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MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist is a page in the MediaWiki namespace, which only administrators may edit.
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WP:SBL

Mediawiki:Spam-blacklist is meant to be used by the spam blacklist extension. Unlike the meta spam blacklist, this blacklist only affects pages on the English Wikipedia. Any administrator may edit the spam blacklist. Any developer may use $wgSpamRegex, another method to prevent the addition of spam links. However $wgSpamRegex should rarely be used.

See Wikipedia:Spam blacklist for more information about the spam blacklist.

Dealing with requests here

Any admin unfamiliar with this page should probably read this first, thanks

Does the site have any validity to the project?
Have links been placed after warnings/blocks? Have other methods of control been exhausted? Is there a Spam project report, if so a permanent links would be helpful
Make the entry at the bottom of the list (before the last line). Please do not do this unless you are familiar with regex - the disruption that can be caused is substantial.
Close the request entry on here using either {{done}} or {{not done}} as appropriate. Request should be left for a week maybe as there will often be further relatede sites or an appeal in that time.
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 - 180787639 after you have closed the request. See here for more info on logging.

Those interested in contributing to this page may find it helpful to watchlist this page or create their own if they want to watch other pages as well. It effectively watches threads rather than pages.

There are 4 sections for posting comments below. Please make comments in the appropriate section. they are Proposed additions, Proposed removals, Troubleshooting and problems, and Discussion. Each section will have a message box explaining them. In addition, please sign your posts with ~~~~ after your comment.

Requests which have been completed are archived. All additions and removals will be logged.

snippet for logging: {{/request|180787639#section_name}}

Proposed additions

ridetheslut.com

Ridetheslut.com is a commercial site that parodies the South Lake Union Streetcar's by taking advantage of an incorrect nickname for the streetcar, South Lake Union Trolley. The site has no encyclopedic value and has been repeatedly added to the streetcar's article. See the edit history of 63.226.228.171 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) for 5 examples of the website being added to the streetcar's article. --71.231.140.53 (talk) 02:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not done. User has been warned and blocked temporarily and seems to b isolated to a few pages origionating from a single IP, no need to blacklist yet. Report back if there is continued spamming. thanks--Hu12 (talk) 02:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

searchindia.com

searchindia.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

Long term sneaky dynamic IP spam. Most IPs added one or two links only. See also WT:WPSPAM#Long term sneaky spamming of spam.searchindia.com. Roughly 5 x-wiki links. MER-C 13:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done & thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

businessjive.com

Repeated spamming on Naked short selling by IPs and throwaway sockpuppet accounts associated with Overstock.com staff. Diffs: [1] [2]

Due to long-term persistent misbehavior by the source, it is likely required that this be spam blacklisted to prevent it sneaking in back doors on related articles. Users are permabanned but extremely persistent and capable of working around blocks and bans. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Given that it has only been placed 2/3 times in the last month I'd need more evidence to convince me that blacklisting was necessary in this case. Others may wish to comment? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In a sense this is preventive - we wish to discourage attempts by banned Overstock staff to contribute, and letting them in the front door with the edits and then having to go find and revert them is less optimal for that than simply spamlisting the URL and making it impossible for them to make the links in the first place. In that sense this is not a "traditional" listing - more of using the spam blacklist as a defensive tool to push back known banned troublemakers who are attempting to return with new activity. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Much in line with the Criteria used on the whitelist, I believe to be true here. Although the blacklist isn't a pre-emptive tool, previous abuse that can be demonstrated from a source or related, certainly justifies its inclusion. Could you post some links to related past Overstock abuse?--Hu12 (talk) 01:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense & I agree with Hu12. Bit more info would be helpful, thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done After quite a bit of research, I've found excessive amounts of abuse re; businessjive.com and is attributed to several overstock socks noted by the diffs below.

businessjive.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

I Also propose the following be added as well...

thesanitycheck.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
faulkingtruth.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
investigatethesec.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

Proposed removals

www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg

Ask Greg is the website where Greg Weisman discussess and responds to questions about his work. This includes television shows like Gargoyles_(TV_series) and The_Spectacular_Spider-Man_(TV_series) as well as Gargoyles_(SLG_comic). The latter two are currently in production and news and information about both often are revealed first through Ask Greg. It's a vast archive of information which is often used for citation of various facts relating to these and other projects of Weisman's. By blocking this site you're disabling users to cite references that contain important and relevant information. As a result pages like the Gargoyles_(TV_series) entry are marked as not citing references. The reason for there being no references is because Ask Greg has been blocked.

