Wikipedia talk:Spam

affiliate or referal codes

It would be nice if these terms were define. Also, do advertisement links count? PDBailey (talk) 20:27, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

This question regards, [1]. PDBailey (talk) 18:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

www.andhranews.net

Wy is this site on the blacklist? It seems a perfectly acceptable news source for local and national news; their coverage of international news-- which I can judge better --seems comparable to other good news sources. DGG (talk) 22:20, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Torrent links to public domain content

Discussion how to put torrent links to public domain content if there is an advertisement also or if to do so. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#The Pirate Bay... (and related). Results should be written into this guideline. --Snek01 (talk) 05:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Promotional usernames

There is a debate going on as to if we should allow usernames that are the names of companies. ie: User:Northwest Investment Firm. Since this seems to fall under the category of spam I am adding this link here: Wikipedia_talk:Username_policy#Disagree_with_change Chillum 15:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Seeking professional help?

Do those whose Wikipedia edits are concerned mainly with getting rid of spam ever seek assistance of the kind referred to here? Are there policies saying they should seek such help? If not, maybe there should be. Michael Hardy (talk) 16:50, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Many users, including myself, fully support MrOllie's spam-removal efforts, especially in obvious cases of conflict-of-interest. Your suggestion could be construed as a personal attack. If you disagree with the removal of a link, discuss it on the article page and refrain from making veiled insults toward other editors. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 17:06, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Why would it be a personal attack? The article's talk page is not the appropriate place when it's about dozens of articles rather than just one. Furthermore, it proposes emendations to the policy on linkspam, so this present talk page is absolutely the right place for it. Why is a proposed policy change a "personal attack"? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:00, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I also spend some time removing linkspam. Look at the problem this way: There are a zillion web sites with owners that want to promote their site. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and is one of the world's most popular sites. The result is that many sites owners go to a lot of trouble to look for places to inject their message into Wikipedia. If MrOllie and cohorts stopped removing spamlinks, WP would become a giant link farm. I see single purpose accounts (users who do almost nothing other than add links to a particular site) who add fake references: they go to an existing article where they have never edited, they find a likely sentence, and they add a properly-formatted ref to some page on their site. They don't make any change to the article (in fact they almost never change articles except to add links). You have to be brutal to combat that kind of link spammer. And if you don't fight the people who just add external links, many of them will start adding links within articles as well (why wouldn't they? they have no desire to improve the article; they just want to promote their site).

I've been removing linkspam for just a few weeks and already I have seen several cases where some determined opposition results in the spammer giving up and going elsewhere (LinkSearch can be used to verify that the links do not recur).

In an ideal world, one would spend 10 minutes verifying that each suspect link really deserved to be removed, and one might even ask for feedback (I recently did that). However, in practice it is impossible, and the balance is wrong: the spammer can add another dozen links in the time it might take to check one.

There should be better guidelines, but clearly any editor is able to revert spam link removal, and those removing spam would happily accept the judgement of an established editor if they use an edit summary indicating that they have checked the link and feel it should be added.

I heard a comment (sorry, have forgotten where) pointing out that if all editors stopped improving articles, Wikipedia would still be a valuable resource for decades. However, if vandal and spam fighters stopped for a couple of months, Wikipedia would be an unusable mess. That is, article improvement is the most important activity, but cleaning up is vital as well. Johnuniq (talk) 10:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Michael, you also raised this issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Seeking expert help to judge suspected spam (permanent link); I have responded to you there. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

bacon maple donut

Could members of this project please look at bacon maple donut? It documents a "craze" less than 2 months old, and mentions some random restaurants a little more prominently than I think makes sense for an encyclopedia. 207.241.239.70 (talk) 02:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)