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== archive.today on wikipedia spam-blacklist: what alternative can handle hashtag in middle of ref URL? ==
== archive.today on wikipedia spam-blacklist: what alternative can handle hashtag in middle of ref URL? ==
* {{LinkSummary|archive.today}}


Tried to include an archive.today URL (.today/YHMIR) with edit of [[Alternative Press Expo]], but archive.today on spam-blacklist. Can't use archive.org Wayback NOR Webcitation.org because neither can handle hashtag (#) in middle of URL. QUESTION: '''What alternative archive website(s) can handle a hashtag in middle of URL?''' --[[User:EarthFurst|EarthFurst]] ([[User talk:EarthFurst|talk]]) 08:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
Tried to include an archive.today URL (.today/YHMIR) with edit of [[Alternative Press Expo]], but archive.today on spam-blacklist. Can't use archive.org Wayback NOR Webcitation.org because neither can handle hashtag (#) in middle of URL. QUESTION: '''What alternative archive website(s) can handle a hashtag in middle of URL?''' --[[User:EarthFurst|EarthFurst]] ([[User talk:EarthFurst|talk]]) 08:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
:Archive.today is not on the blacklist, it is blocked by an edit filter. Generally, you have to url-encode certain characters in links (I think you can find the data on [[Character encoding]]?), maybe the hashtag is also one of those, and then the other sites do work? Also, is the archive really necessary, is the original likely to 'disappear'? --[[User:Beetstra|Dirk Beetstra]] <sup>[[User_Talk:Beetstra|<span style="color:#0000FF;">T</span>]] [[Special:Contributions/Beetstra|<span style="color:#0000FF;">C</span>]]</sup> 09:09, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Revision as of 09:09, 16 October 2014

"Wikipedia:Spam-blacklist" redirects here. Not to be confused with Wikipedia:Spam blacklist or Wikipedia:Spam-blacklisting.
    Spam blacklists
    Shortcuts

    Mediawiki:Spam-blacklist is meant to be used by the spam blacklist extension. Unlike the meta spam blacklist, this blacklist affects pages on the English Wikipedia only. Any administrator may edit the spam blacklist. See Wikipedia:Spam blacklist for more information about the spam blacklist.

    Instructions for editors

    There are 4 sections for posting comments below. Please make comments in the appropriate section. These links take you to the appropriate section:

    1. Proposed additions
    2. Proposed removals
    3. Troubleshooting and problems
    4. Discussion

    Each section has a message box with instructions. In addition, please sign your posts with ~~~~ after your comment.

    Completed requests are archived. Additions and removals are logged, reasons for blacklisting can be found there.

    Addition of the templates {{Link summary}} (for domains), {{IP summary}} (for IP editors) and {{User summary}} (for users with account) results in the COIBot reports to be refreshed. See User:COIBot for more information on the reports.

    Instructions for admins
    Any admin unfamiliar with this page should probably read this first, thanks.
    If in doubt, please leave a request and a spam-knowledgeable admin will follow-up.

    Please consider using Special:BlockedExternalDomains instead, powered by the AbuseFilter extension. This is faster and more easily searchable, though only supports whole domains and not whitelisting.

    1. Does the site have any validity to the project?
    2. Have links been placed after warnings/blocks? Have other methods of control been exhausted? Would referring this to our anti-spam bot, XLinkBot be a more appropriate step? Is there a WikiProject Spam report? If so, a permanent link would be helpful.
    3. Please ensure all links have been removed from articles and discussion pages before blacklisting. (They do not have to be removed from user or user talk pages.)
    4. Make the entry at the bottom of the list (before the last line). Please do not do this unless you are familiar with regular expressions — the disruption that can be caused is substantial.
    5. Close the request entry on here using either {{done}} or {{not done}} as appropriate. The request should be left open for a week maybe as there will often be further related sites or an appeal in that time.
    6. Log the entry. Warning: if you do not log any entry you make on the blacklist, it may well be removed if someone appeals and no valid reasons can be found. To log the entry, you will need this number – 629829353 after you have closed the request. See here for more info on logging.


    Proposed additions

    statnano.com

    Spammers

    All edits were reverted. There are not any other edits than spam. Nano.pfpa was last warned in March, 2014. Alex Spade (talk) 14:09, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    sourcesecurity.com

    Spammers

    Long term, persistent spamming on many IPs and users - above is a partial list of IPs and accounts. Main spam URL is sourcesecurity.com, but thebigredguide and yogawizard show some overlap in accounts. - MrOllie (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    globalrailnews.com

    Further information: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways § Harmful website

    - all suspected of being virus-infected.

    — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjroots (talk • contribs)

    @Beetstra: & @MER-C: Can we get these blacklisted? Werieth (talk) 14:59, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    apptinder.com and tinderblackberry.org

    The first IP added apptinder to the Tinder(app) page, and when I removed it, re-added it. The second added tinderblackberry. Both are copycat sites that direct you to download something from somewhere that's not one of the legit tinder sites, from what I see. Starts at this revision: [1] And continued till here: [2] I'm not sure if I reported this right. I'm going to remove those links from there. 85.138.73.48 (talk) 22:49, 16 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    These continue to be added to the tinder article. Please block them. 85.138.73.48 (talk) 01:35, 23 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    usmagazine.us

    All "source" the other's bullshit stories about celebrity deaths and the like. Caused some annoyance at Brian Bonsall and Wayne Knight today, pretty clear that's all they're good for. Trying to be sneaky by naming like actual rags. Internet people can and will be fooled. Best to preempt them. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:01, March 16, 2014 (UTC)

    @Beetstra: & @MER-C: Can we get these blacklisted?

    Persianfootball.com

    links
    users

    This editor, who is currently blocked for two weeks for other infractions, has been spamming this url on article talk pages.

    I asked the sysop who applied the most recent blocks what to do about this, and he suggested that one of the courses of action I might consider would be to ask for it to be added to the spam list.

    This editor has simply littered talk pages w/the url. He will not listen to others -- he reverted Walter Görlitz who pointed to NOTAFORUM in deleting this editor's addition. See, e.g., here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.Epeefleche (talk) 04:55, 28 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Viejaiglesiacatolicaromanaritolatino Wordpress site

    viejaiglesiacatolicaromanaritolatino.wordpress.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Constantly being added to articles about Catholic churches and rites, either in the external links section or, more recently, at the very top of the article. Also added to category and category talk pages.

    For example, see contributions of:

    ... discospinster talk 21:38, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    microsoft-cortana.com

    This website is constantly put in Microsoft Cortana article but is not registered to Microsoft. It is registered to an ISP in Istanbul, Turkey. Curiously, one of the persons who keep adding it, 92.44.220.141, is also from Istanbul, Turkey. Comodo Internet Security triggered a security alert while I was visiting this website.

    Conclusion: High possibility of malware website being advertised in Wikipedia.

    Best regards,
    Codename Lisa (talk) 10:33, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    @Beetstra: & @MER-C: Can we get these blacklisted? Werieth (talk) 15:08, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    alertwoo.com

    The IP hopping, all from Chetput, India, makes it difficult to communicate with the anon and it's clearly a SPAM link. I can't see this company ever offering a valuable RS either.

    I think that I have reverted them all for now. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:38, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    rtnda.org

    rtnda.org: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Formerly legit domain apparently hijacked by domain squatters / spammers. Guy (Help!) 19:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    www.batteryuniversity.com

    (Copied from a location apparently not in use)

    This request is to add the above website to the blacklist. This website had been used as citations to support various dubious claims made in articles related to battery technology (mainly lithium based rechargeable batteries). This request is made following a discussion at Talk:Lithium-ion battery#Dubious information originating from discredited source (plus subsequent threads and other discussions linked from that talk page) where there is a consensus that this source was not a reliable source. To recap: this request occurs for the following reasons.

    • There is no organisation such as a 'battery university' in existence (and why would there be?).
    • The website is a self published source run by one Isidor Buchmann solely to promote his book (both the book and the website have been discredited).
    • The website does not have the support or backing of any third party authority on batteries beyond Cadex International (of which Isidor Buchmann himself is the CEO).
    • Very few of the claims presented at that website are supported by any manufacturer of batteries. Of the remaining claims, none are supported by anyone else except from sources that have clearly obtained the information from batteryuniversity.
    • Real world batteries seem to be unaware of the many limitations that Buchmann has ascribed to them. For example: according to Buchmann no lithium based battery could possible have a life exceeding 2 years wereas in reality serviceable examples older than 20 years are known to exist.
    • Almost all the claims have been trawled from forums around the internet (such forums not being acceptable citations in their own right - per WP:ELNO). Indeed one of the 'claims' was planted by myself and some colleagues to prove this very point - it appeared at batteryuniversity within 3 weeks).

    Although there are no specific users who are using this web site to facilitate an edit war, nevertheless it has been used by several users to support claims from that website (in fairness: probably in good faith). This may well come about because a Google search for any battery related query often turns up batteryuniversity in the first two or three hits (along with Wikipedia). DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 17:14, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree that www.batteryuniversity.com appears to carry misleading information. I quote from my own contribution to the article Talk page some months ago:

    A source to help judge the reliability or otherwise of batteryuniversity: http: (//) batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries says (as of the date of this comment) in an article with title "How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries": "The author of this essay does not depend on the manufacturer’s specifications alone but also listens to user comments. BatteryUniversity.com is an excellent sounding board to connect with the public and learn about reality. This approach might be unscientific, but it is genuine. When the critical mass speaks, the manufacturers listen. The voice of the multitude is in some ways stronger than laboratory tests performed in sheltered environments." In other words, information is derived from manufacturers' specifications and unverified comments by anybody rather than tests—what Wikipedia would class as a blog. Pol098, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

    The misinformation in the batteryuniversity Web site (picked up and repeated in many other places), is not just technically in breach of Wikipedia guidelines, but has cost me time, money, and bad decisions. Pol098 (talk) 09:20, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Support: The website's prominence in search engine results make it very likely to, if unmonitored, creep back into the main page or in other relatively low-traffic pages of this general topic. There is no way it has any actual use here. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:42, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Beetstra: & @MER-C: Can we get these blacklisted? Werieth (talk) 15:16, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Canback and Company

    Canback and company is a proprietary pay-to-access data site and the account and the two IPs have been busy adding links for data that is otherwise available publicly from the IMF. I've blocked the account and an IP, but that won't stop the company adding its links, hence my request (I'd add it myself but don't want to tinker!). Dougweller (talk) 16:12, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    @Beetstra: & @MER-C: Can we get these blacklisted? Werieth (talk) 15:17, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    open-media-community.com, bd-dvd-copying-ripping.blogspot.tw, www.pavtube.cn, www.pavtube.com, www.flvsoft.com, www.bluray-dvd-converter, www.my-video-converter.com, device-camcorder-tips.blogspot.com, camcordervideoshare.altervista.org

    open-media-community.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    bd-dvd-copying-ripping.blogspot.tw: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    www.pavtube.cn: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    www.pavtube.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    www.flvsoft.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    www.bluray-dvd-converter: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    www.my-video-converter.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com :device-camcorder-tips.blogspot.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
    camcordervideoshare.altervista.org: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    These have been the subject of persistent spamming from a spammer using at least one account (Special:Contributions/JeanLiu520) and numerous IP addresses, including Special:Contributions/58.240.189.22, Special:Contributions/61.64.61.160, Special:Contributions/192.184.42.203, Special:Contributions/192.184.42.204, Special:Contributions/66.226.74.49. At least some of the IP addresses used are proxies, and at least some of them are listed as spam sources on several other websites, such as www.liveipmap.com and whatismyipaddress.com.

    Early spam from this source was fairly routine linkspam, but for a long time now there has been frequent posting of large chunks of spam to talk pages, as for example in this edit. There is a good deal of this, much of it in deleted edits, such as [3], [4] and [5].

    Here are just a few examples of the spamming from over the years. There are many more.

    December 2008 [6]
    May 2009 [7]
    March 2010 [8] [9]
    April 2010 [10] [11]
    March 2014 [12]
    April 2014 [13]
    June 2014 [14] [15]

    The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 10:17, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    @Beetstra: & @MER-C: Can we get these blacklisted? Werieth (talk) 15:18, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Magzter.com

    Magzter.com sells magazine subscription. Patrikjoe added links to them at Elle (magazine), India Today, and Cosmopolitan (magazine). User hasn't added any more beyond those three since I left a talkpage message, so not reporting the user, but I noticed magzter.com isn't listed yet and probably should be. --— Rhododendrites talk |  23:25, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    magzter.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Not enough to justify blacklisting at this time. Werieth (talk) 15:19, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    cirp.org

    cirp.org: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    The issue with this site is copyright infringement: this site hosts the full texts of copyrighted journal articles and book chapters. It actually reproduces the copyright notice along with the content. WP:ELNEVER says

    Material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked. Linking to websites that display copyrighted works is acceptable as long as the website has licensed the work, or uses the work in a way compliant with fair use. Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright may be considered contributory copyright infringement. If there is reason to believe that a website has a copy of a work in violation of its copyright, do not link to it.

    and there is no indication that approval has been obtained from all the various original copyright holders.

    Beyond this, the site in many cases modifies the original sources by marking up the content with their own highlighting and inserting their own comments into the original sources, examples: [16][17] or in some cases, highlighting the content without mentioning that their modification isn't in the original, for example [18]. This is a problem per Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Convenience_links_2: When offering convenience links, it is important to be reasonably certain that the convenience copy is a true copy of the original, without any changes or inappropriate commentary, and that it does not infringe the original publisher's copyright.

    All the original, unmodified sources carried are of course available through conventional means: through looking up the abstracts in PubMed and the book summaries from the book publishers, and then getting the full text, so adding this site to the blacklist will not prevent using the sources.

    Links to this website are added to articles or Talk pages on a regular basis, from IPs, new accounts and longer-term editors, example: [19][20][21][22] As I am an admin, I have the technical capability to make the modification to blacklist myself, but because I am involved in this content area I thought it'd be better to have another admin review and make the change, even though the reason isn't based on content. Thanks... Zad68 17:55, 16 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    footycards.com

    footycards.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com Spammers

    — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt Deres (talk • contribs)

    no Declined as the spam is not persistent. MER-C 12:21, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    nootropicfish.com and nootropicsport.com

    Websites
    Spammers

    Repeated spamming to many articles. I've blocked the registered user and the IPs, including range blocks, but the spammer is just IP hopping. -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:47, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    It looks like your blocking spree worked -- nothing since then. no Declined, please re-report if the spamming resumes. MER-C 11:38, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    lindaikeji.blogspot.com

    The IPs linked below have been adding the self published blog source linked above. I've warned the IPs linked below several times on their talk pages. The IPs have all been blocked in the past and are currently blocked. The IPs below have been taking turns to add the aforementioned unreliable gossip source to the P-Square article. Blacklisting this blog will prevent these IPs (or new IPs) from adding this blog to Wikipedia articles.

    IPs

    Versace1608 (Talk) 04:04, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    perry4law.co.uk

    Links go to an Indian law firm's blog. In addition to the links contained in the link summary, the following articles have had edits reverted because they contained perry4law: [23], [24], [25] and [26]. All articles were edited by different IP addresses.

    I was alerted today on my talk page of another editor who reverted because of spam. A couple articles contained a wikilink to Praveen Dalal's user page. Praveen Dalal is the managing partner at perry4law. A link to the law firm's website as well as email addresses are on the user page. Bgwhite (talk) 05:15, 28 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    This is going to need some cleanup before it goes on the blacklist. MER-C 11:21, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Blacklist Ceiling Fan videos

    User:David Beals and his socks have been very, very active recently, even on my own talk page. [27] Since their primary purpose appears to be adding links to videos uploaded by "The Channel of Random Ceiling Fans" on YouTube, [28] I propose that, if possible, we blacklist every one of this channel's videos to preempt more such additions (given there's almost definitely no real reason these would need to be added). Jinkinson talk to me 15:10, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    zoompondy.com

    Website

    Repeatedly being added by IP-hopper/s and throwaway accounts to articles related to Pondicherry/Puducherry, a Union Territory in India. Thomas.W talk 12:10, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    releasemyad.com

    Website
    Spammers

    Linkspamming from multiple IPs into multiple articles. duffbeerforme (talk) 13:17, 11 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Seems to have stopped... MER-C 12:43, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    PeterCapaldi.info

    Added by various IPs. 203.17.70.53 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot) most recently. It forwards to a Facebook fan community page. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Border Town ‖ 01:54, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm not seeing anything in the DB so  Additional information needed. MER-C 12:31, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    lukeisback.com

    Proposed blacklisting lukeisback.com per discussion at lukeisback and sexherald dot com.

    Despite past discussions and porn project guidelines, it continues to be used as a source, primarily in porn articles. It's an old gossip blog maintained by an apparent replacement gossiper. --Lightbreather (talk) 19:08, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    sexherald.com

    Proposed blacklisting sexherald.com per discussion at lukeisback and sexherald dot com.