I believe the reason for the blacklisting in the first place was due to a user trying to promote a "Gargoyles Wiki", which has no affiliation with Ask Greg, but there is a link to it from Ask Greg. The user, after being blocked from linking to the Gargoyles Wiki, started using links to Ask Greg with instructions to use the link on Ask Greg to get to the Wiki. Ask Greg was a victim of someone abusing Wikipedia policy, but not itself an abuser. It's an important resource that deserves to be removed from the blacklist.207.206.239.1 (talk) 20:11, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Extensively spammed based on this. I wouldn't envisage whitelisting it - any other views? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:06, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing else heard - closed as

Not done --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

worldwidealbums.net

I don't quite understand why this page is blacklisted as spam. Ok, I've read that it is a self-published site, but does it do that big harm? I mean, the methods of counting sales are listed on the page, it uses mediatraffic.de which is a reliable source here on wiki, but after an album is out of the top 40, it is practically impossible to follow the sales. I mean, ok, the reason was that anybody can make a site..but there is no other site, and the person (or people) doing the site is (are) expert(s), uses mediatraffic then other charts from UK (musicweek.com), and Oricon for Japan, etc. (and it's not like the numbers are so way off, I mean they can be with thousands possibly, but I think every worldwide sale is off, but it isn't like it's millions..) And also, other infos are also estimations at best, editors can write sy sold an "estimated" number of copies when they cite worldwidealbums.net. Also, all I'm saying is that we should only use the site as a last choice, if it is impossible to find any source, and then when other source is available we can change it. And lastly, RIAA certifications and Soundscan Data are also highly different almost always, there is almost always a huge gap between the two sales datas, and we now they count sales differently; e.g. an album can be certified Gold, but then Soundscan strill reports only 3-400,000 copies sold 4-5 months after the certification. So, they are estimations at best, and this site has estimations as well, and we should apply a rule not to use the exact datas here, only if we write e.g. "6, 7 millions", because it's not that big of a problem then, if the site says 7,5 mill, we can write "estimated 7 mill". See? Gocsa (talk) 23:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The background to the listing seems to be here. It is not the content that determines listing but the placement of excessive links to the site (although there may be views on its reliability as a source. The .tk version is actually listed on Meta's blacklist due to cross wiki spamming. Others may have views --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but that was my point, that I don't think editors used it as any form of advertising, or spamming, they used it as a primary source, which was - I think - wrong, because there might be "more reliable" sources, but that doesn't mean this site should be banned..I never saw it as spamming really.. Gocsa (talk) 12:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is something a spam just because it's all over the place? Blabbermouth.net links are for example certainly all over the place, but they were never considered spamming. Worldwidealbums.net was only found on musician's pages, discography pages, where it qualifies as a source, although I've already expressed my opinion before how the worldwidealbum link should only be used as a final solution.. Gocsa (talk) 18:42, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gocsa, it's very hard to find reliable sources for up to date album sales—especially when it's off the top 40. And yes, the RIAA seem to hardly ever update their database and I've come across many instances where the Soundscan sales contradict the certifications. But worldwidealbums is a self-published website. They just estimate what the sales are once an album is off the top 40, which is why I proposed its blacklisting a few months ago. Spellcast (talk) 18:55, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But they don't just get the information off the top of their heads, don't you think? Even so called "reliable sources" can contradict each other, I've just found out a couple of days ago that a source states on the Iron Maiden article that the band sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and I've found a 2007 December Billboard.com article in which EMI states they only sold approx. 70 million. That isn't a little difference.. So what harm can this site cause, the reliable sources are also estimates at best, and I'm pretty sure the person who gathers the information at worldwidealbums has access to different sources (I've already mentioned Music Week and Oricon for example), he's quite into this stuff, frequently writing and consulting with other fans of the music industry at UKMIX Forums. Also, then why isn't the UKMIX site (and its forum) banned? People cite it many times as well. And I think they shouldn't, then worldwidealbums.net is a much better site as a source, or at least some kind of base to have an idea of the estimated sales of an album. Gocsa (talk) 20:46, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great to see you find your refusal of this proposal that non-debatable... Gocsa (talk) 17:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

