Wikipedia:Spam: Difference between revisions

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There are two types of wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, and wide-scale external link spamming. Articles considered advertisements include those that are solicitations for a business, product or service, or are public relations pieces designed to promote a company or individual. Wikispam articles are usually noted for sales-oriented language and external links to a commercial website. A differentiation should be made between spam articles and legitimate articles about commercial entities, however.

There is also "Wikipedian-on-Wikipedian" spamming, or "internal spamming".

Advertisements masquerading as articles

Advertisements posted on Wikipedia should be dealt with by listing them on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. On some occasions, the content can be removed temporarily on the basis of a suspected copyright violation, since the text is often copied from another website and posted anonymously.

It is also possible, and appropriate in some cases, to rewrite the article from a neutral point of view.

External link spamming

A few parties now appear to have a spambot capable of spamming wikis from several different wiki engines, analogous to the submitter scripts for guestbooks and blogs. They have a database of a few hundred wikis. Typically they insert external links. Like blog spam, their aim is to improve their search engine rankings, not to directly advertise their product.

If you see a bot inserting external links, please consider checking the other language wikis to see if the attack is widespread. If it is, contact a developer: they can put in a site-wide text filter.

Sysops are authorised to block unauthorised bots on sight. Spam bots should be treated equivalently to vandalbots. Edits by spambots constitute unauthorised defacement of websites, which is against the law in many countries, and may result in complaints to ISPs and (ultimately) prosecution.

Internal spamming

just a proposal

By internal spamming, we mean cross-posting of messages to a large number of user talk pages, by Wikipedians, in order to promote Wikipedia matters such as elections, disputes, discussions, etc. It also includes the use of a custom signature to automatically append some promotional message to every signed post.

It's too early to make any definitive rules about this, but some general guidelines are:

Clean up your mess. For example, after engaging in cross-posting to promote some election, be sure to remove those cross-posts after the election is complete.
Be open. Don't make cross-posts that initially appear to be individual messages.
Be polite. Wikiquette issues are extra-important when a message is likely to be read by many people.
Less redundancy. Rather than copying the same five page essay to twenty talk pages, write it once, in the place where it is most relevant, and then link to it.

There are often better alternatives to internal spamming. For example, suppose you've written a cool new article, and you want lots of people to read it. Simply add links to it from other encyclopedia articles, where it is relevant, and also add it to appropriate categories. This increases the exposure of your article, while simultaneously benefiting the encyclopedia, without annoying your fellow contributors.

External links

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 There are two types of '''wikispam''': advertisements masquerading as articles, and wide-scale external link spamming. Articles considered advertisements include those that are solicitations for a business, product or service, or are [[public relations]] pieces designed to promote a company or individual. Wikispam articles are usually noted for sales-oriented language and external links to a commercial website. A differentiation should be made between spam articles and legitimate articles about commercial entities, however.
+There is also "Wikipedian-on-Wikipedian" spamming, or "internal spamming".
 == Advertisements masquerading as articles ==
@@ Line 14: / Line 16: @@
 Sysops are authorised to [[wikipedia:blocking policy|block]] unauthorised [[wikipedia:bots|bots]] on sight. Spam bots should be treated equivalently to vandalbots. Edits by spambots constitute unauthorised defacement of websites, which is against the law in many countries, and may result in complaints to ISPs and (ultimately) prosecution.
+== Internal spamming ==
+''just a proposal''
+By internal spamming, we mean cross-posting of messages to a large number of user talk pages, by Wikipedians, in order to promote Wikipedia matters such as elections, disputes, discussions, etc. It also includes the use of a custom signature to automatically append some promotional message to every signed post.
+It's too early to make any definitive rules about this, but some general guidelines are:
+* Clean up your mess. For example, after engaging in cross-posting to promote some election, be sure to remove those cross-posts after the election is complete.
+* Be open. Don't make cross-posts that initially appear to be individual messages.
+* Be polite. Wikiquette issues are extra-important when a message is likely to be read by many people.
+* Less redundancy. Rather than copying the same five page essay to twenty talk pages, write it once, in the place where it is most relevant, and then link to it.
+There are often better alternatives to internal spamming. For example, suppose you've written a cool new article, and you want lots of people to read it. Simply add links to it from other encyclopedia articles, where it is relevant, and also add it to appropriate categories. This increases the exposure of your article, while simultaneously benefiting the encyclopedia, without annoying your fellow contributors.
 ==See also==