    It's a commercial site (for FUCKINGMACHINES, maybe? others) posing as an "adult entertainment news authority." Lightbreather (talk) 19:15, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    interpretermag.com

    It was removed from the article in question. There was a discussion in the talk page also. On a search, links from this domain which translates even personal blogs are used as inline citations in many articles. --Drajay1976 (talk) 07:30, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    It may well be an unreliable source, but that doesn't mean it is spam. I don't understand this request. RGloucester — ☎ 15:53, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I would like to see some evidence of link abuse as well, User:Drajay1976. We generally don't blacklist just because something is unreliable. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:26, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    no Declined MER-C 11:02, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Completed Proposed additions

    yourbrainonporn and such

    Spam links which to not pass w:WP:MEDRS and w:WP:MEDASSESS relentlessly added to articles about masturbation and pornography over the years. The matter has been debated at w:WP:RSN. They may seem to violate w:WP:SOAP. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I would add another
    It is a blog written by a lawyer who pretends to be a sex expert, although she did not study medicine, nor psychology. She is the partner of the man who runs yourbrainonporn.com and a fellow anti-pornography crusader. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:47, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem with these blogs is that to the wannabe they appear to contain hard science, and out of gullibility wanabees want to add such information to Wikipedia as if it were presented in a reliable source. We cannot do otherwise than assume good faith for those who add it for the first time and assume bad faith after lengthy explanations that the couple who writes these blogs is no way near expert opinion on any medical or psychological subject. You'd be amazed how many people come to believe the dopamine-version of "masturbation makes you blind", i.e. they come to believe there is hard science behind sex/masturbation being an addiction similar to crack cocaine. The man who runs yourbrainonporn even made it to speak for TEDx, but if you listen carefully to what he said there he acknowledges it is all guessiology, there is no peer-reviewed evidence that he would be correct (as DSM-5 explicitly states, and it has been published fairly recently). Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:34, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Another one:
    I oppose adding these to the blacklist. There is no evidence here that they are actually being spammed. Not being a reliable source is not a reason for spam blacklisting. If/when they do get linked inappropriately, it is easy enough to remove. Antrocent (♫♬) 06:43, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    No evidence of being spammed, no Declined. MER-C 06:50, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    ifscswiftcodes.com

    Spammers

    — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brianhe (talk • contribs)

    Adsense google_ad_client = pub-8006888766042666 (Track - Report - reverseinternet.com • meta: Track - Report)
    Also:
    This is, unfortunately, stale. no Declined MER-C 06:44, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Active again: [50], [51] ; added to IP list above— Brianhe (talk) 01:39, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    plus Added MER-C 11:08, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    shopping.mywannado.com

    Website
    Spammer

    Infrequent but repeated spamming on various clock related articles. Sometimes replacing dead links with this spam site. Reverted by various users and warned on user talk page, on which not responsive. Suggest adding to blacklist. - DVdm (talk) 12:01, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Raiahana6 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)
    IP blocked for three months. no Declined for now. MER-C 06:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    rakeshbiswas.in

    Website

    See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rakesh biswas01, we have a person who is repeatedly creating socks to re-create articles related to Rakesh Biswas. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:03, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    plus Added MER-C 17:02, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    FullSongs24.com

    fullsongs24.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Starahad (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

    The user has added the links to two different articles so it's not spamming yet, but between the copyright vio, the site not having any value to Wikipedia and a gut feeling this will just continue, I'd prefer to nip this in the bud. Ravensfire (talk) 22:01, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Nothing since this report... no Declined, but domain noted in case of future spamming. MER-C 12:46, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    messagizer.com

    Spammers

    All users added external links to the site in the See Also or External Links area on the page. FirstDrop87 (talk) 02:29, 21 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Domain is dead. no Declined. MER-C 12:56, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]


    indiaproperty.com

    All edits by the above users promote indiaproperty.com as citation spam or promote Indiaproperty or its founder or sister concerns.

    These accounts might be dupes of blocked user, Realestatewalas (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam).

    Anithakrish15 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam) and RealtyCompass might be related to the same SEO campaign/mob as there's some cross-linking. Edits and editors related to Metroplots look related too.

    A Google of Lakshmin's name (based on his message to me) shows that he is employed by Indiaproperty in a marketing/SEO role. Furthermore, he was previous employed in a similarly capacity at a company named Comodo and he has edited its pages as well. (I'm not sure if it is kosher to link to personal information.) There is an obvious conflict of interest here and a lack of notability to these companies as well. Their pages, IMO, should not be part of an encyclopaedia.

    - Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 19:49, 13 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    This is a grey area because the user has disclosed some of this information on wiki. That said, Lakshmin is now blocked. MER-C 12:41, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    How about User:Rameshsyadav? His activities aren't grey. They are jet black :) And will indiaproperty.com be added to the blacklist? Thanks. -- Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 18:19, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I have added KarthikSEO1305 to the above list as well. His only edits on WP are related to citation spam on behalf of Indiaproperty. Then there's his tell-tale username. I have also reported him here. -- Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 09:39, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    FYI, I have now rolled back or edited out a large number of indiaproperty.com citation spam edits. --Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 10:02, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    By "grey area", I was referring to posting a link to that... external page. Realestatewalas and Anithakrish15 just look like rival spammers. There is a whole lot of bad faith editing going on, so plus Added. MER-C 19:04, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah. I see. Thanks for taking care of these guys :) You might've missed a spot with User:Rameshsyadav at the top of the above list. But I'll keep an eye on him and his indiaproperty brethren. Cheers. -- Cpt.a.haddock (talk) 06:33, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    airbrushclasses.com

    Spammers

    Commercial website selling DVDs, repeatedly added to the Airbrush article and related articles since 2011. 79.69.202.97 (talk) 14:53, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    plus Added MER-C 12:37, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    www.ruife.es

    Website
    Spammer

    Repeated addition of the site's pages in place of association football club team official websites. Anon has been blocked once for the action but has returned and continues. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:10, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    IP blocked for three months. no Declined, please re-report if spamming recommences. MER-C 19:16, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    palace-on-wheel.com

    Travel agency site being repeatedly spammed by numerous IPs to Palace on Wheels. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:09, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Semi-protected for three months. MER-C 03:52, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    knowyourmeme.com

    Rarely used link, but keeps being used in BLP articles such as Techno Viking, Jameis Winston and other articles, by vandals and good faith editors. Already on XLinkBot list, but good faith edits keep slipping through.--Otterathome (talk) 19:43, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • There are legitimate uses of this link to document the existence of internet memes, notably when the [point is specifically that Know your meme has featured something. The reporting editor has been removing these, giving the impression the link is used less often than it is, and some of the removals are disputed. IMO should not be a blacklisted link. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:16, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've no comment on the site itself; but the editor has certainly been edit-warring (1, 2, 3, 4) to remove it from at least one article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    The spam blacklist is not a means for settling content disputes. Rejected. MER-C 03:54, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Proposed removals

    altafsir.com


    How can the site be useful
    I cannot find any other sources online which quote some of the historical sources that this website does. The website is as vital as Template:Hadith-usc, which is linking to islamic primary sources at University of South Carolina's website here.

    I cant find in the archives here why it was blacklisted. Possibly because it might be considered extremist literature, because it contains: hadith, quran and tafsir. And someone may have thought these historical text promote extremism and violence. If that was the reason it was blacklisted then that is like saying "block websites that link to the bible because it contains violence".

    Also Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/altafsir.com explains nothing about why this was blacklsited--Misconceptions2 (talk) 12:21, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Why it should not be blacklisted
    It does not contain spam or any kind of malware. I beleive it was a huge mistake to blacklist this.

    This website contains mainly Islamic primary sources known as Tafsir, so just like there is a Template:Hadith-usc linking to islamic primary sources at University of South Carolina's website, this website is same as the USC webcites which has records of islamic primary sources called hadith. altafsir.com has records of islamic primary sources call tafsir. I am proposing this be whitelisted for same reason as why links from Template:Hadith-usc that go to University of South Carolina's database of islamic primary sources is whitelisted.

    Blacklisting reasons:
    No opinion on delisting. MER-C 12:50, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah i get it now, so it was blacklisted because some guys were posting external links to it. But the links were abosultely relevant. If only the blocking admin knew why those guys werel inking to that website on articles related to Quran verses. Its because those links give commentaries of the relevant quran verse. Although those guys may have spammed links from this website on wikipedia. I see that this spamming in particularly was actually relevant and not really considered spam. More effort should have been taken to investigate back then what exactly a tafsir is--Misconceptions2 (talk) 17:56, 5 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
     Done, removed from blacklist here, but  Defer to Global blacklist because the site is still blacklisted on Meta.
    I'll add that the behavior after being blacklisted on meta (evading the blacklist and hiring an outside entity to help them continue spamming) is questionable. Sites are blacklisted on the basis of behavior, and relevance isn't a reason to de-list, although I agree the links would be quite useful on Islam-related articles. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:30, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    lmgtfy.com

    How can the site be useful This is a harmless tongue-in-cheek redirect to Google.

    Why it should not be blacklisted It does not contain spam or any kind of malware, in other words - there is no reason for it to be blacklisted. Chunk5Darth (talk) 19:10, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

     Not done. Redirect sites have no purpose here, and all redirect sites are blacklisted by default because they are routinely used to circumvent the blacklist. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:01, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Comment: Amatulic, it only redirects to Google, which is not blacklisted. It does not redirect to anything else. Therefore, there is no way it can be used to circumvent the blacklist. It has zero affiliation with anything related to the blacklist whatsoever. Chunk5Darth (talk) 23:33, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Did you even look at this page's archives before posting your request? It has been denied in the past. You are not offering any new arguments. ~Amatulić (talk) 03:52, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    shaded-relief.com

    How can the site be useful Terrain map for https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php currently in use at {{GeoTemplate}}

    Why it should not be blacklisted Any attempt to edit {{GeoTemplate}} (for instance, to correct OpenStreetMap's licence from CC-BY-SA to ODbL) fails as shaded-relief.com and pro-gorod.ru are blacklisted links, despite being in use on the GeoHack page. K7L (talk) 15:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    @A. B.: You added this to the blacklist in 2012 as part of a large group associated with a Fox spamming incident, but the log entry cases linked don't show this domain. Please shed some light. Do you have an objection to removing it from the blacklist? Alternatively we could whitelist the GeoTemplate URL. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    hqtips.com

    This blog have really helpful information of IT and have some helpful list of website and tools. I was adding reference of project management tool comparison article of their blog and found that its blacklisted. Here I can find hqtips log of spam discussed in April 2013


    How can the site be useful This blog have informative and helpful written article that usually required by user to find their solutions for IT

    Why it should not be blacklisted This website doesn't look spammy and have unique articles that could be required by any contributor to add it to wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevpet (talk • contribs)

    no Declined. What assurance do we have that the original AdSense spamming that caused the blacklisting would not resume? Also, why should we make an exception to WP:ELNO for a blog site? Have you had the community review this source at WP:RSN? ~Amatulić (talk) 19:42, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't find any AdSense spamming now. This blog have good authority and Google PR so I think that could be added to Wikipedia.--Stevpet (talk) 21:27, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Spamming has stopped because they are blacklisted. That was the point. A good pagerank is irrelevant to blacklisting. This is someone's self-published personal blog. Sorry, I don't see how this has value for Wikipedia. We generally don't link to blogs, let alone use them as references. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:59, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    pv-magazine.com

    This website is a secondary source which includes specific information on photovoltaic projects throughout the world. It was used legitimately in a number of photovoltaic power stations articles and is generally reliable. It was discussed in May 2011 for spamming.

    How can the site be useful It is used as a reliable source. Often this website is the only English secondary source with a specific information.