thanks Gocsa to defend my site!..i don't know, we only doing estimations, there could be some mistakes, but if we write 7m the ipotetical real data can't be 6m or 8m but AROUND 7m..estimations can have some problems but in a general view they are correct..having data from the biggest countries is so impossible make huge (over 1m) mistakes..Then wikipedia mods can do all they want, is not a problem..if they think that it isn't reliable they can ban it, but remember that almost all the data you will find on official/fan site or magazine articles are fake and anyone with a bit of experience in chart world can confirm it ;) Zagozagozago (talk) 19:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that your site and the UKMIX Forums are accurate to a degree, but Wikipedia can only go with reliable sources. The fact that it's hard to find up-to-date sales for albums off the top 40 isn't really an excuse to settle for self-published sites and forums. I'm not saying your is bad or anything, but this is an encyclopedia, so we can only go with reputable sources. Spellcast (talk) 20:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I mean I love Wikipedia and everything, and of course I agree with and support the concept of reliable sources. But sometimes I see really stupid things written, and they are accepted by everyone just because a so-called reliable, reputable site is cited. E.g. the Iron Maiden article I've mentioned. My point is just that we shouldn't blindly follow the reputable sites, sometimes just question their reliability, and check other (2,3 or more) sources..but album sales aren't even that big of an issue, I mean is it that big harm to humanity if we cite an estimation? It's not like saying the number of African elephants has tripled, if you know what I mean. And as Zagozagozago said, the so-called official numbers are also quite on the fake side..they are estimations, and many times the record company says the band has sold this or that much albums, and I hope you're not that naive to believe that record companies want to tell the real numbers, or less..their obvious aim is to say a bit higher number..or a lot.. And in many articles the band's official site (i.e. the record company) is cited.. Gocsa (talk) 21:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree..almost all what we call "reliable source" give fake data (usually inflated), wikipedia now is full of inflated data put by fans (they write always the "biggest" numbers they find on the net..) and some of them are from "reliable source"..but is obvious that are fake.so called "offical sources" sometimes give laughable data, now i'm thinking to the 104millions for Thriller, write also on Guinnes book..and all the times that in the articles they consider the sales of "album+singles" as one..or also when they consider "shipments data" and not sales.I know is a encyclopedia and it should have only "official" data..but if we continue to trust to articles,artists site or labels we continue to have data like the 104millions for Thriller everywhere.. Zagozagozago (talk) 00:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

legistorm.com

This is a site that presents unbiased, objective information on congressional staff salaries (obtained from congressional data released in print form only). This is the only site I (and several others involved in this discussion) have found online that offers this information. The site is much less ad-oriented than say ontheissues.org or warshingtonpost.com, both of which are linked as well from most/all congressional articles.

There has apparently been a problem with some users from IP addresses or accounts presumed to be associated with the company that owns the site placing links to the site on various pages (where they would otherwise be useful, relevant links were it not for the COI). I, and several other editors who also find this information valuable, have no relationship to this website or the company that owns it. (I in fact was not even aware of this site a week ago). The actions taken by the editors from legistorm (assuming the stated claims by the relevant Admin(s) are accurate), would justify warnings then IP range and/or account edit blocks, NOT blocking the entire domain.

The adding of this domain to the spam black list was an administrative abuse of power. This blacklist is for domains whose primary purpose is funnelling clicks back to their site from wikipedia. Legistorm is an established site that is the only I am aware of online that provies the information they do. I suggest you do a google search for congressional salary information -- every major-media news story that offers a link will link back to legistorm. This list is for blocking actual spam sites, not for punishing useful sites that may employee an overzelous editor to two.

This block should be removed immediately. kenj0418 (talk) 23:06, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. Even if the site owners have been adding it, that alone does not mandate it's removal. It easily meets WP:EL as encyclopedic information which would not be likely to be in the articles if they reached featured status. I also ask that it be removed from the blacklist. I have no connection with this site; I only know about this because of my recent overhaul of Anna Eshoo. MilesAgain (talk) 23:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As another non-COI, long-time editor, I support removal. Site appears meritorious, even if it was originally added by spammers. Has unobtrusive adsense ads compared to sites we already use, and the information (staff expenses and primary financial disclosure documentation) does not appear to be available elsewhere. See also Template talk:CongLinks.

