensus against the links. But I'm glad to see that you guys agree they don't belong.
Some of the articles in question have lists of companies or software products, such as Computer cluster or Service Level Agreement. These sorts of lists seem to frequently attract people trying to use Wikipedia for promotion. It's also hard to determine which links belong and which don't, and to justify the decisions without appearing arbitrary. I think ultimately the best solution might be to remove these lists; we generally don't try to list all manufacturers in articles about physical products, so why do it for software? Wmahan. 01:38, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
the new user, User:HouKid, appears to be collaborating with User:Shigdon to claim to be rewriting for npov but are actually not changing any prose and simply removing the pov/prod tags. 216.220.208.117 15:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The three main articles have been AfD'd (discussion). DataSynapse had been deleted as spam a month ago and was a repost. JonHarder 14:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I dispute 216.220.208.117 (who btw should sign-in and get a username) as I am not collaborating with Shigdon. In fact, if you notice I have removed external links and changed copy. I think what they do is very interesting and noteworthy in the IT field...they just need to say what it does without selling. I am trying to be helpful rather than blast them like everyone else seems to be doing. Rats in a maze you seem. HouKid 14:00 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I concur that your edits are in good faith and that you are not collaborating with the DataSynapse editors. If that article had been created by you, and not by someone with fairly obvious self-interest, it likely would have passed under the radar of those of us checking against the WP:CORP criteria and wouldn't be having its current problems. JonHarder 19:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I need to reconsider in light of the edits by 12.158.31.82 who signs variously as HouKid and Shigdon. The IP resolves to DATASYNAPSE DATASYNA43-31-80 (NET-12-158-31-80-1). In addition HouKid has shown no interest in editing other than the DataSynapse articles. The DataSynapse folks are not understanding the problem conflict of interest with self-interest edits. JonHarder 16:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Strangely the comment that was supposedly from Houkid was actually from 12.158.31.82, who just commented on the DataSynapse AFD signing themselves first HouKid and then changing it to Shigdon, so they appear to have a bit of an identity crisis. Yomangani 16:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:NoMoreLinks created

Keeping in mind the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#New template needed? disscussion I have created a new Template:NoMoreLinks based on a successful Polish Template:Linkownia . What do you think, should it be included in the Template:Spam-nav? Mieciu K 14:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I like it. (I think I'd prefer a template name in all-lowercase, but a redirect would be enough for me.) I made some fixes to the Usage section and left a suggestion on the Talk page for improving the template a bit. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
So what would you prefer {nomorelinks}, {no more links}, {no-more-links} (as in {cleanup-spam})? Mieciu K 23:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
It's fairly academic since the template-format will never be seen, but {{nomorelinks}} or/and {{no-more-links}} as redirects to {{NoMoreLinks}} would make it easier to type and remember the subst. If this is adopted I'll likely add those as redirects just for convenience later. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Since after 3 days I don't see any negative opinions, I have been bold and added Template:NoMoreLinks to the Template:Spam-nav. Mieciu K 18:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Block please

See contribs for IP user: [13]. All are to the same site, he/she has been warned but did not reply. SB_Johnny | talk 17:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I've given another message. Report to WP:AIV for a block if it continues only after more serious warnings (i.e. subst:Spam4). Femto 18:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
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