    Why it should not be blacklisted It is useful as a source for many articles. Despite that the website was spammed, it is a valuable resource for myself and others who works with energy-related articles. When discussed in 2011, it was said that "If a non-COI editor makes a later request, it could be reconsidered". Accordingly I am making that request. Additional issues are that the blacklisting seems punitive, not preventive, and it was blacklisted without prior notifying relevant Wikiproject. Beagel (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    The original thread regarding the spamming is Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2011_Archive_Mar_1#User:Paulzubrinich
    "Despite that the website was spammed .... the blacklisting seems punitive, not preventive". I respectfully disagree - it prevented the spamming (there were multiple accounts (some likely with a conflict of interest: User:Beckystuart - [52]; User:Paulzubrinich), they show an intention to spam ([53]), they mislead other editors ([54]), replace other sources with theirs, there is no reason to think that it should stop (in fact, User:MER-C noted the creation of new socks when old were blocked)), it does not punish anyone.
    Blacklisted without prior notifying relevant WikiProject - that is at best a good consideration, but is not, has never been, and should never be a compulsory part of blacklisting.
    Did you look whether the spamming actually is not still actively busy, so that we can safely say that blacklisting is not necessary anymore to prevent further spamming? Otherwise, I would consider to  Defer to Whitelist for the links that are needed. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:37, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Taking account the time how long this site has been blacklisted there are not so much websites left. However, it is a very time-consuming to apply for each single link for whitelisting (as a rule, it takes weeks to get any reaction and too often the reaction is an advice to look for some other source.) During the latest discussion about different -technology.com sites there were several proposals how to use bots and filter to make the process of blacklisting more transparent and detecting spammers more easily; however, it seems that there is no wish to change the current system. Beagel (talk) 18:02, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    It is good that we do not have any deadlines, then.
    Beagel, WP:BRFA is right there for that task (I am not going to operate that bot, and I warn anyone who wants to take that task of familiarising themselves of what happened with Betacommand). I believe that it should not be compulsory, that is it - and you still seem to think that I am unwilling to notify wikiprojects of 'their' links being blacklisted, and that I don't (or didn't) make the analysis. I explained what and how I analysed it, and I still believe that most of these -technology.com links are not secondary sources, but simple re-reports of primary sources (in fact, the first addition of one of those sites that I encountered made by you (after the many by the spammers) was exactly that - a rewrite of the company report - in fact, I only believed it when I found the original, as they did not source where they actually got the information from).
    I don't think that this process is less transparent than WP:AN/I or WP:RS/N .. it is just that people don't care. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    So, no analysis what is the impact to the work of other editors who are here to improve the Wikipedia and not for spamming. And no intention to see the situation from these editors point of view. And it is big difference, if the source is directly from the company (that is, primary source) or re-written (not re-printed) by the webmedia source (secondary source). Beagel (talk) 18:55, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Don't start that again, 'the work of other editors who are here to improve the Wikipedia and not for spamming' - you say you have all these pages on your watchlist (together with tens of others in the Wikiproject), still none cared about the spammers.
    No, it is not, it is re-written without pointing to the original source - it is only reliable when you see the original source and compare. This is not a reliable secondary source. There is nothing against primary sources, and this is a prime example why prime sources should sometimes be used over secondary sources. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:21, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Please do not put words in my mouth. I never said I have all these pages in my watchlist. My watchlist icludes only about 3,000 pages including files, templates, projects etc. However, your accusation that "none cared about the spammers" is baseless. I can't speak on behalf of anybody else; however, if there has been spamming also like vandalism etc I have always dealt with this. For some reasons, there has been no such a large-scale spamming at these pages on my watch list as you seems to imply. Therefore, my experience have been that blacklisting of certain websites have been created more harm and extra work than any spammer I have dealt with. And this is not said only by me but has been said here by several other editors. So, maybe instead of denying the problem it would be better if we could together find a way to make the system less painful for the ordinary editors without being less effective for fighting spammers. I personally suggested some potential solutions (I don't say that they are ready solutions or that there is no better solutions) but instead the of dialogue and discussing it you just rejected any cahnge to the current system. Although, if the link is added not by spammer but ordinary editor with a long edit history without histroy of spamming, vandalizing, paid editing etc, it would be logical if the link will be whitelisted more or less automatically. Beagel (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, I did not mean it in that way, not as a personal complaint to you. These spammers were too smart for that, Beagel. Still, between the 7-or-so last accounts (some likely socks seen their timing!) there are about 250 link additions. Count that for all the sites there are a couple of hundreds of links (500? 700?), and the fact that this is known to be busy for 7 years (did I still miss accounts, I think I blacklisted after 4, found more later, and I did see a number of accounts with in total 4 or 5 edits where they add 3 or 4 links, is it a spammer or not? I also have a 'gap' where the spammers don't seem to have been active, that is too curious to be true) quite some of the links that are there were originally spammed (the one on Navy is spammed (and IMHO, inappropriate)). Even if you had ALL articles in one of the spammed subject areas on your watchlist (which no-one has, I do not have all 14.000 chemicals on my watchlist), you might have seen just a couple of edits over months - as I said, they are smart, they know we are looking (we caught them spamming earlier).
    I may have underestimated how often this link was used by regulars (the analysis if it should have been is elsewhere), but as I said - I see an (obviously incomplete) set of editors spamming, with hundreds of edits between them, and several hundreds of links there, and I found it easier to find spammers than regulars adding the site (it took me quite some time before I ran into the first case where you added the link, and as for the four you requested whitelisting for, I found that one replaceable as well (don't remember where, I left it)). Maybe the cleanup of at least the spammed links should have been more rigorous before blacklisting (and I still believe that quite some of the rest should go as well, there are better sources). Announcing it to the WikiProjects (which would probably be 30 or 40 in this case .. each for a 15-20 links on average) might have been an option, though I a) doubt much participation in cleaning (personal experience), and b) if you notify them on a regular basis of pending blacklisting that participation will even become lower - in the end I don't think it will have much of an effect, and c) the spamming would still go on and that would also need to be cleaned. The bot does a similar thing, it notifies people of 'questionable' links on pages on their watchlist. You say that you have 3000 pages on your watchlist, so a rough guess, that there would be 25 pages with now blacklisted links (tagged in one go, so all visible). Most of those 25 pages are likely watched by another 10 people, so you would on average have to evaluate 2 of them. I, as spam-fighter, would however first have to clean-out all the spammed links, and then evaluate (which is difficult for me, I am not a specialist in all these subjects) whether the others are replaceable, should go or should be whitelisted (in the meantime, I have to revert the ongoing spam).
    I am not rejecting any change - I am all for more participation. But having compulsory notifications to Wikiprojects is not a solution (but just for the compulsory part of it - WP:PHARM is going to kill me after the 3rd notification of a Taladafil spammer, do I REALLY have to notify them? - and some links are plain spam and should undoubtedly be blacklisted but do not 'belong' to one, or any WikiProject. As I said elsewhere, I know what happened with Betacommand, the idea is good but the practical application is running into problems which will make people yell at the bot operator that operates that bot). For me, the solution is to get more people aware of the page and get more people commenting, and helping. And I have asked for that on several occasions ...
    In most cases, requests for whitelisting for links added by regulars and requested by regulars go fairly automatic - though, and I have said that here before, besides that it was spammed, I have serious questions about the reliability (reliability is not the right word, it turns out that it is reliable, it is more that they are not independent determinations of the facts than really reliability - they are secondary, they appear therefore independent, but that is a wrong impression) and suitability of these links (and not only of the ones that were spammed). Examiner.com links are not automatically whitelisted if a regular requests it - we ask everybody to go the extra mile and show there is no better source for the same info. I think that that should happen here as well (but now it is not blacklisted no-one will care about the links that are there: they are fine because they are not blacklisted - and (likely after a bit of time) the spammers can carry on). --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:26, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    re@ In most cases, requests for whitelisting for links added by regulars and requested by regulars go fairly automatic. Based on my recent experience by asking whitelisting some links, which were not spamming and were not added by spammers, which you rejected, I would say that this statement does not reflect the reality adequately. There may be or may be not better sources, but it should not be the bases of rejection (as this is also not the bases of blacklisting). I do not reject the idea that in certain cases blacklisting and whitelisting of websites should be done based on their reliability but there should be very clearly defined written policy on this — otherwise it would be just a subjectivity of acting admin or in the worst cases, even censorship which goes againts the core principles of Wikipedia.
    re@compulsory notifications. I see the point and agree that proposing it as "compulsory" may create problems. I think that for Wikiprojects it would probably work better as opt-in, so they will have a choice if they would like to recieve these notifications or not. As my other proposals, I still think that it would be necessary analysing impact of the certain website/publisher blacklisting to the articles by using bot and/or specific Wikitool. It should be not only listing affected articles, but also list of editors who have added that certain website link into articles by number of that kind of edits. I also support what was said by another editor that in certain cases it would be more efficient to use filters instead of blacklisting. But, of course, these (and probably also some other) proposals need wider and better organized discussion. I have to admit that my proposal last time at Village Pump was not well-described and the discussion was not appropriately structured, which does not help to keep that discussion focused. Beagel (talk) 11:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the whitelisting - whitelisting is done for links that are really needed. Do we have to whitelist an unreliable source where better sources exist (and in some cases were even already in use)? These sources should not be used, they should be replaced with reliable sources, even if those reliable sources are primary.
    Opt-in is also difficult, it is not dependent on the nature of the wikiproject, it is dependent on the nature of the site. Of course wikiproject pharmacology does not want to be notified if we blacklist another taladifil site, they do want to be notified if some publisher that they use is spamming Wikipedia and runs the risk to have their links blacklisted. Still, if you think that a bot c/should be written for this, that is something that we have bot-requests for.
    Maybe here notifications were necessary, but I still insist that I could find spammers easier than regulars using this site, and I still believe that a lot of these pages that are there should be replaced with the proper primary source as this secondary source is of less value (and because it is plainly re-writing the same info as the primary source - sometimes less correct) than the primary source. I am convinced that most of the news-items reported by these sites will not survive a WP:RS/N-discussion when the original is presented. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Also note that I did not decline/reject in those three discussions, I merely suggested alternatives that are not blacklisted and discussed the request. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:29, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    re@Opt-in is also difficult, it is not dependent on the nature of the wikiproject, it is dependent on the nature of the site. Of course wikiproject pharmacology does not want to be notified if we blacklist another taladifil site, they do want to be notified if some publisher that they use is spamming Wikipedia and runs the risk to have their links blacklisted. I am some how confused. How the opt-in is more difficult compared to the current situation where is no notification? If you think that there are cases when notification is necessary nothwithstanding the opt-in, it could be done in addition to the bot manually. It needs only some goodwill for this.
    re@I still insist that I could find spammers easier than regulars using this site. Excuse me but I can't understand what is your point. Nobody is not questioning your experiences fighting spamming but does it really more important than work of regulars using these sites for writing encyclopaedia?
    re@I still believe that a lot of these pages that are there should be replaced. This is your right to believe. This does not mean you are right. I also believe that some of sites should be replaced while "some others" are useful for the project. That does not mean I am right. I agree that there is no agreement, a community based discussion is needed and as the reliability depends of the context, each link under question should be discussed separately. Beagel (talk) 19:34, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No, Opt-in is not more difficult than no notification, it is more difficult than blanket-always-notification. Opt-in on which links. I think that the situation I describe is going to be the same for all wikiprojects, so all WikiProjects would not opt-in and have to rely on the goodwill of the editors (which is there anyway, you are now just saying because in this one case you were not notified that it is never done - I realise that with the -technology.com sites I underestimated the size of the situation.
    No, not more important per sé - the point is, spammers make money spamming their links, they insist, they go on (examples are there of organisations who spam 3-9 years despite links being blacklisted, this is not your run-of-the-mill vandalism, they persist). Playing whack-a-mole is futile, not blacklisting a site where the spammers are shown to be still active is damaging Wikipedia more than the little hurdle of whitelisting the material that is really needed. Often, the sites are of use on a very small subset of the 4 million+ pages that we have. I am sorry, but leaving some sites not blacklisted gives a lot of work to very few editors in favour of very, very few additions which are really important by a large group of editors. If I go through 20 situations where the link is used on Wikipedia (that was for the -technology.com websites) go back sifting through the history, and I find that none of those 20 were actually added by regulars but all by spammers then the conclusion rises quickly that regulars do not use the site very often and spammers do. Because that is what happened with the -technology.com websites, Beagel. I believe you that you say that you used that link regularly, but over the last three months 30-40 additions were by 6 to 8 spammers, and 3-4 by 1 to 2 regulars. If there are already 6-7 sock/meat puppets (or a whole sweat-shop), blocking the editors is futile, and page-protection is futile and gives a lot of aggravation to regulars as well - where is the line between continuing to play whack-a-mole with spammers and a bit of inconvenience to request whitelist the few links that are really needed?
    I agree that the reliability depends on the context and use (there are cases where porn sites do need to be linked, despite that 99+% is plain abuse of the link). But if a site is actively and definitely spammed, or the site is not one of general use, then the mitigation plan is to blacklist the whole domain, and allow individual links to be whitelisted on their own merits. If those links are shown to be useful and not replaceable by other (better) sources, then whitelisting is a formality (even for a site of questionable reliability). Your suggestion 'each link under question should be discussed separately' - that is exactly where the whitelist comes in, where every single link can be separately whitelisted. If a site can be shown to be of general use (most/all of the discussions result in whitelisting), and the spam threat seems to have stopped, then de-listing could be considered. And those are the arguments that should be answered in this thread, not accusations of unwillingness to notify WikiProjects (how do you know that was not done in this case anyway?), nor unfounded remarks that it was a long time anyway (there are tools to show that sites are still spammed or that the threat has stopped completely).
    Note that also the argument that this is often the only English source is not valid - WP:V does not require the sources to be in English, and you suggest that there are non-English sources. Moreover, if this source is an English translation of another language, you just assume that the translation is correct. Also, WP:V does not require a source to be online, nor does it require a source to be actually linked. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:17, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    re@I realise that with the -technology.com sites I underestimated the size of the situation. Yes, you did. And does "I underestimated the size of the situation" means that the blacklisting is based on one man estimation? However, this is exactly the reason why an impact analysis and usage of bot or special tool for this is needed. E.g. after proposal to blacklist the site (or group of sites by the same owner) the bot would list all the articles using this site as a reference, creates a list of users who have added this site with number of additions; and a number of individual Wikiproject banners on the affected articles. First, it gives an overview what the impact is. In the case of -technology.com sites the total number of articles is thousands, and number of editors adding this is hundreds. Second, it assist to detect spammers. Third, if a particular Wikiproject has hundreds of affected articles, one will know that for community-based consensus the notification of that particular WP is necessary. Knowing this beforehand probably would (and should) change the process of blacklisting.
    re@If I go through 20 situations where the link is used on Wikipedia (that was for the -technology.com websites) go back sifting through the history, and I find that none of those 20 were actually added by regulars but all by spammers then the conclusion rises quickly that regulars do not use the site very often and spammers do. Taking decision by 20 articles if thousands of articles are affected is not very representative. Again, using impact analysis as suggested at the previous paragraph would avoid that kind of underestimations. On the other hand, refusing to see the need for this will result with repeating similar situation again and again.
    re@If those links are shown to be useful and not replaceable by other (better) sources, then whitelisting is a formality (even for a site of questionable reliability). If the whitelisting request is made by regular editor, not a spammer, and it is useful for the article, the fact if the the link is replaceable or not should not to be relevant because blaclisting is preventive, not punitive. From the preventive point of view, it does not make a difference, if the useful link added by regular editor is replaceable or not.
    re@Note that also the argument that this is often the only English source is not valid - WP:V does not require the sources to be in English, and you suggest that there are non-English sources. I did not make this argument. Again, as I said in my previous paragraph, from the preventive point of view this is irrelevant. If requested by a regular editor and if it is useful, it should be whitelisted notwithstanding if and in which languages alternatives exist. Beagel (talk) 05:02, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @underestimation: No, if you read the thread, you see that it was not a one-man investigation, and if you read the related threads you see that more. And the number is hundreds, not thousands (maybe a thousand). I also saw hundreds of edits by identified spammers. Also, for the recent additions we have those statistics, and they do not make it much better, one or two uses by regulars, 20-30 by spammers.
    @20 situations: Again, it is hundreds, and it is a subset - I do not believe that the relative situation will be significantly different on 100 examinations. And again, I do see the need, I have done it in the past, and this situation does not occur thát often - you are around for what, 7 years and this is the first time that you see it happening, I am around for about 10 and this is also one of the first times this happens.
    @replaceability: I still do not see why you insist to use an unreliable source when better, reliable sources exist. In fact, I don't understand why you used that unreliable source in the first place when you added it originally.
    And yes, you make that exact argument in your delisting request: "How can the site be useful It is used as a reliable source. Often this website is the only English secondary source with a specific information." - that is it used as a source does not mean we need a link to it (not a WP:V requirement), and you remark that it is the 'only English secondary source' suggests that there are other language secondary sources with the same information (and being in English is not a WP:V requirement either). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:15, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @And the number is hundreds, not thousands (maybe a thousand). The number of three -techology.com sites for WP Energy alone was more than 300. Taking account all other -technology.com sites for other WPs the number of "hundreds, not thousands" is an underestimation.
    @for the recent additions we have those statistics Could you provide the link to this statistics? However, we are not blaclisting also recent edits - if you blacklist the site, you blacklist all links referring to the that site.
    @I do not believe that the relative situation will be significantly different on 100 examinations. I have to apology that I did not explained my suggestion clearly. The issue is not about checking 20 sites or 100 sites. The idea is to list all editors who have added links to that particular site with a number of links added. This is different from what you do/did.
    @I don't understand why you used that unreliable source in the first place when you added it originally. Fact that you believe that the source is unreliable is what you believe–it does not make this source unreliable per se. As I said, we have a different board for discussing reliability, it is not the purpose of this board. And taking account that there are several articles which I have brought to GA/FA level, including working specifically with the quality of sources, your allegation that I intentionally use unrealiable sources is unfounded. And again, purpose of this board is not to discuss relaibility of sources - the purpose is to fight spam. Beagel (talk) 06:02, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I've done a bit of a count, a good 1500 maybe (all over, so not only mainspace). We get somewhere inbetween.
    They are all in the COIBot reports linked from the discussions. No, we blacklist only new additions, not old ones. They are not affected except when removed (then re-addition would not work - which is why it is better that they get whitelisted when appropriate or removed when spammed/inappropriate).
    What I did was check a good number of existing links, finding who added them. If of that subset only very few (if any) are by regulars, whereas the spammers that show up in that all link to many additions (the 8 identified accounts over a period of 6 years, sometimes operating at the same time, and I know that there are SPA's that I am unsure about, and likely missing accounts, have more than 400 edits on their name - about 20-25% of the total links already, not taking into account that some of the links are on talkpages which the spammers never added). I know that that means that 75-80% MAY have been added by regulars, but the sample subset did not show many regulars (as I said, there were some which did not have enough edits on their name to distinguish between being genuine new editors or spam SPAs - I have not listed nor ocunted them).
    Maybe these sources and their alternatives should go through a WP:RS/N discussion, then. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    energy-business-review.com

    This website is a secondary source which includes good, detailed information on different type of energy projects throughout the world. It was used legitimately in a number of energy-related articles and is generally reliable and, notwithstanding blacklisting, it is still in use in some articles. It was discussed in October 2009 whith several other website for spamming. I myself have never seen it spammed on Wikipedia, just used as a reference.

    How can the site be useful It is used as a reliable source. Often this website is the only English secondary source with a specific information.

    Why it should not be blacklisted It may have been spammed with several other websites but it is most useful as a source for many articles. Despite that the website was spammed, it is a valuable resource for myself and others who works with energy-related articles. Additional issues are that the blacklisting seems punitive, not preventive, and it was blacklisted without prior notifying relevant Wikiproject. Beagel (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    This site is part of the large scale CBROnline-spamming. This is mainly a site that re-reports company reports. There may be a few links left, most were removed, most are replaceable with the proper primary source (repeating the primary source does not make this a secondary source), whitelisting can handle the rest.
    "Despite that the website was spammed .... the blacklisting seems punitive, not preventive". I respectfully disagree - it prevented the spamming (as has been shown, it is still ongoing with numerous related accounts lately spamming sites of the same owner), it does not punish anyone.
    Blacklisted without prior notifying relevant WikiProject - that is at best a good consideration, but is not, has never been, and should never be a compulsory part of blacklisting.
    Did you look whether the spamming actually is not still actively busy, so that we can safely say that blacklisting is not necessary anymore to prevent further spamming? Otherwise, I would consider to  Defer to Whitelist for the links that are needed. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:43, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Taking account the time how long this site has been blacklisted there are not so much websites left. However, it is a very time-consuming to apply for each single link for whitelisting (as a rule, it takes weeks to get any reaction and too often the reaction is an advice to look for some other source.) AS for CBROnline, it is perfect example of sites too large and too important to so easily blacklist. And no, this is not only company reports. Also, if the site is blacklisted, that means you can't to add this site, so how one could say it is still spamming? During the latest discussion about different -technology.com sites there were several proposals how to use bots and filter to make the process of blacklisting more transparent and detecting spammers more easily; however, it seems that there is no wish to change the current system. Beagel (talk) 18:07, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Note, there is nothing against more people actually helping at the whitelist and blacklist .. they are after all community noticeboards and crosslinked from all of them. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:15, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the question on how to see whether a site is still spammed - that is how I found the ongoing CBROnline.com-spam, because people are still trying to add and were still spamming links belonging to the company. I think that that is a compulsory analysis to be done before de-blacklisting is considered, as well as an analysis of the overall use of the link (we have 4 million pages, if we are talking thousands of pages in a subject-range, but only 10 which would be enhanced by a reference to this site, then whitelisting is a better solution). I believe still that whitelisting is a better solution for this site as well. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:22, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Just curious - where's the logfile that shows the hits on the blacklist? Is it one of the edit filters? ~Amatulić (talk) 19:39, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Amatulic: see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/spamblacklist&limit=500&type=spamblacklist&user= <- admin only. I went through attempts to add cbronline.com, looking at the contributions of editors who hit the blacklist on it, found an IP that had such a hit, and as contributions only spam to -technology.com sites. COIBot helps you further. Digging further .... --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:47, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    infodriveindia.com

    infodriveindia.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Could this link please be removed from the blacklist? This website has trade data relating to India, and I would like to reference it in articles that mention multilateral trade involving India. I have not found any alternative online sources for this data via Google Search. The link used to be spammed in the external links section of articles until it was blacklisted in 2007. See also MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/November_2007#Infodriveindia.com (removal). I think that the possibility of re-listing on the blacklist is a sufficient disincentive to further spamming. --Joshua Issac (talk) 13:04, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    army-guide.com

    Was blacklisted 6 years ago because somebody seemed to spam links to it [55].