I do not however assume that it was an administrative abuse. I think this was a good faith judgment. Cool Hand Luke 23:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. The site could be used as a source in an appropriate context, but there is no question that its addition in the manner and quantity (600+ links by SP accounts) was spam. Is there a graylist for sites that have been abused but are also legitimate? Or remove it temporarily when an editor wants to use it? Or remove it but be prepared to add it back if the site owners go on another spam blast. Thatcher131 00:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think reversion of the link spam was correct, and we should continue to black and revert further campaigns, but we should allow neutral editors to add links to this site where they are useful and accord with WP:EL. Cool Hand Luke 00:03, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Responding to Kenj0418, blacklisting a domain after it's been spammed hundreds of times to drive traffic to the legistorm site is not administrative abuse. Perhaps it's the best response, perhaps it's not the best, but it is certainly not "abusive".

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Storming Media LLC Spamming

The question is, who wants to watch over the addition of these links to reverse instances of spamming (as opposed to additions by regular editors)? Yes, we could block an IP range, but based on my experience with spam, they'll just do it from home, Starbucks, their library, etc. We can't block all of Washington's IPs. Then we have the issue of meat/sockpuppetry, something else this crew engaged in. So someone's got to volunteer to watch over the additions of these links once removed from the blacklist.

Who's it going to be?

--A. B. ^(talk) 00:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Justifiably Blacklisted, supported by evidence, more evidence and facts. Wikipedia is NOT a "repository of links" or a "vehicle for advertising". Wikipedia policy is quite clear here; External links policy on Advertising and conflicts of interest states You should avoid linking to a website that you own, maintain or represent, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked. This blacklisting is a clear result of WP:SPA (WP:SOCK) accounts and a WP:COI IP ('Storming Media LLC) being employed for the sole purpose to Spam Legistorm.com and to self-promote. see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Storming_Media_LLC_Spamming. Storming Media LLC has clearly illustrated a situation where a single company is using Wikipedia to promote for their own interests (Adsense pub-5159231827098763). Perhaps Whitelisting on a "case by case" basis is best for Wikipedia at this point. As mentioned above, whitelisting should only be implemented where it is demonstrated as a source, in an appropriate context.--Hu12 (talk) 00:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's understood, but no one in this section has a COI with respect to the site. I'll volunteer to watch the links.[23] Cool Hand Luke 01:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Luke, which specific legistorm pages do you intend to use as citations and in which articles? That's what we have a spam-whitelist for. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All sitting U.S. Congressmen and Senators. Through the CongLinks template, so that if they're later decided to be inappropriate, they can all be removed at once. Cool Hand Luke 01:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reinserting a link back into the President_pro_tempore_of_the_United_States_Senate article as a source for the statement that President Pro Tempore Emeriti get extra staff would also be useful. meamemg (talk) 04:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This request is a case where it is demonstrated as a source, and appropriate in that context. I've whitelised the specific url for that article and have added the citation back^[24]. Thanks Meamemg. Cheers--Hu12 (talk) 05:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Most of the editors in the evidence cited by Hu12 found the links unobjectionable, and even useful, including admins and experienced users like Will Beback, Lawrence Cohen, Penwhale, and Kralizec! Several users expressed doubt over whether this even constitutes spam. It's useful and EL-compliant on all congressmen, so a 535-page whitelist is pointless. If no one else removes the blacklist or comes up with a good alternative, I will unblacklist it myself. Cool Hand Luke 05:11, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't call one or two "yes" versus one or two "no" quite a consensus for inclusion of a link yet, especially considering that per WP:EL the default is to keep external links to a minimum, and your proposing a wikipedia wide scale Mass addition.--Hu12 (talk) 05:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's six or seven "yes" versus you and Guy. But you're right that it's not a consensus. The spam blacklist is a last resort, and there's positively no consensus on listing this site, correct?