    Seems to contain much useful info. Concretely I wanted to reference the list of contracts from www.army-guide.com/eng/product116.html to add a unit cost estimate to BTR-80. The German and French Wikipedias use it on many pages, but the uses seem relevant and not overly spammy.

    Just because the site was spammed to Wikipedia 6 years ago, an eternity in Internet time, doesn't mean it will happen again today. Lets try unbanning it and see. Thue (talk) 16:22, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    6 years is not necessarily long - we have companies around who got their first links blacklisted 7 years ago, and who are still active to push other links ..
    If it is just one link, I would suggest to try whitelisting first. If more are coming up and pass the bar, then maybe it is time to consider whitelisting. I think that was what was suggested on Meta as well. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:40, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    6 years is 1/4 the age of the Internet - that is a long time! I only need one link right now, but it seems like a very useful page, so I strongly suggest unblocking all of it. Thue (talk) 18:15, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    That is what I said, we have companies spamming for that same 1/4 of the age of the Internet (and longer; and actually, this company spammed for half of that time, 1/8th of the age of the internet!). A previous request for whitelisting showed a rather unreliable document, and therefore I'd like to see an analysis for this one as well. As you say "I only need one link right now, but it seems like a very useful page" - you 'need one link' (that is what we have a whitelist for), and it 'seems' useful (and that will be shown if there are really multiple coming, at which time we can consider de-listing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:40, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The site has a page for each weapon system, and seem very informative. The part I especially like is the list of actual contracts, from which you can estimate the unit cost of the weapon systems. That is useful for almost all Wikipedia pages on weapon systems, of which there are a lot. The text and other data seems very useful as well, but the list of contracts in itself should be enough to make the page unambiguously useful. Hence I would like to get all of it whitelisted, and not just this one. Thue (talk) 19:19, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    You still talk in terms of 'seems very useful'. We had a request for whitelisting for a page on this site not too long ago, where the reliability of that specific page was strongly questioned. That is why I suggest, try to see what happens with a couple of whitelisting requests on different pages, show that individual pages come through and also that they stick, and then re-request delisting. I am not against de-listing per sé (I have not outright declined this, I just suggest that maybe a couple of whitelist discussions before delisting would probably help).
    I do note that this looks a bit like an aggregator site - they do not do their own independent research, but they get their info from other websites, rewrite and publish it. Often, the 'other website' where they got the info from is the better source. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:42, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Googling, the only prior discussion I can find is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dad7/babynology.hist this], which is a poor argument for keeping it blocked:
    Quote: It [i.e. Army Guide] was posted frequently in external links, but this appears to have been done by one or two "enthusiastic" users with "good intentions" (providing additional sources on the topic), which perhaps triggered the initial fear that this was a spam link. If you look at the links posted, they were all relevant to the page that they were posted in. If you look at the contributions of the people who posted them, they're on a wide variety of topics, not just associated with the site in question... so it doesn't appear to be for the sake of advertising or a bot ... Finally, yes, this site was posted frequently, but it's an extensive site, so it can be realistically associated with many articles here at Wikipedia.
    As for army-guide being aggregate information, that is the whole point. What I wanted was an aggregate list of purchases to determine the unit cost. I just googled for that, and couldn't find it anywhere else. I actually don't know how reliable army-guide.com is, but it would seem silly for them to invent that list of purchases out of thin air.
    Is the Wikipedia blacklist really meant to be this kind of bureaucratic roadblock? The top comment itself says it just exists to prevent spam, not to judge the quality of the site being linked to. Surely the few overenthusiastic regular Wikipedians have learned their lesson now after 6 years? Since it doesn't seem to have been a case of the the army-guide people themselves posting the links, there is little reason to believe the spamming will re-occur. Thue (talk) 12:21, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    You are linking in the beginning to 3 years of spamming of http...spam.army-guide.com (maimed link, my bolding), which links back to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam/2007_Archive_Dec_1#http:.2F.2Fspam.army-guide.com .. I see at least 14 accounts worth 3 years of spamming. That, for me, is enough to first want to see some discussion on specific links and their general use. Then we have this discussion, where the one link (and as far as I can see, the only time any link) was requested for whitelisting, it was deemed unreliable. This would be the second request, which does not give much to go on as to really how much general use there is. As it is an aggregator site, as you confess, that information is available from other sites (another thing the lack of whitelisting requests is suggesting is that others use those other sites). As I said, we have companies blacklisted in 2009/2010 which are still spamming Wikipedia using other domains (or spamming while avoiding to use the domain). --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:35, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Note, of those 14 editors, 12 are IPs - not a 'few overenthusiastic regulars'. And we are not here to learn spammers a lesson (which is a futile action anyway), we are here to stop the abuse of Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:39, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Being an aggregator site is not a valid argument for blacklisting, so that means it can't be also an argument for refusing to remove a site from the blacklist. Bringing this argument into discussion will just defocus the issue. As for former spamming — six years is a very long time for a project like Wikipedia. If the spamming happens, the limited blacklisting time could be appropriate but for indef blacklisting more strict rules are needed. It is also concerning that there seems to be a strong bias against blacklisted sites, which one could call even censorship. As these decisions, as a rule, depends of personal preferences of the single admin, it raises question if the abusive use of mop may be an issue. Beagel (talk) 12:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Beagel, the argument for blacklisting is that it was spammed for 3 years by multiple editors - that is the argument that I am careful removing it. Point is, that I would like to see whether this site is really of general use and that it merits de-listing, or that this is something that can easily be handled by whitelisting because it is only a few links anyway. The point that it may not be a reliable source does not help, but is not the reason for listing or delisting, that is purely your conclusion. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:14, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Moreover, I am not using any administrative tools, nor did I officially decline this, I have just given a suggestion. How you can construe that as abuse of administrative tools is beyond me, and is chilling this discussion and not helping your argument in any form. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:15, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, I am going on - this is a community discussion noticeboard. The decision is not that of a single admin, that decision should be made by consensus, awaiting different editors for input. I am the first one to comment. There is no rule that others can not comment, give their opinion or analysis. 6 years is a long time, but again, I have shown you companies who are spamming Wikipedia for over 6 years, so if having been blacklisted for 6 years is long, then how do you call companies that spam Wikipedia for 6 years. Did you show, or even research, whether the 14 accounts really stopped spamming, or are you just assuming that it must have stopped since it is 6 years ago? --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:20, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Even worse, Beagel, is the point that first I have a set of sites that is being spammed that I do not blacklist directly but allow for a community discussion. All that is brought forward is yet another set of spammers of these sites. I look around, and I have trouble finding regulars using the site, all I find is more spammers. Looking at the site, I see that there are alternatives (better alternatives) for most of the links that I see added, and I, after 3 weeks, decide to blacklist. Ample time for community discussion, but you tell me off because I did not inform the community. Now, we are about 1 day into this request, I give an opinion and wait for discussion, and I give a suggestion. Again, I allow for community input on this, allow for consensus to form, and also allow for some further research into the issue (did the spamming really stop?). 20 hours into the discussion, you accuse me, once again, of abuse of administrative tools because I do not use them. Beagel, there is a strong consensus against spam, it violates our core policies and guidelines. As there is a whitelist, and I suggested the use of the whitelist, there is no censorship (an argument that you used again). If I would decline whitelisting without suggesting alternatives to solve the problem, and those alternatives would not exist, then that might be construed as censorship, and remotely as an abuse of administrative tools (which also there were not used, unless the denial of the use of administrative tools is administrative abuse - which then is true for all administrators who did not edit the whitelist allowing for the site being linked).
    Note, the blacklisting of the CBROnline links was 6 years ago, and they, evidently, still at it. Blacklisting does not occur after 1 day of spamming, which means that CBROnline was already spamming for several years, which makes them spamming for significantly over 6 years. And here I am told that 6 years is a long time?
    evidently, I am going to let another admin make the decision whether there is consensus to remove or otherwise. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:09, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    re@The point that it may not be a reliable source does not help, but is not the reason for listing or delisting, that is purely your conclusion. If this not the reason for listing or delisting, why do use this argument in delisting discussions, not only in this discussion but also in other delisting discussions? Just for the record: this was not me or user Thue who started discussion about reliability of this site.
    re@I would like to see whether this site is really of general use. Well, if the site has been six years blacklisted, you can't really expect that it is still of general use in Wikipedia. That is exactly the problem with a long-term (indef. blacklistings).
    re@I am not using any administrative tools, nor did I officially decline this, I have just given a suggestion. Listing and delisting is a prerogative of admins. And taking account the fact that this community discussion noticeboard is more or less one-man-show (e.g. all this I do and I allow' things), you even do not need to officially decline any delisting request because it is unlikely that any other admin will even comment the specific discussion.
    re@I see that there are alternatives (better alternatives) for most of the links that I see added. But as you just said, this is not the basis for listing or delisting. This is you personal opinion which you are using to reject delisting/whitelisting request, even if made by ordinary editors who have nothing to do being SPAs or spammers.
    re@"I suggested the use of the whitelist" What the point if you are going to use the same arguments for rejects there–as I have learnt from my recent experiences.
    re@I look around, and I have trouble finding regulars using the site, all I find is more spammers. This is interesting. I did not check the history but how you call in this context Thue if not regular? And this has not been the case with some other sites you have blacklisted.
    re@there is a strong consensus against spam, it violates our core policies and guidelines. That is true. However, finding more balance approach between blacklisting and other values of Wikipedia, is not supporting spammers. The most efficient for fighting spamming would be blaclisting whole www; however, doing this will probably also end Wikipedia as we know it. So, labelling editors who would like to see more balanced approach as supporters of spamming is quite demagogic.
    re@If I would decline whitelisting without suggesting alternatives to solve the problem, and those alternatives would not exist, then that might be construed as censorship, and remotely as an abuse of administrative tools. Suggesting alternatives is fine but again, if the request is made by regular editor (not spammer), and the reference is valid and useful (notwithstanding if alternatives exist or not), there is no valid basis do not whitelist. Rejecting that kind of request is not preventive (as in this case it is not a spam) but rather punitive. And yes, not always but in extreme cases one could say that this is a misuse of admin. privileges.
    re@the blacklisting of the CBROnline. This request is not about the CBROnline, so please do not defocus the discussion again. Beagel (talk) 19:07, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Reliability - it is not the reason for blacklisting, but it is a factor taken into account.
    @General use - No, of course it is not used on Wikipedia, in those 6 years also hardly anyone requested whitelisting, which does not suggest that it is a site that is wanted. There is now one request for de-listing, and we just have to de-list in the assumption that it is of general use.
    @One man show/administrative tools - Obviously, I would block everyone who would be willing to help and I have never asked for more help on these pages.
    @alternatives - no, it is not the basis, it is a factor. I do not know why you insist to use a site that was spammed and where the specific document is shown to be less reliable than an alternative. WP:V is one of our pillars, and insisting to use an unreliable source not in line with that.
    @Suggested whitelist - as the previous point, do you really insist to use an unreliable source where alternatives exist?
    @Looking around - that was an argument used in context with the -technology.com sites - Thue has nothing to do with that. And as I said, it took me a long time before I found the first addition by a non-spammer, by you, which was the use of the site as an unreliable and replaceable reference. I have not, do not and never will suggest that Thue or you are spammers, those are unfounded suggestions coming from you, Beagel.
    @'The most efficient for fighting spamming would be blacklisting whole www; - that is not what we do, and you know it.
    @decline whitelisting - I could also say that insisting to use an unreliable source where reliable sources exist is an abuse of editing priviliges. I also fail to see why admin time (and discussion time) should be wasted on whitelisting unreliable sites where the requester does not want to go the extra mile to see
    @CBROnline was brought up to show that 6 years of spamming is not long. The evidence that 6 years is a long time ago hangs on the argument that it is a quarter of the age of the internet. If the spammers were active for 2-3 months, 6 years ago, I might very well de-list quicker (I have delisted sites on that) - here we have 3 years of spamming, starting 9 years ago, forced to end 6 years ago. No, that is not long, and I have given examples why it is not long.
    For de-listing this site a reasonably strong case can be made, but arguments like 'it seems useful', and '6 years is a long time' are both unreferenced and unhelpful - the points should be that it was discussed and the general consensus within a group of users is that it is useful, and show that the spamming did actually stop. Tools for both do exist. That case would only be stronger if a couple of granted whitelisting requests would be there (and the link suggested in this thread is already a good candidate). --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:43, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    re@WP:V is one of our pillars, and insisting to use an unreliable source not in line with that. The point is that reliability does not based on what decision-making admin thinks to be or to be not reliable. Reliability should be discussed at WP:RSN, not WP:SBL.
    re@I also fail to see why admin time (and discussion time) should be wasted on whitelisting unreliable sites where the requester does not want to go the extra mile to see I think that we should not to waste anybody's time—not admin's or regular editors'. The current whitelisting is time-consuming and it would save everybody's time if requests by long-time regular editors who have no history of spamming or paid editing go automatically. Again Reliability should be discussed at WP:RSN, not WP:SBL or WT:WHITELIST.
    re@I have not, do not and never will suggest that Thue or you are spammers, those are unfounded suggestions coming from you, Beagel. I apology for misunderstanding you. I thought that we discuss army-guide.com and not -technology.com here. However, if we discuss -technology.com site, saying that "I have trouble finding regulars using the site, all I find is more spammers" (sic! in the present tense) after discussions here where a number of long-time editors have said that they are using these -technology.com sites, is something which does not correspond to the true.
    re@I would block everyone who would be willing to help and I have never asked for more help on these pages. I never said that you would or did. However, de facto the situation is that decisions are made by very limited number of admins here. Also your replies in the style "I do", "I allow", etc do not help to create a feeling that decisions are made based on wider consensus.
    The most efficient for fighting spamming would be blacklisting whole www; - that is not what we do, and you know it. My suggestion was exaggeration, of course, and you know it. But the line is somewhere between blacklisting everything and blacklisting nothing and we have different understandings where it should be. By my understanding, as of today blacklisting is used in more proportions than it is useful for creating an encyclopaedia, which is the core purpose of Wikipedia before other important tasks. I am concerned about the mentality do not take into account the impact of blacklisting to regular editors writing an encyclopaedia. Beagel (talk) 05:42, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The decision whether something is reliable, or whether better sources exist should come before it was originally added. I think that if a regular is considering to use, or is using, a site where someone else questions the reliability, that then first that reliability needs to be established before we whitelist/deblacklist. And no, the whitelisting/delisting should not be automatic.
    That is semantics. You know that I meant that in the time that I was researching the additions of the site. It now turns out that regulars do use the site .. I still wonder about the ratio. For army-guide.com, when it was blacklisted it was solely spammed, there were no regulars using the site. And in the argument of delisting or elsewhere here, there was never the argument that regulars are on a regular basis using this site (or attempting to) - just solely a remark that it seems useful.
    Re@Block: And here I was the one to exaggerate. Generally discussions here stay open for some time, and there are a (albeit limited) number of admins working here. Although far from requirement or rule, very often the reporter does not execute the case. Fact is, there are only limited editors here, a known problem, but <sarcasm> it is so much cooler to work at CfD </sarcasm>. This is an area that certainly needs more admins (or even editors who investigate), what does not help is to suggest that we should not blacklist because we are only so few and our decisions do not represent a community consensus.
    There are some cases which are grey areas (I still believe that they are more the exception than the rule) - and note that the spammers do not take into what is useful for creating an encyclopedia, nor what is the core purpose of Wikipedia.
    (I do feel that these discussions stray too far from the purpose of these sections, maybe parts of these discussions should be done separately, and maybe even brought to wider discussion with a/some RfCs). --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:55, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    moneyweek.com

    Blacklisted October 2008 by User:A. B., who hasn't been on Wikipedia in the past 8 months. Reason given for blacklist: "See WikiProject Spam Report". I'm not familiar with analyzing those reports. MoneyWeek is an important financial publication in the UK, with valuable informational articles that are used to cite a variety of topics and biographical articles on Wikipedia. I'm not seeing a need for it to be blacklisted, at least not now, and as it is a major resource, it seems best that it should be removed from blacklist. Thanks. Softlavender (talk) 06:22, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • Note that the main company, Agora, who owns these domains was caught spamming quite recently. I would advise whitelisting on a case-by-case basis, of the individual links where a positive case for their inclusion can be made. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:17, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I hear you. That's irritating for serious editors though. :-/ Were they spamming with this particular domain? Anyway, it's just inconvenient when I'm in the middle of researching and writing to stop and request whitelist for a particularly useful biographical MoneyWeek article. *sigh* Softlavender (talk) 07:28, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Delisting is of course also convenient for the spammers, and we know that they are still around. Note as well that the current spammers are (probably carefully) avoiding the blacklist while spamming their articles, they know they can not be linked. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:06, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    infosecinstitute.com

    infosecinstitute.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Not sure why this was blacklisted at all? The portal seems to publish quite a lot of information security related articles and doesn't seem to be a spam puppet on the first look. Pawel Krawczyk (talk) 10:06, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    @Kravietz: Apologies for the delayed response. It's been spammed in the past. Check the archives of this page for enlightenment.  Defer to Whitelist to white-list a specific page for use as a reference in an article. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:01, 24 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    hotrails.co.uk

    This site is a compendium of information about the Blue Öyster Cult and related bands and artists, which appears to have been blacklisted since an unfortunate editing dispute way back in 2008. There is some info on this revision of WikiProject Spam talk page, and then it was blacklisted as logged at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/log/start to 2009#March 2008.

    There was also a request for unblocking at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/March 2008#hotrails.co.uk which was rejected on the grounds that it was the original anon editor making the request, but which does make a case for instance that it contains an interview with drummer Albert Bouchard which he described as the most in-depth he had given, and which would certainly be a reference for sections of the main article.

    The site contains a great deal of information that would be useful as references, such as the most complete list anywhere of Blue Öyster Cult live performances, and numerous interviews with band members, crew and associates that are not available anywhere else.

    Given that there didn't seem to be any serious issue with the site itself, just a dispute with an aggressive anonymous editor more than six years ago, I feel that it is probably safe to unblock. As an administrator I could do it myself, but having not been particularly active on Wikipedia for quite some time, I thought I'd put in a formal request. --Stormie (talk) 04:41, 24 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Informative website - nepa.com.np

    This is a very informative and useful website on the culture of the Kathmandu Valley and I request that it be removed from the black list. I see no possible reason why it has been black listed. Karrattul (talk) 17:41, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Added tracking. It was indeed blacklisted due to significant spamming, but also a long time ago. However, I'd first go for some whitelisting to see the general use of the site and get a specific discussion on one of the pages. So  Defer to Whitelist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:55, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Completed Proposed removals

    Incomplete message for petition url

    An attempt to save http://petition.com/example only gives me the message:

    • The following link has triggered a protection filter: petition

    Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blocked.

    It appears MediaWiki:Spamprotectionmatch doesn't get the full url in $1. Maybe it has something to do with the petition entry not having a domain:
    \bpetition(?:online|s)?\b

    {{int:Spamprotectionmatch|petition}} produces the message I got:
    The following link has triggered a protection filter: petition
    Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blocked.

    Solutions:

    • If the URL used is a URL shortener/redirect, please use the full URL in its place, for example, use youtube.com rather than youtu.be,
    • If the URL is a Google URL, please look to use the (full) original source, not the Google shortcut or its alternative.
    • Look to find an alternative URL that is considered authoritative.

    {{int:Spamprotectionmatch|http://petition.com/example}} produces what I expected to get: A message with "The following link has triggered a protection filter: http://petition.com/example". I can see it in preview but not save it without nowiki, because the produced interface message contains the blacklisted link.

    My tests were based on a report at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#I can't figure out what link is blacklisted? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    the admin visible log for blacklist-matches has the same problem .. Especially annoying for cases where redirects are used - what did they try to avoid? --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:03, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I ran into a similar problem as well and I find this frankly very annoying. Why is the search string petition blocked at all. This seems severy hindering any sourcing or discussion regarding petitions, which I find unacceptable.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:57, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    This should only block links with these terms in the domainname.
    Petitions are at best a primary source at the moment they are closed. That being said, if that information is notable, then a secondary source will have reported the same number. For the few that are needed, they can be whitelisted.
    For the rest, these are a prime example of violations of WP:SOAPBOX when they are still open. 'Click here to get Justin Bieber sent back to Canada' .. that is how petition links are often 'abused' (and some got regularly plainly spammed), and since they do not often serve a real use anyway, blacklisting those prevents this soapboxing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    For the record, delisting is no Declined per Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive853#Please remove petitions.whitehouse.gov from the spam blacklist (or whitelist it). MER-C 09:14, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    petition (the English word)

    This seems like a stupid entry at first glance. It blocks any and all domains that include the word "petition". I am more interested in who added the entry and why. Why is a plain English word in a URL blocklist? Int21h (talk) 07:50, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I am not aware of how the process works, but there was a previous discussion with clear support that apparently failed here. Someone please inform me of what is going on here. The problem clearly was not fixed. Int21h (talk) 07:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Petitions were often abused (soapboxing), and fail our core policies for linking (if a petition is worth mentioning then independent sources have reported on it, otherwise the fact is not encyclopedic and close to (even unintended) soapboxing - 'endorsement of the result'). The consensus there was due to the 'false' catching of the links (wrong interpretation of the regex). It does not say anything about the validity of the rule to exclude these petition sites. If a petition really merits linking, it will have to go through the scrutiny of a whitelist request. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    no Declined per Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive853#Please remove petitions.whitehouse.gov from the spam blacklist (or whitelist it). MER-C 08:59, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    petitions.whitehouse.gov

    petitions.whitehouse.gov: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Apparently "petitions" is a blacklisted word. The only previous discussion that I could find was on that occurred a more than four years ago here. There was a small consensus to blacklist thepetitionsite.com, but none that I could find to blacklist all URLs containing the string "petition".

    petitions.whitehouse.gov is part of the official website of the White House. It is platform for citizens to raise issues with the US Presidential administration. As a primary source, it provides verifiability and additional contextual detail for readers. I would generally be opposed to including such links as an external link, but this one has encyclopedic value as a URL within a citation template.- MrX 15:24, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

     Defer to Whitelist - Despite the .gov credentials, this isn't much different from any other petition site in that anyone can create a petition about anything. There may be individual cases where a ref is appropriate, hence the whitelist deferral. OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hold on a second. Kindly point to a discussion where this URL met the criteria for blacklisting and where consensus was established to do so.- MrX 15:50, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Also noting that there does not seem to be any evidence or prior discussions that petitions.whitehouse.gov ever met "the bar for blacklisting [which] is whether a site was spammed to Wikipedia, or otherwise abused, not whether the content of the site is 'spammy' or unreliable." I'm not aware of any discussion where there was consensus reached for preemptively blacklisting all URLs containing the string "petition".- MrX 15:44, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Here is your consensus. OhNoitsJamie Talk 20:59, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No, that is a search listing. One of those results here seems to support that there is no consensus for blacklisting the URL. This one also supports removing the keyword Petition from the spam filter. This comment is particularly apropos:
    The petition blackisting began in January 2008 ([46]). it initially covered only petitions.com, which no doubt had some abuse. About a year later ([47]) it was expanded to snag any domain name with "petitions" in it. However, it clearly was not intended to cover official petitions to the U.S. executive branch under petitions.whitehouse.gov, which was not launched until September 2011. This still looks to me like a tuna net snagging a dolphin by mistake. Absent any evidence that the White House petitions site is being abused, it ought not to be mechanically disallowed, requiring manual intervention anytime an editor legitimately wishes to point to it. TJRC (talk) 7:41 pm, 21 February 2013, Thursday (1 year, 6 months, 10 days ago) (UTC−5)
    Now I ask again, where is the specific discussion in which process was followed for removing this specific URL? If I can't get some cooperation for this simple request, I will bring it to wider community for comment.- MrX 22:23, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Feel free to do that. OhNoitsJamie Talk 23:23, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Petition sites simply fail our inclusion standards - when they are open, they are abused (also the official ones, and maybe especially the official ones - generally the abuse is on a one-by-one-scale to get attention for a specific petition). That there is a petition open is not a notable fact (except if someone else wrote about it, and that is than the reliable source that you need, not the link itself).

    When the petition finished, the petition is a reliable source for is the outcome (the number) and maybe for the fact that the president himself signed the petition (note, it is a primary source for that). However, if those facts are notable, then they are again covered by someone else (but if it is really needed, the specific cases can be whitelisted).

    In short, petition sites are regularly abused and are hence blacklisted (I would argue that also other petition sites should be blanketed ..). For the few specific cases where one can show that the link is needed, there is the whitelist. Delisting no Declined,  Defer to Whitelist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:26, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Note that MrX has taken this to WP:ANI, because I guess that's what you do when you don't like the answers you get here in the first 24 hours. OhNoitsJamie Talk 03:43, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I can do without the snark Ohnoitsjamie.
    @Dirk Beetstra: There is nothing in WP:RS that precludes petition sites, especially ones hosted by the United States government. It strikes me as absurd to think that an editor would have to ask for a specific URL to be whitelisted in order to use it in a citation. To say that petition websites fail our inclusion standards is an meaningless statement. Out inclusion standards are based on notability, and notability applies to the subject, not citations. As far as I know, this part of the project is not exempt from consensus, yet the comments here and in previous related threads suggest that some believe otherwise.- MrX 03:59, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I have not said that, there is something about primary, secondary and tertiary sources though and how they determine notability of the fact. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:06, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't see what the issue is. WP:ELNO #4 says petition sites should be avoided. The whitelist is available if for some reason such a link is appropriate. Chillum 04:04, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • Support per OP and my previous discussion not long ago. Int21h (talk) 04:43, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support whitelist Petitions.Whitehouse.gov No rationale has been given for the past ban on this site, other than blanket inclusion of this site with other troublesome petition websites. This website is more than a petition site, as it also publishes summaries of law and government policies. Past discussions about this are at
    This issue comes up repeatedly. It has not been fully discussed. Multiple people have asserted that this link is often a reliable source, and the special blocking and treatment that this source is getting is only because it contains the word "petition" and not because of any consensus. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:04, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Is there a proposal for improving an article? What link should be added to what article to add what encyclopedic information? Johnuniq (talk) 11:25, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    "it also publishes summaries of law and government policies" .. on petitions.whitehouse.gov, or elsewhere on whitehouse.gov? This is about the petition part of the site, not about the rest of the site. Can you show me links on the petition part where it publishes a summary or government policy (leave off the http:// and it will save here)? --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:53, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, "MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2013/12#petitions.whitehouse.gov denied, having judged that it is not a reliable source" - it is not judged there to be not a reliable source, it is judged that the result is only notable if it is covered by secondary sources, making this primary source superfluous. This is now the second time that here the discussion is suggested that it is denied because it is not a reliable source (also by User:MrX above), where that is not being said, what is being said is that for the fact that this is a possible source for, the site itself is a primary source (which is not necessarily a problem), and for the fact that the petition in itself is notable it needs a secondary source which makes the primary source, however reliable, superfluous. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:07, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    @Bluerasberry:: An argument was made on AN/I for the link 'petitions.whitehouse.gov/responses' - that is not part of this request nor mentioned earlier on AN/I, and completely in line with all responses here:  Defer to Whitelist (though I will process that as part of this request). --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:49, 7 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Link to ANI discussion where consensus for link to not be delisted is reaffirmed. OhNoitsJamie Talk 14:25, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    itconnxion.com

    It seems that the website in question, seems to have been blacklisted as to the message coming up when using the link in an edit. I am unsure as to why this is? I have scrolled through wikipedia's blacklisted sites and I think that the domain name is triggering this from a blacklisted site; bitconnexion.com If this is the case can we please have this rectified?? ContentKing01 (talk) 07:07, 5 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Bad faith request. Rejected, user blocked (see [56], [57] and punchdigital.com.au). MER-C 04:13, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    hubpages.com

    hubpages.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    This appears to be a blogging site used by thousands of users, but the entire site has been blocked thanks to a single page that is not even there anymore. I have been attempting to add an article that appeared in The Guardian as a source, the article is on hubpages.com as part of the author's blog that reproduces examples of his work. Please remove hubpages from the blocked list. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:21, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    this may be of interest. Please ask for whitelisting of specific links:  Defer to Whitelist. Whole site removal no Declined. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:42, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I was asking in connection to this [[58]], there are two articles mentioning this organization in articles written by C.J Stone that are reproduced on the author's hubpage. Can an exception be made for just cjstone.hubpages? Is that what you mean by whitelisting? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:02, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, whitelisting is exactly that. Please, when you request those 2 links to be whitelisted, post the whole link but leaving off the initial 'http://' - otherwise the page will not save. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:10, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Troubleshooting and problems

    cbronline.com

    Currently, "cbronline.com" is blacklisted on the English Wikipedia as of late 2013. "Computer Business Review Online" used to be a reasonable news source, but at some point it transitioned to "Your Tech Social Network" and went downhill. All the old URLs stopped working (the ones with the form "?guid=" followed by a long hex string) but can be fixed from the Internet Archive. New URLs have a different syntax. I suggest updating the regular expression on the blacklist to exclude URLs of the old form. They were legitimate links in many articles. In general, blacklisting links from years ago is a bad idea. It damages the encyclopedia. I'm trying to fix the mess Cydebot II created at RegisterFly now. John Nagle (talk) 22:07, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I just want to point out Cydebot didn't create a mess it did exactly as was designed to do, flag links that are on the blacklist. This is something the bot nor the operator have control over. However i totally agree this is something that needs sorted to avoid old links being hit unnecessarily, especially when their content was entirely justifiable and useful at the time.Blethering Scot 23:56, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    As a general reply to this. Look, it is not our fault that a company finds it necessary to optimize their search engine results, or to just generally make sure that their site gets promoted. I agree, sometimes sites are a reasonable source that is reasonably used, but if the amount of spam pushed by this company exceeds that level significantly (a whole long list of sites; a whole list of sock/meatpuppets, reports go back to 2009), then the spam blacklist is designed to just do what it should do: stop the spamming (it was not blacklisted in 2013, it was blacklisted in 2010).