I should emphasize that this is not the normal situation where the site's owner appeals the blacklist. These links have broad support, and the blacklist is being appealed by editors with thousands of unrelated edits on the project and years of experience. Cool Hand Luke 05:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As WP:EL is being used as a justification for excluding these links, I get a much different conclusion from reading WP:EL. Particularly from:

What should be linked

#3: Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks) or other reasons.

this information seems to be very much in the class of athlete statistics, movie credits, etc. (Except that this concerns something of actual importance rather than pop culture).

The only clauses from WP:EL that I see that remotely speak against including these links is COI (which is not applicable to myself and the other editors not associated with the site) and the general goal of not having too many EL's (Which would cause us to question ALL the links (except the official hosue.gov/senate.gov ones) -- not just the legistorm link).

We're are having this discussion here instead of on the Template:CongLinks's talk page because an admin has chosen to bypass any discussion of the links merits and place it on the blacklist. There clearly is not a concensus for doing this -- this is what I was refering to as an 'abuse of power'. Discussion of the merits of the actual link were completely bypassed because of an admin's power. Then after it was made clear that there was legitimate oposition to the blacklisting, by several long-time editors, still no admin removes the blacklist.

I would expect this site to be removed from the blacklist promptly. Once that is done, the merits of including or omitting the links can then properly take place on the template's talk page.

Remember, Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy and Anyone can edit. kenj0418 (talk) 06:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd love to edit the blacklist and remove the entry, but it seems to be justifiably restricted. As such, thise with authority to edit this list and add entries need to provide more than a link to their own rambling suspicions as a valid justification. Please add my name to the whitelist of people who feel that the legistorm.com is not spam and should not be blacklisted as such. As stated elsewhere, there are two distinct issues: 1) is it appropriate for an editor, who may be associated with the legistorm.com website, to add hundreds of links to the site; and 2) does the legistorm.com website, which provides neutral and objective details re congressional staff salaries qualify as spam, such that it should not be included as a link on any Wikipedia article under any and all circumstances. You might find support that case 1 qualifies as spam. As for case 2, there has been no valid justification offered for a permanent block for the site nor any explanation as to why the site should be included on a blacklist so that neutral third party editors could add it as a link or reference. It seems clear that consensus is that legistorm.com is not spam. That is, if consensus has any meaning here. Alansohn (talk) 08:23, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll not deal with this one myself but I do not see the consensus you refer to. There has been excessive linkage to this site that has been removed by members of the community. That is why the site is listed. That there should be a constructive discussion about it seems right and proper. It would be good if people just stopped for a moment and looked at generating light rather than heat. The "demands" to remove this are rather less then helpful in the reactions they will generate. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not that your two cents is worth much, but where exactly do you propose that this constructive discussion take place, if not right here, and what exactly has not been constructive?. I'm unsure what you mean by your bizarre threat, but it seems hard to imagine that making requests here to remove the blacklist entry will trigger some sort of irrational retaliatory response, even based on recent experience. Given that there has been a clear explanation of why there are perfectly legitimate reasons to link to the site, and that there is a clear consensus of editors that there is no justification for the site to be treated as spam, it seems to be a rather appropriate conclusion that its time to remove legistorm.com from the blacklist. Trying to put the best spin on a poorly executed set of actions, it might have been justified -- in the heat of the kneejerk response to what was perceived as a spam attack -- to take precautionary measures to block links to the site. Stopping for a moment, and given the opportunity to consider the site and its appropriate uses, no valid justification exists -- or has been offered -- to prevent all third-party editors to use the link in relevant articles. That's not a "demand"; it's just common sense. Alansohn (talk) 08:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There was no "constructive discussion" to have the site blacklisted, and there is certainly no consensus to have it blacklisted. Since it's supposed to be a last resort, shouldn't the burden be with those who believe it is spam? As shown in the links Hu12 provides, most users saw great value in the site—even to the point of willfully ignoring the obvious COI involved in inserting the links. Certainly non-COI users should be allowed to use the site on its own merits. Cool Hand Luke 08:52, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Given that you say Not that your (my) two cents is worth much I'll certainly not bother you again. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:00, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Gah! I didn't say that. Look, this process is frustrating for us because we're productive editors. We understand that we should be vigilant against spam, but this site is not spam. It was added as spam, but that doesn't make the site itself Platonically spammy. Elsewhere on this page you talk about carefully considering the requests of productive wikipedians who make a showing of encyclopedic merit. That's us, and the site is meritorious! I'm sorry if we haven't been as polite as we could be, but I'm asking "please," and I'll certainly add "thank you" afterwards. What more could you want? Cool Hand Luke 09:14, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My observations:

There was discussion prior to blacklisting.
There was ample hard evidence of massive spamming by Storming Media LLC.
The evidence takes a lot of work to wade through if one doesn't assume good faith on the investigators' part. Based on having done this sort of thing before, it probably took the people that investigated it many hours to step through all those edits.
As spamming goes, this was big -- one of the biggest of the year.
The traffic this many links bring to legistorm is likely worth tens of thousands of dollars in annual ad revenue.
The number of legistorm links added by Storming Media LLC >> any added by any legitimate editors
We can't allow our editorial decisions to be overwhelmed by others' desire to enhance their bottom line.
Storming Media LLC's use of sock/meatpuppets and the lack of any other content added shows the Storming Media accounts were acting in bad faith. They're not interested in building our encyclopedia, just building Storming Media LLC.
Guy was not abusive blacklisting it under these circumstances. I might have done the same thing.
A number of editors dislike Guy and picked this action of his to illustrate of their concerns that he's an abusive admin.
Whether or not Guy's an abusive admin, his critics picked the wrong admin action to make their case, (perhaps because they were unaware of the prior discussions about the link.)
Likewise none of the other editors involved in investigating and cleaning this up acted in bad faith, notwithstanding the things said about them. The folks involved in all of this spend hours a day quietly going about finding big spam campaigns and cleaning them up. Thousands of links per week and <1% get questioned by legitimate editors. At some point someone needs to thank them rather than assume bad faith when the occasional action blows up in their face. In particular, I'm thinking of Hu12 and Herby.
This domain has some editorial merit.
Some of the supporters of this link were unaware of it before this incident.
Just because a site has ads doesn't make it a bad site. Most news media sites have ads. The issue here was Storming Media LLC's actions, not their site quality.
Whitelisting one or two links makes sense. Whitelisting 535 doesn't; in that case, the link should be removed from the blacklist if the community wants that many links.
Everyone's all riled up right now.
The Free World will still live with this domain on Wikipedia's blacklist for a few days or weeks. I suggest we just leave the matter as it stands for now, enjoy the holiday season and then revisit the issue quietly in January. Until then, count me as another editor strongly opposed to removing this link from the blacklist.--A. B. ^(talk) 13:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The analysis is an interesting whitewashing of the entire incident:

There were a small number of individual editors involved
There was no current editing going on when the editor blocks were initiated.
In the initial hysteria, no investigation was done of the individuals involved.
No contact was made to the individuals involved in editing to determine if there might be a legitimate good faith justification for adding these links.
No warning was made that continued activity might result in a block.
JzG used his own personal biases in refusing to unblock one of the individuals involved in adding such links, citing the fact that the editor seemed angry, frustrated and had the nerve to have political views that differed from his own.
The legistorm.com was blacklisted hours after the wave of additions to the site had already ended.
Legistorm.com is one of thousands of websites linked from Wikipedia that might have the audacity to make money if people link to the site and have the nerve to find useful information there.
The domain offers neutral, non-partisan information, was already linked before the "spam" started and has a clear consensus that it has editorial merit.
Many third-party editors have indicated that they have used and intend to use the site and have provided clear, cogent, rational explanations for why the site should be removed from the blacklist.
"Whitelisting one or two links makes sense" only if there are only two of 535 Congressman with paid staff. Other than that it isn't even a figleaf of a solution.
Many other sites linked from Congressional webpages and are included in the CongLinks template.
No explanation has been proffered as to why the block should continue ad infinitum.
No process has been offered of how the gang of admins supporting the blacklist and covering up for JzG's abusive actions will review the evidence indicating that the site should be removed.
No timeframe has even been mentioned and the excuse that it will take a lot of time, is just that, an excuse.
The WP:POINT is only made worse by refusing to address and undo the damage promptly.
The Free World will still live with this domain removed from the blacklist.
The claim that it will live with it blacklisted has to be the most pathetic rationalization I have ever heard to justify any action, let alone an abusive block of an entire website.
The Free World will live if Wikipedia shut down this afternoon.
Consensus is meaningless when admins refuse to pursue it or respect it. Alansohn (talk) 14:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alan, my comments were not intended to be a "whitewashing" nor really even a comment about the Free World. Like most human beings, I don't set out to make "pathetic" comments, even if it seems that way to you. I did mention a timeframe. I did not recommend the block remain "ad infinitum" -- just until after the holidays when folks on both sides have had a chance to take a break and and then we can discuss this rationally. Cheers, --14:38, 20 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by A. B. (talk • contribs)