    Per Blethering Scot - Cyberbot II has not created a mess - the mess is completely at the side of the spammers who were the editors responsible for getting the site blacklisted. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • A couple of points I'd like to make here. Their guid URLs may be dead, but you can find the same article on their site is you just google its title. So you don't have to resort to the copyright-questionable copy on archive.org. CBR should have preserved redirects from their the old links when they transitioned to the more google-friendly URLs, but apparently they did not care enough for old citations. (It's not the first publication to make this mistake, I can thing of a few more, like The Register and so forth). I'm not sure how bad the spamming of CBR links was, but it may be worthwhile removing the blacklist and see if there any issues presently. 2010 was a long time ago in wikitime. Anyway, the interim solution is to add specific (and fairly numerous) URLs to the whitelist. A second batch has been proposed by me (the first was one probably the one by User:Wbm1058/User:Qwertyus), and I have a 3rd in preparation given that User:Rilak wrote quite a few articles citing CBR at at time when Google Books didn't offer the full archives of Computerworld and Infoworld. Even with these better-known sources now available, occasionally CBR is useful for citing stuff not (easily) found in the other two. If and when EE Times puts all its archives online (via Google Books or themselves) we might have a better alternative for the chip-oriented stuff, but in the meantime, there isn't another online source for old chip topics that I know of. Someone not using his real name (talk) 19:03, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • By the way, I cannot find a discussion for when cbronline was added to the blacklist. The earliest discussion I can find about it is a complain from 2011 (against its listing) MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/September_2011#cbronline. Someone not using his real name (talk) 19:20, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ok, I found the original discussion for the addition: [59]. The number of *-business-review.com sites spammed was indeed impressive (all part of Progressive Media Group), but the actual number of links added to them was not that big and they were in conjunction with out-of-place content so the few spammer accounts were rather easy to spot. Only a small percentage of the links added by the spammer accounts was to cbronline (rather than the other sites). It's probably worth risking to de-blacklist just this one, although if you'd rather process all whitelist requests that Cyberbot II with trigger... Someone not using his real name (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • So what's the proposed solution? Expecting editors to manually fix articles from years ago won't work; many of those editors are long gone. (In fact, for a 'bot to complain about an editor action from the distant past is usually an indication of a bad bot.) John Nagle (talk) 21:39, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • The proposed solution is as usual, and as suggested the template: evaluate and whitelist the links. You don't really need to fix the articles - if they are good references the articles should remain untouched. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • Note, the bot is not 'complaining about an editor action from the distant past', the bot is signifying a problem that is an issue with the editing of the page: that there is a link that is caught by the blacklist on the page. It does not say that the addition was spam, just that having that blacklisted link is there may result in problems with editing (as already I have found in personal experience - an issue with a blacklisted link which was not whitelisted disabled me reverting vandalism). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:58, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've removed the cbronline.com entry from the blacklist. After four years it's probably worth giving this another chance. If the spam problems resume, please feel free to add the site back to the blacklist. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:36, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      Note: I've also removed a bunch of links to cbronline.com from the spam whitelist, so if you add cbronline.com back to the blacklist, please undo my edit to the whitelist too. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:43, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    As a note, I strongly disagree with this removal. This was a link in a large, deliberate spam campaign of epic proportions. Experience has learned (e.g. with a similar company: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2013 Archive Nov 1#Agora Publishing spam on Wikipedia - 2, blacklisted >5 years ago) that they do not stop, they do continue, they often are still around. This is exactly what we have a whitelist for, and what the whitelist should resolve. I would suggest undoing these edits. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:58, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I've undone the de-whitelisting - having links on the whitelist that are not caught by a blacklist will not influence the loading of the page anyway, and there are quite some which have been 'properly vetted' for addition, we don't want to go through that again if the blacklisting is reverted. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Still looking, but I just blocked a spammer who was spamming over the last >6 months '$$$$-technology.com'-website (that looks somewhat familiar, though it looks like it is from a different company than cbronline). However, this particular editor triggered the spam blacklist for an addition of cbronline.com .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:51, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you, Mr. Stradivarius, in my opinion this removal is long overdue. I have put in hours and hours of my time working to support whitelisting efforts for reference-links to this site (which has been a significant distraction from other projects I've committed to work on). I am willing to put in similar time manually reverting spam-links to this site which might result from this action. Until the time I spend reverting spam-links greatly exceeds the time I've already spent working towards whitelisting, I won't be supporting a re-blacklist of this site. I am still unclear on the best methods for detecting spam-link additions that point to this site. Any advice on how to do that is appreciated. Can an edit filter be created that flags any edits adding the text "cbronline"? If anyone points me to unwanted spam from this site I will work to remove it. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:06, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    OK, after consultation with another user, I am reverting this removal. They are still here. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:40, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Undone de-blacklisting. Now for some more:
    This editor, over the last six months added:
    now (in collaboration with MER-C: see User_talk:MER-C:
    "airforce-technology.com is a product of Kable. Copyright 2014 Kable, a trading division of Kable Intelligence Limited"
    kable.co.uk:
    ""©2013 Kable Business Intelligence Limited. John Carpenter House, 7 Carmelite Street, London, EC4Y 0BS
    cbronline.com/about-us:
    "© CBR 2013 | Part of Progressive Digital Media Group Plc."
    progressivedigitalmedia.com:
    "Progressive Digital Media Group PLC © 2012 | John Carpenter House, 7 Carmelite Street, London, EC4Y 0BS"
    In other words, user:115.119.113.194 is spamming on behalf of kable.co.uk, a company that has exactly the same address as the company that owns CBR, and was trying to add cbronline.com as well. I am sorry, I am all for more help at the spam blacklist and spam whitelist - but removals (and additions) do need investigation whether the situation did stop, and like with Agora, spamming pays their bills, they will continue as has once again been shown here. Currently, WikiMedia is discussing a change in the Terms and Conditions regarding Paid editing, and these two examples show blatantly why paid editing is an issue. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:53, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Beetstra: Thanks for adding the site back to the list. If the spammers are still active, then I of course agree that that's the right thing to do. I see that I have been guilty of Administrative Action While Clueless here - I didn't even know that we had a log of attempted link additions until about an hour ago. I was assuming that the situation was more or less equivalent to vandalism and page protection, i.e. that you have to unprotect for a little while to see if the vandalism continues, but now I see that I was wrong. And now I see that we have Wikipedia:Spam-blacklisting, which I somehow managed to miss when I read the top of the page last time. Sorry for acting out of process - I think I need to make a few requests before I attempt the admin side of things again. Speaking of which, there are some cbronline links at RS/6000 that will need to be whitelisted. I'll make that report when I have a spare moment, if no-one else gets to it first. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 09:38, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No worries - I am glad you are willing to participate and hopefully learn, there is an obvious and huge backlog on all sides. Note also that I am all for trying to remove old items and monitor them - unless the spamming is still known to be active. I am a bit worried that I did not see these earlier, I did look before whether CBRonline was still active in spamming, but totally missed these spammers (maybe they did not try cbronline.com itself earlier ..). Guess this will grow again into a huge list of to-be-blacklisted links. Hope to see you around. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:36, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Well I find this all very frustrating. The cited IP has made all of 27 edits over a span of seven months, keeping such a low profile that even Dirk did not immediately notice their edits. This one made just 27 edits, but I know this editing activity is not likely limited to just a single IP. There may be dozens (hundreds?) (thousands?) of other IP editors with similar editing activity. So, 27 edits is not that many that we can't take a close look at all of them, or all of their edits that have not been deleted. As I'm not an admin, I don't know how many deleted edits that they may have made.
    • The first two "test" edits to Chandra Sekhar Yeleti, an Indian film director, changed a birth year and quickly reverted that change; imply that the editor is likely Indian and perhaps based in India.
    • Next we get to their first "spam link" addition. An external link to Indianapolis International Airport. As external links go, this one doesn't seem that bad; it is on-topic, seems professionally written and potentially could be used as a reference. Nonetheless, it was reverted one minute later by User:XLinkBot for reasons that were posted to the editor's talk page. As I see that the code is maintained by User:Beetstra perhaps you can explain the logic that flagged this edit for reversion. The link seems to "contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject", per WP:EL#YES 3.
    • The next edit was a similar external link addition, to Boeing X-51 (airforce-technology rather than airport-technology); again this was on-topic. For some unknown reason, this one was never reverted and is still on the article, along with other "spam" links to a couple of youtube videos, one from Fox News.
    • Next, a link on Fresno Yosemite International Airport, which, as with the Indy airport, was reverted a minute later by XLinkBot. Out of curiosity I added this link back to the article, to see if the bot would revert me, but, so far the link has been allowed to stay. It appears to me that this bot is implementing some sort of "back-door bot-enabled blacklisting of sites" and thus avoiding the scrutiny of a front-door blacklisting request.
    • The next edit, months later, was a good-faith, good edit to correct a link on Vizianagaram district—which supports my theory that this IP is India-based. Indeed, I just made a who-is lookup and found that the IP belongs to TATA Communications, based in Hyderabad. So their interest in editing articles about American airports is suspect.
    • Next we have an addition to List of countries by gold production, another on-topic link, this one to mining-technology; it's not been removed, and could serve as a reference for the article.
    • Then another mining-technology link on Mir mine. The link is still there, and this source directly contradicts the article, so the article should be scrutinized for accuracy. The article says "The Mir mine was permanently closed in 2011", while this external link says "The mine produced 497,000 tonnes of ore in 2012."
    • Next Wind farm links to power-technology. Again, an on-topic link which has not been reverted and seems to add value to the encyclopedia.
    OK, that's enough for now, I'll stop here. While {{unreferenced}} tags some 219,000 articles lacking sources and {{refimprove}} tags another 228,000 articles needing additional references, I wonder if it's counterproductive to discourage the addition of (potentially) useful links that other editors might cite. I disagree with the idea that these examples show blatantly why paid editing is an issue. I think we may have too broad a definition of spam, if these links are considered spam.
    Sorry, I don't see any log of attempted link additions. All I see is "Permission error". That's why I was asking about an edit filter for "cbronline". I think I would be allowed to see that. Why couldn't cbronline just get the "softer scrutiny" of XLinkBot, allowing good-faith editors to override the bot? Wbm1058 (talk) 19:30, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    And here we have a proposal, if I'm reading it right, that would effectively remove "grandfathered" blacklisted links from Wikipedia very promptly, effectively sending them to Wikipedia's "gas chamber" long before the glacial whitelisting process ever saves them, to ensure the "cultural purity" of the encyclopedia is maintained. Wbm1058 (talk) 21:47, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I hope you realize that this was not the only editor spamming these sites, User:Wbm1058, I already caught a second one who is indefinitely blocked now, and the set of links is growing as well. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:15, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Also note, that it is in the spammers interest to stay under the radar - it pays their bills. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:18, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    You may want to see this in the light of m:Talk:Terms of use/Paid contributions amendment - this is likely SEO spamming (as the contributions seem to originate from India), someone pays someone else to spam their sites to Wikipedia. That it is helpful does not make the principle of spamming right
    To take your last example, Wind farm in the article names 13 'largest onshore wind farms', and we have 2 articles listing wind farms. How does that link to power-technology about 'Biggest Wind Farms in the World', listing a mere 10 (!) ADD anything extra to Wikipedia (the lists largely overlap). That link blatantly fails our external links guideline - and that is the whole problem here, these paid editors link because it fits their goals, not necessarily because it adds anything. If there is anything interesting there, go to the talkpage and discuss, as our conflict of interest guideline suggests. This is plainly spamming. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't waded through all of m:Talk:Terms of use/Paid contributions amendment—sorry, TLDR—but this quote I spotted there sums my view up nicely: A case of trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. Clearly the goal here is to put Progressive Digital Media Group out of business. We won't be satisfied until that organisation shuts down all its sites and turns off the lights. They are an evil organisation that needs to be banished from the face of the earth and we will do whatever it takes to deny them all sources of revenue. Yeah, we begrudgingly whitelist those old cbronline cites after making the requesters jump through lots of hoops and show a lot of patience, but we really want editors to just remove those links. Removing those links is easy and is the best and recommended way to get rid of that annoyingly helpful banner template our bot puts on those pages. Hey, I've identified another spammer. Google is spamming links to Wikipedia all over its search engine results. They need to stop that. Readers should just find Wikipedia articles by searching Wikipedia. We don't want or need Google's help to pay our bills, thank you. We need to blacklist Google until they stop spamming their search results with links to Wikipedia. Wbm1058 (talk) 14:38, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    "Clearly the goal here is to put Progressive Digital Media Group out of business.". What a ridiculous accusation, as is the rest of your remarks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Going on - cbronline.com

    links
    users
    (in progress) --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:11, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Gentlemen, I added this on another page, but it is more appropriated to add it here. Please see my findings below.

    designbuild-network.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    roadtraffic-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    airforce-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    power-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    aerospace-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    foodprocessing-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    airport-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    army-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    mining-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    naval-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    railway-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    offshore-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    ship-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Less used, from the same group:

    semiconductor-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    mobilecomms-technology.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    hotelmanagement-network.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    water-technology.net: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com


    Spammers
    Explanation

    I could identify only some spammers, as apparently they have been active since 2006 at least. All those domains appear to be part of the same farm and have about 2k links combined. They are all part of Kable.

    Some sites appear to have actual content, many links are just dropped on the "external links" section.

    Legionarius (talk) 03:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    All these are currently being plus Added. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:42, 31 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I will admit that there are a non-trivial number of external link injection edits to these sites. They do have reliable info on them (they are essentially industrial news aggregator sites), and are legitimately used as sources in a lot of articles. IMO this was overkill. Dave (talk) 16:58, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a gray area between curbing behavior issues and causing damage to the project. These links do contain legitimate content. I added one of these links myself and am not a spammer. -- GreenC 17:28, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I appreciate you guys and bots are having fun but the bot is tagging hundreds of articles related to the aviation project, including official sites of Airbus like www.airbusmilitary.com, appreciate you are trying to stop spammers but you need to appreciate the chaos out in the real world. I presume it will be left to others like the aviation project to sort this out. Oh and why does the bot put a message on the article and the talk page, is is that bad that the article needs to be marked (and more stuff to tidy up). MilborneOne (talk) 18:34, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Airbusmilitary is clearly a false positive - no idea how anyone came to the conclusion it's part of the spammed-for sites. It needs to be removed from the spamlist ASAP. I don't think the other sites offer anything of value, a quick check of Airbus aircraft pages there does not really reveal useful information. Parts of the information seem to be taken from multiple sources including Wiki. Could not even be used as reference for anything. --Denniss (talk) 18:57, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I came across this recent bot edit [60] to [Nakhoda Ragam-class corvette] effectively undermining some cited specification information added more than five years ago with [61]. It seems that a very large number of bot-flagged blacklisted links associated with this case were legitimate citations. --Rumping (talk) 19:15, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Links to Foo-Technology.com are not legitimate citations; they are either unreliable sources (and thus acceptable collateral damage, at worst) or spam masquerading as references (hiding a spam link as a legitimate citation happens distressingly often). Airbusmilitary does need to be removed from the blacklist though, that was a mistake. - The Bushranger One ping only 20:21, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Today, when I first saw my watchlist clogged with the bot flagging these for blacklisted links I was inclined to believe this was a gross overreaction. However, your point is valid and I'm re-thinking this. After reviewing some of the citations and these cites, the "about us" page for these does not inspire confidence, and while the text seems reliable, it appears to have been scraped from somewhere else. I did find this humorous instance http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/i-15-core-utah-county/ of an article about a major construction project in Utah, where the text seems reliable and matches what other reliable websites have said, but the pictures for the article are clearly taken in the San Diego, California area, not Utah. Sigh, collateral damage it is.Dave (talk) 21:51, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    My watchlist notified me of the drive-by tagging of Brehon B. Somervell. The link in question was to ***** which I added myself some years ago. It's about a class of warships, and I took it from the eponymous warship's page. It is a useful resource and carries no advertising. I did not see any debate about its reliability, so we cannot declare it an unreliable source. I guess we have to have some form of censorship. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:31, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Is it possible for this bot to place its notice on the talk page of articles but not in the articles themselves? There are a large number of articles which cite railway-technology.com as a reliable source, and in many cases there is no easy alternative source for the cited facts. At the moment, with so many legitimate links being flagged (in the articles and not just talk pages) this bot is damaging Wikipedia. Hallucegenia (talk) 00:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I share the same concerns with water-technology.net and requested a removal from the blacklist above. It is generally a reliable source and valuable to the project. There must be some other solution other than blacklisting the site.--NortyNort (Holla) 00:52, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Furthermore, I question whether User:Innomad is a spammer as described above. I may be wrong of course, but permanently blocking a user without warning whose only ever made 20 edits and whose last edit was in 2009 seems to me to be an abuse of administrators' privileges. Hallucegenia (talk) 07:18, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    User Innomad ONLY added external links, just like the previous spammers related to CBROnline - at best a sock/meatpuppet of other users. This is obvious a spammer related to the case, and they, seen the earlier cases, should have known better. I am not here to play a game of whack-a-mole - Spammers out of the same campaign get blocked without warning - they can consider themselves already to have been warned. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:55, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Why using the swat a fly with a sledgehammer approach on only a few users identified as spammers? We want to penalize the spammers but it seems like we are penalizing hard-working editors who want to keep articles clean. Please rethink this again and weight the benefits before making a massive change to tons of existing articles. If you think that ???-technology.com are not reliable sources, please provide evidences of such. I could have theorized that the spammers are Kable's competitors who know the loophole that if someone spams enough on Wikipedia, those web sites will be put on the Wikipedia's blacklist. The approach to deal with spammers is to deal directly with spammers. If the web sites are obvious product advertisement, okay fine, it may be legitimate to put on the blacklist. But when the sites associated with suspected spammers are reliable sources providing good contents, we should not address it this way. We could have been manipulated by the spammers to do this because we actually don't know to true intention of spammers and the true connection between the spammers and the sites. Like I said the spammers could have been their competitors, or some crazy people just having fun seeing us hammering ourselves. Even more to this, it appears that one of the alleged spammers who "is actively spamming" made the total of 27 edits in the last 6 months, and our action is to ban legitimate sites??? Z22 (talk) 03:53, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    A few, CBROnline was on it with a large number of editors. The approach to deal with spammers is to make sure they stop - blocking does not make them stop, you already see a number of different Single Purpose Accounts here - blocking one will likely result in others coming up. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:55, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Removed airbusmilitary.com. MER-C 13:05, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]


    Further Review Requested

    I recently looked at a page for the Boeing 737 Next Generation (and, related, the Boeing 737 root page which also mentions the 737NG), and I saw the site aerospace-technology.com on the blacklist. This, with other previously posted examples in this section, I've seen that these appear at first glance to be valid references. However, I haven't had the chance (and won't have the time) to scrutinize the site; all I'm saying is that I think that some people need to go through all the sites made by these posters, to check their accuracy, and, if necessary, change the links, whitelist the links, or even remove the sites from the blacklist. I'd do it myself, but I don't have the time commitment necessary to do that massive task; only just to add the Boeing 737NG link issue to your attention.