"Just leave it til after the holidays"? What kind of argument is that?!? Either the site contains useful, non-biased information, or it doesn't. If it's the former, remove it from the blacklist now. If it's the latter, leave it there forever. Waiting until after the holidays, (and hoping those of us agitating for its removal will forget about it) isn't a helpful suggestion at all. Are people looking at the pages of members of congress simply going to "wait until after the holidays"? I hardly think so. This should be taken care of straightaway. Mr Which ??? 15:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to add my two cents. This blacklisting of a legitimate site should be reversed immediately. Legistorm is a legit, neutral, non-partisan site, from which helpful information to the project can be gleaned. If we blacklist every site that is ad-supported, the first to go would be every major newspaper in America. Mr Which ??? 15:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why is it that people who think the blacklist was legitimate are the only ones proposing a way through this situation? There was obviously a spam problem regardless of whether or not the site has merit -- if blacklisting isn't appropriate, can someone suggest what the appropriate response would be? Shell ^babelfish 15:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- The solution is, "Remove it from the blacklist." The blacklist is a move of last resort. This was clearly not added as a "last resort." One question for you: how is it "spam" if the site has merit? Would it be "spamming" if a movie-loving SPA went through and added IMDB links for various actors' articles that did not have them already? Of course not. Yet, it somehow is called "spam" when similarly helpful links are added to a member of congress' site? That makes less than no sense. No, I don't even concede that your premise is true. These links are not spam now, and were not spam when they were added to the articles. Not every mass-addition of links is "spam." Mr Which??? 15:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Except that isn't what happened... This does not appear to be some random SPA... and yes this was spamming.--Isotope23 ^talk 16:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless of any merits of the site, it is painfully obvious that the site owners engaged in a willful spam-a-thon of this site all over Wikipedia. Personally, I think they got off very easy with a 2 week block on their IP given the nature of their edits... but that is another issue entirely. The blacklisting of this site, in light of the actions of those adding the site was an entirely appropriate response to the spamming. That isn't to say that at some point the blacklisting should be lifted and the site possibly added back to Wikipedia articles by good-faith editors, but demands that this blacklisting be immediately lifted so those editors can immediately proxy this back into the articles it was removed from isn't particularly helpful. The blacklist shouldn't be used as "punishment" of the spammers, but at the same time, there is no reason to lift the blacklisting without some reasonable discussion somewhere (perhaps the Village Pump) about if, how, and where, to link this site in Wikipedia. I'll also say that to me, the ads are a non-issue.--Isotope23 ^talk 16:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- "Spam" refers to links without merit. These links have great merit. As such, legistorm.com should be immediately removed from the list. No one has ever answered my question as to whether massive additions of IMDB pages from an SPA account would be considered spam. Please answer that question, as it bears directly on this case. Mr Which ??? 16:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm? Last time I checked spam isn't a judgment of content merit so much as a statement of action. Spam is unsolicited bulk; content can have merit and still be spammed. This site may be something that can be usefully integrated into Wikipedia articles, but that doesn't change the fact that it was spammed here by individuals with a pretty clear conflict of interest and blacklisting it to stop that from happening was probably a very good decision. Having a reasoned discussion of where to go from here and if, how, when to add this content to articles is also a good decision now. Personally though I'd suggest a bit of a cool down from both sides before that discussion takes place.--Isotope23 ^talk 16:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm? The last I checked, the spam blacklist was a last resort, not a preventative measure to keep legit users from adding a site that has merit into appropriate articles. The only thing that the link continuing to be misplaced on the blacklist (even for a "short time" while everyone "cools down", whatever that means) will be that a legit link will be kept out of appropriate articles. In other words, it's a net detriment to the project to do what you're saying. Two other things: Please comment on the proposed solution below. It seems quite reasonable. Please answer the question about IMDB. Mr Which ??? 16:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple editors tied to the site being added were adding this link en mass to articles. That is an appropriate time to blacklist, even if only temporarily. Your IMDB example is apples and oranges... unless you are hypothetically saying the owners of IMDB are the SPAs spamming the links. I will say though that I personally, tend to take a rather dim view of any external link spamming. Beyond that, I've already proposed my own solution above (i.e. everyone calm down and stop with the thinly veiled sarcasm, discuss the merits of the link in the appropriate venue, and implement accordingly).--Isotope23 ^talk 16:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed solution