    In my personal opinion, though it does come off as spammy in the way it was posted, and even if the person posting the links may be paid to do it (proof permitting; after all, it could be someone who -really- likes cbronline.com as a reference), if the sources are valid (unless it's against Wikipedia policy), as long as they are accurate, why not leave them as is and keep them off the blacklist? But again, that's just me. :)

    From what I've seen, all the External Links shown seem to directly relate to the content, so there's no question on whether it's on the wrong page or not, and it does help explain the content similar to a reference. I see it in similar vein to a link to almost any movie's wikipedia page, that almost always has a metacritic.com, rottentomatoes.com, and/or some other review site page on it, even though they are all ultimately business sites, similar to cbonline.com. But again, I'm not educated on this particular website host, so if I'm mistaken, feel free to let me know. The Legacy (talk) 18:31, 4 April 2014 (UTC) (Edited The Legacy (talk) 18:39, 4 April 2014 (UTC))[reply]

    Railway-Technology.com

    I've just seen dozens of railway related articles tagged by the bot because they contain links from railway-technology. Most of these links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations in many articles. I added some of them myself. And I'm certainly not a spammer. This has been raised at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Trains#Blacklisted website. This bot is causing more havoc to the wikipedia than any spammer could, and I rather resent this taking up time which I could better put to something useful! G-13114 (talk) 21:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Power-Technology.com
    Offshore-Technology.com

    All what was said about Railway-Technology.com applies also to Power-Technology.com and Offshore-Technology.com. The first one is included in more than 150 articles and the second one is included in more than 130 articles. Most of these links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations. And as the previous editor, also I may say that a number of these links were added by me and I am not a spammer. It is also unacceptable that that kind of mass listings are made without prior notification of affected Wikiprojects (concerning these two sites it is mainly WP:Energy but also WP:Geology, WP:Dams and some others). Beagel (talk) 16:43, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    naval-technology.com
    army-technology.com

    The first is used in over 300 articles, the second over 200. These links contain legitimate information and are being used as citations. It seems that the blacklist is a bigger menace to the integrity of the wikipedia that any spammer. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    I do see that someone else brought up that these are not reliable sources anyway, and I found this diff informative regarding that as well. It starts to seem that most of these are replaceable by better, reliable sources, others can plainly be deleted as the information is not notable enough to be mentioned, and then the rest can be handled by whitelisting. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:55, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Please go ahead and find alternative sources for the hundreds upon hundreds of articles which use these then! Cause I'm bloody well not doing it!! G-13114 (talk) 08:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobody asks you to do it - and as argued below and above, this may not be the reliable source one takes it for (funny, that happened as well with a whole other set of CBROnline references - deemed unreliable and scraped), so it can just go without going through the effort of looking for the reliable sources. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    By the way, you might want to direct your anger at CBROnline/Kable for continuously violating our core policies - and by the looks of it the violation of what is soon going to be our new Terms of Use (though that is still under debate). --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:25, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I'd rather direct my anger at the black list. That's what is really in violation of our values. There's been no argument presented that the sites are replaceable or unreliable in any way. No editor should be allowed to place an article on the blacklist if they are not prepared to go and fix it personally. We block vandals for much less. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No argument, but several people have commented that the info is better sourced from other sites in the several threads here (e.g. "Links to Foo-Technology.com are not legitimate citations; they are either unreliable sources (and thus acceptable collateral damage, at worst) or spam masquerading as references (hiding a spam link as a legitimate citation happens distressingly often)" by The Bushranger above; "given its just being used to cite basic facts those should be easily found in better sources." by Werieth below). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:32, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Going on - part 2

    I have for now commented out the blacklisting, though I will encourage further discussion (and I will undo this if I find ongoing abuse or see that the scale is bigger than expected - we have a blacklist and whitelist for a reason). There is to me NO question that CBROnline and Kable are spamming Wikipedia using multiple Single Purpose Accounts, and that they have been doing this for many, many years now. Although regulars have been using this site, I know that spammers have engaged in 'reference spamming' as well as plain external link spamming. This is an issue that needs to be resolved, as this (the spamming) goes straight against our core policies and guidelines. I am also worried by several (knowledgeable) voices saying that either the information they provide is replaceable, or is used to support not-notable information. Editors may want to start and look into those issues. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:19, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Just noting, that I do not have any problem if another admin disagrees with my (temporary) removal of the blacklisting and reverts that removal. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:58, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Taking account the impact this listing has and the ongoing discussion, this blacklisting should be a community-based decision, not a decision of a single admin. Beagel (talk) 09:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I am sorry to say but you just deny the problem. Nobody says that spamming is not a problem, but the real problem here is not spamming but the fact that thousands of valid references are being outlawed. Even if we assume that there are replacement for all these references (but there is not, at least not for all), it is a large workload for fellow editors to do that. We are not paid for editing here, so some respect for others work and time is appreciated. You says that these references may not to be reliable but a number of people being active in different Wikiprojects say that these references are reliable (at least in most of cases) and have added-value to quality of articles. And knowing some of them by their excellent work in Wikipedia, I would say that they are also "knowledgeable voices". Also, recalling some earlier cases, it seems that in some cases the blaclisting really is not preventive but punitive. And the big problem is that nobody notifies affected/relevant Wikiprojects prior any action taken. Getting to know that something is going on when bot messes-up your watchlist or when the project clean-up listing has hundreds new entries, is not the way how thing should be done. Beagel (talk) 09:17, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I am not denying that - and that is why I commented out the blacklisting. More research on the scale of things needs to be done here. The links are not outlawed - we do have a whitelist for a reason.
    I am not sure if it is punitive - this really prevents editors from editing, this is not more punitive than blocking the individual spammers - it prevents spammers from adding, it does not punish them (having your links blacklisted does not significantly affect your search ranking, unlike the nofollow that Wikipedia implemented years ago).
    I am sorry, it is just impossible to notify wikiprojects affected - there is no way of detecting that, scale the necessity, etc. The notification of the bot that an article needs to be looked at is the closest one can get to notifying editors. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:30, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Re@prventive v. punitive. I am not talking about spammers. I personally think that every spammer should be blocked. But the blackslisting of websites should be the last resort because of its side-effects, mainly taking away information resources from editors. And it is punitive - mainly against our regular editors who have to deal with the mess created with backlisting like in this case (but definately this is not the only one).
    Re@notification. It is hard, I agree, but it is possible, if there is a goodwill for this. If you have the website you would like to blacklist, you have to check which/how many articles uses that website. This is not a rocket science. And if you know which articles use this website, it is easy to check which Wikiprojects are involved. It is even possible to create a special bot task for this which helps to deliver notifications imminently after the blacklisting proposal is made. And websites like aerospace-technology.com or power-technology.com give a clear indication which Wikiprojects could be interested about this, so the argument of impossibility is not valid one. But as I said, it needs some extra work. However, I think that some extra work by blacklisters are justified if this helps avoid even more extra work by our regular editors. It can't be accepted if blacklister decrease their workload by increasing workload of other editors. A change of attitude in this respect would be useful to achieve the common goals of Wikipedia.
    Beagel (talk) 11:12, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Punitive against regular editors .. what is blacklisting punishing them for? --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:35, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    It was said several times by several editors, but lets me repeat what TheOtherEvilTwin said: "Banning a site which is legitimately linked by hundreds of wiki pages means imposing hundreds of hours of work on the Wikipedia community to either find alternate sources or to remove now-unsourced material. Requiring the community to waste that much time on busywork instead of spending it on more productive edits just because a site was spam promoted is unreasonable. Anti-spam work is supposed to reduce others' opportunity costs, not increase them." If this additional workload for community is not a punishment, what it is then? If you can't predict what are the consequences of blacklisting certain websites, it shows that something is wrong with the whole procedure. So, if the bot already looks for links in the articles (at the moment after blacklisting), lets program it to do this imminently when the proposal to blacklist any webiste is submitted (that means before any action is taken). Bot could make the list of affected articles, it could make the list of affected Wikiprojects based on WP banners on the articles' talk pages and it could notify affected WPs (it could be that there are some misplaced banners but lets say if the certain WP has more than 10 (or 20 or what ever we agree) hits, it should be notified). And if there are hundreds or thousands articles linked to the certain website, it is a clear signal that the issue needs a careful analysis. If we don't have that kind of analysis, we would repeat these mistakes what happened now.
    And also, putting every website related to the person who was stupid enough to spam, into the indef. blacklist is punitive, not preventive. I think that the first time blaclisting should not exceed one year (exception, of course, should be websites promoting hate, violence, child pornography etc). Beagel (talk) 14:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, so we don't blacklist and let the few editors who care work their hours to remove the spam - that is more important than the 100 editors who spend some time pruning (removing/whitelisting) the sites that are of interest. I totally agree.
    Blacklisting is not indef - if the threat has stopped and when editors request removal then they get removed - however experience shows that de-listing does result in the spammers to return (in fact, cbronline.com was being attempted to be added despite that it is years that the site was blacklisted). The blacklist prevents addition of sites that are spammed in the same way that a block prevents an editor from vandalising Wikipedia. If the company stops with spamming, the site can be removed, if the editor stops vandalising the editor can be unblocked. CBROnline, obviously, did not stop spamming. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:42, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether it is a justified method of stopping the spammers, I'm going to put that aside for now. My point is more on how the bot adds a mess to tons of good quality articles. Maybe putting a site on the blacklist for future edits and force editors to look for alternatives or request a particular page to be put on the whitelist may not be as bad. But putting a hat tag on every single articles with a blacklist link is very counter productive. If the bot has to do anything, another approach may need to be implemented. For example, the bot would not put a hat tag on the article. It would put a new section on the talk page of each article and list out which links are from the blacklist sites. Then be clear to editors that having a site on blacklist does not automatically mean that the references and the associated contents are questionable. The message should be clearly conveyed that editors should use discretion to inspect each of those links and confirm that whether they are legitimate. If legitimate, no action is needed. If not so, find alternative sources. Z22 (talk) 15:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    That boat has sailed a long time ago. If you have a problem with the bot, take it up with the bot operator. MER-C 04:18, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Stop giving these editors the run-around. The bot editor will just refer you back to here. The only justification for that bot was a bot request with minimal participation. Somehow things have been warped to where any source may be deemed an {{unreliable source}} if someone is thought to be creating "spam" links to that source. It's high time for a bot that has the widespread impact that this bot has to justify its existence with consensus for its operation at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Don't be surprised if, as with this discussion about {{orphan}}s, consensus turns out to be that the bot's "big", "ugly", "defacing", "distracting" and "grotesque" message should be moved to talk pages. – Wbm1058 (talk) 01:03, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree, the bot is causing far more damage to wikipedia than any spammer could ever dream of! Like 99.9% of editors, I had absolutely no idea that this bot existed until I saw the havoc it was wreaking across hundreds of articles. So saying that it was approved when hardly anyone knew about it is a touch disingenuous! Had I known I might have participated. G-13114 (talk) 01:41, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The bot is not giving any more damage than the {{unreferenced}} which is also everywhere on top of pages (as are many of those maintenance templates). I still have NO clue how that template is causing damage to Wikipedia. And the argument for {{orphan}} is the only one that managed to get moved (logically, it does not signify a problem with the page, as {{unreferenced}} does) - you've tried that argument before and it does not sail. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:43, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    This is just giving us the run around again. As has already been explained to you. What is causing the damage, is that many hundreds of articles are having otherwise perfectly good references outlawed for no good reason. And necessitating enormous time wastage on behalf of the (volunteer) editors to find replacements, which may or may not be as good. The template is a nuisance though. G-13114 (talk) 09:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    And that was explained as well - they are not outlawed - if they are perfectly fine than they are suitable for whitelisting. And again, removing the spam is also a 'necessitating enormous time wastage on behalf of the (volunteer <- yes, I am a volunteer as well) editors to remove. The template is not more of a nuisance than {{unreferenced}}, {{cleanup}}, {{primarysources}}, and, as opposed to {{unreferenced}}, {{cleanup}} and {{primarysources}}, it in fact points to a problem with the page that should (generally by whitelisting) be solved as it may interfere with the editing process. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:09, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Moreover, the solving of the problems on the hundreds of pages can be performed by the hundreds of editors who have each some of the pages on the talkpage, unlike the spam issue, which (just like that you did not know about the existence of the bot and the template) was completely missed by you and all those volunteers that have the pages in these subjects on their watchlists, and has to be solved by the few volunteers that are active there. I am actually wondering why I am wasting my time fighting spam, maybe we should remove those guidelines, and scrap WP:NOTSOAPBOX from WP:NOT, as it can be completely ignored. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:13, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Are these sites on XLinkBot? MER-C 07:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Blanketed, but I am going to adapt that now. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:31, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Rules adapted, sites spammed here are there (if there are other Kable links still missing, I would suggest to add those as well). There is still a lot of cleanup to do, the editor mentioned below from 2009 is hardly reverted, e.g. (and that is true for recent editors as well). I am questioning how many of the hundreds of links that are there were originally spammed, spammers here have sometimes more than 50 additions on their name. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:43, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Going on - Part 3

    The last edit of this editor was made more than four years ago. How it is relevant in this context? And why s/he was not blocked in the first place? Beagel (talk) 09:28, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    'how is it relevant': this is long term abuse of Wikipedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:26, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    This first user (Dee82) last edited in January 2010. The first edit by the second user (Veronicawilson235) was in March 2013 or more than three years later. There is no proof that they are even the same person. Blocking seems to be a right decision here; however, blacklisting was clearly an overkill and, based on this provided information, is not justified. Beagel (talk) 15:33, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Beagel, they are working for the same organisation, this is WP:DUCK, they may not be the same person, but meatpuppetry is the same. Moreover, you forgot the other 5 or 6 accounts that were active, showing that blocking them does not solve the problem, there are 7 or 8 editors spamming (and their MO is practically always the same, many cases just external links, sometimes a bit of low-relevance reference spamming). That there is a gap between Dee82 and Veronicawilson235 (or even, if we see all accounts) may just mean that there were more links being spammed. Lets turn it around - how many edits can you show me by regulars using this site, for me, it seems to be easier to find the spammers. Top level article in the field of naval-technology.com would be Navy, the link was not added by a regular, but by a spammer. And naval-technology.com is not the official recognised reporter on Navy, is it? Is that link appropriate? And that is my conclusion in many cases for this link: the fast majority should plainly go. Blacklisting is justified, this is spam. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:54, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Re@how many edits can you show me by regulars using this site. I myself at least 50 (am really not able to recall all my 78,000 edits made over 8 years), mainly offshore-technology.com and power-technology-com but probbaly few of other technology pages. I think that you got similar figures from NortyNort or Dormskirk. Do not know so well other editors commented here but certainly also they have used these websites. I would be very careful calling any of them spammers. Beagel (talk) 04:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    'I would be very careful calling any of them spammers.' .... you really got a wrong impression of me. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:45, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I had a quick glance at the additions of those two you mentioned - I did not see any additions of you over the last handful of months, I do find more possible spammers though. I will look further into the past. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:15, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    ...this is one for long-term abuse. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:02, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    S/he is blocked now. Did not this solve a problem? Beagel (talk) 09:28, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not entirely sure I see what the problem is here. All of those links as far as I can see are relevant to the articles they have been put in, so I'm not sure how this is detrimental to the wikipedia. If they were putting in links to websites that were selling viagra or something then that would be different! G-13114 (talk) 11:09, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @User:Beagel: until another sockpuppet comes up. We have 5 who have been active in the last months, and 2 or 3 from before, and those are only the ones identified. Do you believe that this solved the problem? Did all the editors from the CBROnline spam of a couple of years ago who got blocked convey the message that it stops? Do you understand why people spam? It pays their bills. They do not stop (obviously) when just blocked, they will just make a new account.
    @User:G-13114: It is a community consensus that we are NOT writing a linkfarm here but an encyclopedia. These additions, simply, fail our external links guideline, others fail our reliable sources guideline (when used as a source), and the editors are, plainly, violating WP:SPAM. These editors are violation our core policies and guidelines, our pillars. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:24, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I strongly agree with Beetstra here. Not blacklisting these links sets a dangerous precedence that would allow any site that could meet WP:RS to abusively spam Wikipedia. Yes, it's a pain to replace those links, but it's not as if one person has to do it all. I'd be happy to help. OhNoitsJamie Talk 14:46, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Until now, most of the links I encountered I simply removed, haven't found anything that needed replacement yet. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Based on the provided information my understanding is that blaclisting was an overkill. However, I do not want to underestimate the spamming problem and I think that solution could be some kind of "greylist". Websites in this list are not blacklisted but they have a history of spamming. We should designate a bot to check and list every day articles where these "greylisted" links were added. Having that kind of list (including the name of users who added these links) it would be quite easy to discover any pattern of spamming and it would be easy to catch these spammers. It would be more editors-friendly solution than blacklisting websites that qualifies as RS. Of course, we will still have a blacklist for special cases. Beagel (talk) 15:43, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    re: "greylist" – see Wikipedia:Edit filter. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:51, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Edit Filter is, with some exceptions, not capable of handling this - overloads the server. Greylist here is more User:XLinkBot - the links (with thinking forward) are there. However, accounts (established accounts) are easy to get, most of these accounts have been active for several months and have >50 edits - way over the 'autoconfirmed' limit that is used by XLinkBot and MediaWiki. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:59, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The proposal was not meant to prevent somebody, but to get a better analysis to detect potential spammers more easy way and without damaging work of regulars. Beagel (talk) 04:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I find the idea that Progressive Digital Media is not operating reliable sources to be dubious. Assume in good faith that they are trying to be reliable. Even major news outlets occasionally make errors and have to later publish corrections. Perhaps this organisation, which may be running on shoestring resources, makes more errors than larger, better endowed media, but they are trying to be reliable and usually are. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:51, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dirk Beetstra, would you like to explain why you say that the X-technology links are not reliable sources? I have to say that in my experience they are accurate and professionally written, I have put in a few railway-technology links myself as cites, I would not have done this if I did not believe they were accurate and reliable. I see a lot of people have said the same thing. G-13114 (talk) 16:27, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No, that is the wrong way of asking, G-13114. A site is hardly even not an RS at all. But a lot of the material that Wikipedia is currently referencing to these sites is either not notable, or this is not the optimal source, or it is, for that fact, not a reliable source. Being reliable does not make you a reliable source either. Wikipedia is often reliable, it is not a reliable source. Fact however is, that even plain spam, utter useless for the majority of Wikipedia, where the majority of the site can be replaced with easy to find better sources, material where you would not have a doubt for blacklisting seen the abuse, are sometimes reliable sources for something.
    I am not saying, and I have never said, that this site should never be used by regulars, that this site should be banished from the face of the earth. I said that the scale of the spamming of the editors is a problem that can not be solved by blocking the editors, that can not be solved by protecting the pages, and seen the persistence over the years (this is a problem for many, many years) it is also not a problem that XLinkBot can solve - the spamming can only be stopped by blacklisting the site. The main argument that is thrown at me is that by blacklisting a site it outlaws it, that regulars are not allowed to use it, that the material on the site is bad, that I damage Wikipedia. That is a logical fallacy - it is not true. I do however say that a) many, many (if not all) of the links in external links sections currently there are inappropriate and can go without damaging Wikipedia; b) that many, many of the references there are either trivial information, some of the information should actually be primary sourced (and not from aggregator), c) and that the links that are detrimental should be whitelisted. For what I have seen, the hundreds and hundreds of additions by identified spammers and I hardly ever encounter an addition by a regular (some IPs with 1 or 2 edits, not sure if they are spammers, hence not reported; some editors with 20 edits editing only in a very small subset; some vandalism reverts where the link was re-added after a vandal). I have yet to encounter the edits by you, G-13114 and Beagle and others. You all say 'I've used this site', but if I find the spammers adding hundreds, and you guys are talking about 'a few' - does that mean that all the regulars have added maybe up to 25 of the current links to all these sites (by now several hundreds), and the spammers the rest. To me it looks this way.
    These sites are being spammed on a large scale, SEO exists for a reason. This is likely not one editor, but a concerted effort. These sites should be blacklisted, and pruned. Material should be replaced where possible and then the rest should be whitelisted. Not blacklisting sites that are spammed on a large scale is setting a bad precedent, especially in the light of the drive of WMF against paid editing. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:54, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:RS clearly says: The reliability of a source depends on context. That mean the some source should be in some context reliable and in the other context unreliable. Every source (and that means reference, not the website in whole) should be considered individually. Saying that all these sites are unreliable is a non-starter. Concerning whitelisting, well, this is not a suitable if we talking a mass blacklisting. I have an experience when I some years ago asked to whitelist one site. The first time the request was ignored, the second time the answer was quite arrogant recommending to look for another source. All in all, I spent more than month for nothing. This is clearly not the way forward for regulars. Concerning outlawing, well, you could it how you like but de facto these sites a outlawed in practice.Beagel (talk) 04:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    That is what I said - there are however sites where the information is generally unreliable, and/or where they can be replaced with more reliable sites in general - aggregator type information is not 'reliable', they copy without scrutiny what others say, that does not make it reliable (it is probably true, but that is something else). It were however not my words (it was mentioned by others) and it has NOT been a large factor in my decision to blacklist. Somewhere else there is the suggestion to have more manpower - I would be all for having more manpower on the whitelist as well .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:42, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Getting at the heart of the issue with sites like cbronline

    This issue has been building for some time; see MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/December 2013#cbronline.com for an earlier thread. Extracting some comments from that:

    Q: Wikipedia has a "massive" number of links to The New York Times, but their massiveness doesn't make them spam. The Times does still make real money from selling subscriptions, but even they are becoming more dependent on online ads. What if some anonymous editors "help" the Times by focusing their editing on clearing the Category:Articles with unsourced statements backlog by inserting mostly helpful citations to Times articles, but get somewhat over-enthusiastic about the project and also add some dubious (external) Times links that are not strictly required for confirmation of article statements of fact. Would we then be forced to blacklist the Times?
    A: A journal like the Times does not need spam to get their links out (so that says something about companies that do spam), moreover, if a site like that would engage in a massive spamming campaign, we would indeed have a nice problem, which likely would be handled through the legal department of Wikimedia (we have had congressman or their representatives spam Wikipedia - besides blocking, they have to be reported to the Foundation). I would however not exclude that if such a site would engage in such massive spamming, that blacklisting (though more likely an edit filter) may be needed to mitigate the problem - and it has happened for sites like that.

    We have something of on an ongoing crisis in journalism, as traditional print newspapers have become more and more scarce, and those that survive have shrinking resources and content. If all we have left are a handful of sources who can afford not spamming Wikipedia to build their audience, then the only remaining available media may be that provided by a handful of major corporations who will have a de facto oligopoly on the news. Why should we give the Times or any other major media special treatment? Shouldn't Progressive Digital Media be given equal treatment? Has Wikimedia's legal department been made aware of this situation? Why haven't we used an edit filter to deal with this problem, as would "more likely" be done to fight Times spam? A cynic—and make no mistake, in my earlier post that was dismissed as "ridiculous", I was in cynic or devil's advocate mode—might think that the problem was that Progressive Digital Media wasn't generous enough with contributions to the Foundation, and that the Foundation favors organisations that are generous towards it. Wbm1058 (talk) 15:34, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Giving grants does not make your links magically appear here. That would be completely against our core policies and guidelines, editors would never allow that.
    Point is, we are not giving one site a special treatment. If a site gets spammed (which I have never observed for the Times) it is up for blacklisting. Whether it is CNN or whether it is your regular Taladafil site. Now, blackisting ALWAYS has collateral damage - but I think that the collateral damage here is minor, really there are only a few additions by regulars in comparison to hundreds of additions by spammers, for CNN that would be different. If a huge site would massively spam Wikipedia with multiple accounts, all across, then the only problem to mitigate it at some point may be a blacklist entry. Unless you want that company to overtake the editing in Wikipedia and make sure that they proclaim what Wikipedia is reporting and finds important, because that is the consequence, that is what you are advocating here and in above threads: by not blacklisting and allowing this to continue you endorse those hundreds of spammed links to the -technology.com websites, letting them decide what is important, and letting them decide how things are being sourced. On top of that, there are a few links added outside of that effort, which may have been 'an easy to find source' (hey, easy to find: their spamming works?) and replaceable as well, or up for whitelisting. They are now being allowed to violate our pillars WP:NOT, WP:NPOV), so you can follow yours (WP:V, WP:ENC). Who wins: the big company? --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:11, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    "Giving grants does not make your links magically appear here". Sometimes it does. It's an historical case, but a well known one. Check out [62] and the talk page. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:44, 12 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    patrika.com

    patrika.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

    Hemantmalav88 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam) Adding links where there are already good sources, replacing old sources, and adding copyvio text from English language sources but citing to articles from patrika.com that don't have all the details in the English language source. Obvious COI and I have every reason to believe that if this editor is blocked another will take his place. Taken to ANI and will probably block. Dougweller (talk) 14:52, 5 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Logging / COIBot Instr

    Blacklist logging

    Full instructions for admins


    Quick reference

    For Spam reports or requests originating from this page, use template {{/request|0#section_name}}

    • {{/request|213416274#Section_name}}
    • Insert the oldid 213416274 a hash "#" and the Section_name (Underscoring_spaces_where_applicable):
    • Use within the entry log here.

    For Spam reports or requests originating from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam use template {{WPSPAM|0#section_name}}

    • {{WPSPAM|182725895#Section_name}}
    • Insert the oldid 182725895 a hash "#" and the Section_name (Underscoring_spaces_where_applicable):
    • Use within the entry log here.
    Note: If you do not log your entries, it may be removed if someone appeals the entry and no valid reasons can be found.

    Addition to the COIBot reports

    The lower list in the COIBot reports now have after each link four numbers between brackets (e.g. "www.example.com (0, 0, 0, 0)"):

    1. first number, how many links did this user add (is the same after each link)
    2. second number, how many times did this link get added to wikipedia (for as far as the linkwatcher database goes back)
    3. third number, how many times did this user add this link
    4. fourth number, to how many different wikipedia did this user add this link.

    If the third number or the fourth number are high with respect to the first or the second, then that means that the user has at least a preference for using that link. Be careful with other statistics from these numbers (e.g. good user who adds a lot of links). If there are more statistics that would be useful, please notify me, and I will have a look if I can get the info out of the database and report it. This data is available in real-time on IRC.

    Poking COIBot

    When adding {{LinkSummary}}, {{UserSummary}} and/or {{IPSummary}} templates to WT:WPSPAM, WT:SBL, WT:SWL and User:COIBot/Poke (the latter for privileged editors) COIBot will generate linkreports for the domains, and userreports for users and IPs.


    Discussion

    Help?

    I've hit a wall editing the Icon Complex, and fear I can't get much more done without a solution to this problem. Here is an example:
    If you search for 171011_Supporting_Info.pdf on Google (bing doesn't find this file), one of the results will lead you straight to the motherload of information for said article, at the Hobart City Council website (I would just look there but find this site very hard to navigate). Unfortunately, Wikipedia wont let me cite these sources as they go thru some funky Google redirecting process (I think?). Can someone please tell me a way to find the original link? The search result I have (and cant cite) is http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hobartcity.com.au%2Ffiles%2F06ef439a-450b-48dd-b33d-9f7b00f2017e%2F171011_Supporting_Info.pdf&ei=K9sBU5uDLsijkAX0zID4DA&usg=AFQjCNGy8xhtzY6MEgNPCjB8QQtbE7qQ8w&bvm=bv.61535280,d.dGI There must be a way to bypass Google and cite the source? Wiki ian 10:19, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    You mean: http://www.hobartcity.com.au/files/06ef439a-450b-48dd-b33d-9f7b00f2017e/171011_Supporting_Info.pdf - pdfs are generally set to 'download', and it is then difficult to get the link itself (you are right, it is the redirect code). Hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:46, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    thank you. Could you please give me some advice on how to find out the link for myself in future? Wiki ian 10:49, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Pages with parameters have a base part (here 'http://www.google.com.au/url'), followed by a '?', and then a list of parameters separated by '&' (the first one is the parameter 'sa', set to 't': 'sa=t', the second one is 'rct', set to 'j'). For google, the original link is in 'url', set to 'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hobartcity.com.au%2Ffiles%2F06ef439a-450b-48dd-b33d-9f7b00f2017e%2F171011_Supporting_Info.pdf' - that link is 'percent encoded', '%3A' = ':'; '%2F' = '/' - you take that part and 'decode' the encodings in that list.
    For most, it is a matter of clicking the link and copy-pasting the result in the address bar, but for some a handler in your browser takes over (typically for pdf, xls, doc etc.). Asking here also helps :-). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:00, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi user:Wiki ian!
    There's a tool for this kind of link conversion: http://tools.wmflabs.org/url-converter. -- seth (talk) 09:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Now what to do?

    I know the policy on short urls. Once again, it gets in the way. http://archive.is/SSm7 is a short code for the webarchive. How much more of a legitimate use can we find. The do not provide the longer code to reach this. So how do we get here? Trackinfo (talk) 00:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    That's not a "short code for the webarchive." That's the full URL of a shady archiving site (not the real web.archive.org) that the community decided to disallow. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:42, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    As above, you should use The Internet Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) or WebCite. --///EuroCarGT 00:50, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a web archive but there are many others so I wouldn't say "the" webarchive. Which policy on short url's are you referring to? We don't want url shortening services like TinyURL which redirect to other websites but this is an archive and not a redirect so the issues are different. See previous discussions about archive.is at Wikipedia:Archive.is RFC and Wikipedia talk:Link rot. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:07, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Whatever the semantics, its blacklisted. Trackinfo (talk) 02:11, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    No it isn't. If it were blacklisted, you wouldn't be able to link to it above. However, consensus is that it should not be used on Wikipedia, so any links found to it should be removed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:25, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Note, that this is due to be blacklisted per outcome of an RfC; it is just awaiting removal of the plethora of links - an editfilter is in place to avoid additions with specific explanation. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:06, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Change in functionality of spam blacklist

    Due to issues with determining the content of parsed pages ahead of time (see bugzilla:15582 for some examples), the way the spam blacklist works should probably be changed. Per bugzilla:16326, I plan to submit a patch for the spam blacklist extension that causes it to either delink or remove blacklisted links upon parsing, or replace them with a link to a special page explaining the blacklisting. This could be done either in addition to or instead of the current functionality. Are there any comments or suggestions on such a new implementation? Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:46, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    It think that that is a bad idea - sometimes links get blacklisted because of spamming or similar abuse, but older links should then be whitelisted if they do pass the bar. De-linking or even outright removal would be damaging to Wikipedia (one would remove legit references?). Such links should simply be whitelisted if they pass the merits of linking, as should be done for new links that one considers to add. As is currently, blacklisted links that were there before blacklisting do not disable editing to a page, and there is now an effort going on to get those links whitelisted (to avoid the rarely occurring cases of 'accidental' removal). --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:06, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    To clarify, the links would still be in the source of the page. They just won't be linked in the normal view of it. None of the links will be lost with this proposal. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:30, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    \bpower-technology\.com\b

    Does anyone know why power-technology.com is on the blacklist? A bot recently tagged Hazelwood Power Station. The link is arguably not in the best point in the article, but is this a mirror site or something? The link has been there since 2009. Yaris678 (talk) 12:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    See #cbronline.com Werieth (talk) 12:39, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    OK. So links to the site have been added recently by a known spammer. The website appears to be associated with another website whose quality has gone down at some point. What do you think should be done in this instance? Yaris678 (talk) 12:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Block the spammer, I would say. Beagel (talk) 05:34, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually this has been an ongoing issue. I would just find a better source, given its just being used to cite basic facts those should be easily found in better sources. Werieth (talk) 12:57, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    More than 150 articles use that site for references and most of them are valid references, not spam. Another site heavily affecting WP:Energy is offshore-techology.com (more than 130 articles - again, valid references, not spam). Do you do any consequences analysis before blaclisting sites? Anyway, I started policy discussion here as this is not acceptable that affected Wikiprojects get know about blacklisting only post factum. Beagel (talk) 05:31, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The sites have been spammed. Better sources will exist. This is normal. Guy (Help!) 18:35, 18 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    why the hell is International Trade Union Confederation on the black list?

    http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/statement_by_global_unions_to_the_2013_annual_meetings_of_the_imf_and_world_bank.pdf.pdf

    that link doesnt work for example--Crossswords (talk) 00:03, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Eh, you just linked to it - so it is obviously not on the blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:07, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    -not true, i am allowed to post it in talk pages, but i am not allowed to edit things by using their url site as a source--Crossswords (talk) 03:18, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Thats not how the backlist works. Can you provide more details? Werieth (talk) 03:20, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Romanian press

    Hello, please forgive me if I post in the wrong place. I will kindly ask you to add those links to wikipedia's white list. Those are links of articles in the Romanian Press. The entire article is about a Romanian mediatized healer - Zinaida Stoenescu - You can google her and you will get thousands of results! 

    Link http://www.formula-as.ro/2008/838/enigme-16/ne-otravim-sau-ne-vindecam-10248

    ink http://www.revistafelicia.ro/da_paranormal-zinaida_stoenescu_are_puterea_de_a_reda_sanatatea_1000701.html 

    link youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMtl_m7tHQ  - Television Interview

    Interviu Tv, Zinaida Stoenescu - O alta putere, link youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sMtl_m7tHQ </ref> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lydia17 (talk • contribs) 09:25, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Block specific file?

    Does the blacklist have the ability to block a specific file. An author is promoting his paper, hosted at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2014.930034 all over Wikipedia in anything that is even slightly related to calendars, and uses constantly changing IP addresses to do so. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:08, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes it is possible, can you provide a few diffs shows where this is a persistent issue? dx.doi.org in general is OK. — xaosflux Talk 17:19, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Everything at Special:Contributions/119.158.16.157. Also [63], [64], [65], [66], [67], and [68]. Note that some of the earlier diffs are for a version hosted at http://www.omertaa.org/archive/omertaa0044.pdf Jc3s5h (talk) 17:36, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Given this is a DOI an abuse filter may be a better option.Werieth (talk) 18:28, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know how abuse filters work, or where to go to ask for one. But it appears the paper is, or was, hosted at more than one location, so I don't know if an abuse filter would be effective. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:53, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The abuse filter can do a lot more than the spam blacklist. See Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested to request a filter. Just provide what your goal is, and what specifics that the filter should be looking to block. Werieth (talk) 18:56, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Looking more closely, I see there are two different papers, both about concepts of time in rural Pakistan, but the two papers seem to be about two different villages. Nevertheless, I cannot help but conclude that sticking references to these papers in general articles about calendars, to support points related to large areas of the world, is motivated by self-promotion rather than a desire to provide the most appropriate source. That seems particularly evident since all the edits are to sources written by the same author. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:03, 24 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    It seems just one IP on one day - I would just impose a block if they continue. Then if they start moving to other IPs .. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:43, 25 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    What has changed since the introduction to spambot?

    When Cyberbot II started operating on Wikipedia, we had around 5000 articles containing blacklisted links. Now we have roughly half that amount. I think the effects of Cyberbot II's work are showing.—cyberpower ChatOnline 13:18, 3 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes, good work User:Cyberpower678. Antrocent (♫♬) 07:22, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Draft:Sanaka Educational Trust's Group of Institutions Revision history

    Please examine the on again off again on again off again actions of the bot to determine whether this is reasonable or whether something is astray. Fiddle Faddle 10:07, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    The on again off again on again off again actions have nothing to do with the Spam-blacklist, but with the operation of the bot. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:45, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    By the way, the link is blacklisted. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:47, 21 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. I am pinging cyberpower678 to come and have a look at this. Fiddle Faddle 08:22, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    archive.today on wikipedia spam-blacklist: what alternative can handle hashtag in middle of ref URL?

    Tried to include an archive.today URL (.today/YHMIR) with edit of Alternative Press Expo, but archive.today on spam-blacklist. Can't use archive.org Wayback NOR Webcitation.org because neither can handle hashtag (#) in middle of URL. QUESTION: What alternative archive website(s) can handle a hashtag in middle of URL? --EarthFurst (talk) 08:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    Archive.today is not on the blacklist, it is blocked by an edit filter. Generally, you have to url-encode certain characters in links (I think you can find the data on Character encoding?), maybe the hashtag is also one of those, and then the other sites do work? Also, is the archive really necessary, is the original likely to 'disappear'? --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:09, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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