Define that legistorm.com link is appropriate from congressional and campaign articles. Remove from blacklist. Try it for a week. Expect to see around 500+ links added over that period to congressional and campaign articles to be added by third-party editors. If new SPA "spammers" come along, consider communicating with them and blocking, if appropriate, as a last resort. Once links have been added, most interested editors will move on. If the world doesn't end, problem is over. Admins will be able to find other, more genuine crises to address. Alansohn (talk) 16:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as this seems quite reasonable. I still don't see what's the problem with an SPA that cares about congressional matters mass-adding helpful links, but I can compromise on that side for now. Mr Which ??? 16:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC) (I took the liberty of bolding the "Porposed solution" test above. Hope you do not mind.)[reply]

The problem with permitting mass addition of links is that it's a slippery slope.. for instance the editors involved here believed they were adding helpful links. That said.. If people agree that this site meets our requirements for WP:RS and WP:EL, I don't have a problem with this specific site being removed from the blacklist as long as an SPA doesn't return & bulk add the links again. If there is consensus that the site is legit & contains important information perhaps we should consider adding it to one or more of the infoboxes used in relevant articles - or create a template for adding the link (as we've done with IMDB and a few other sites). For the time being, CoiBot will pick up all of the new additions and record them in one place - so it should be fairly easy to see what is happening. --Versa geek 16:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An SPA that cares about congressional matters is great. An SPA that cares about promoting the website he or she owns or participates in, thereby gaining more ad revenue (regardless of whether this is the primary intention), is not. Gracenotes^T § 16:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That is an extremely bad faith assumption, and involves some crystal-balling as to motives from you that is not appropriate for this discussion. I was assuming good faith in that someone who works for a website concerned with legislative matters most likely cares deeply about congressional matters. Please assume good faith with regards to the contributors. Not every SPA is a bad-faith account. Many are, but not all.Mr Which ??? 16:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Discarding intentions and reviewing the SPAs' actions, mass inclusion of links from someone affiliated with the website is, by precedent, still not something allowed. If we have assurance that site owners/employees/volunteers will not add links, but rather established editors here, it should be fine. Gracenotes^T § 16:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Alansohn's proposed solution above. kenj0418 (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like a job for the AntiSpamBot, which will revert unregistered and brand new users who spam the link, while still allowing established editors to add it to pages. - Ehheh (talk) 16:45, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose removal from the blacklist per our Spam Guideline, our Wikipedia is Not a Soapbox for Promotion Policy, our Conflict of Interest Guideline and my earlier comments. I'm open to reconsidering my opinion in January once everyone's calmed down; Ehheh has a potentially good idea.

There's still the issue of hundreds of other links added by Storming Media LLC to their other sites. Nothing has been done about their removal or about preventing the addition of more. The legistorm debates put a stop to anything there.

I find it depressing that 5 sockpuppets and a corporate IP adding links on behalf of Storming Media LLC are being defended as innocent, good faith editors. Meanwhile Hu12 is being accused of acting with bad faith in the matter and harshly criticized for trying to do the right thing in his eyes on Wikipedia's behalf. Hu12 is not some sort of enemy, just another human being and Wikipedia editor.

Something to reflect on over the holidays. --A. B. ^(talk) 17:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose too & with A. B.

This does not mean I do not want to see a constructive solution to this however - I do. But it will take a little more goodwill & understanding than has been apparent from some so far.

There has been excessive disruptive linkage, there is some value & validity in the site & some hard working editors are also being disrupted.

Being rude, unpleasant, aggressive will not be likely to lead to a solution that will appeal to all.

My earlier contribution was derided - I'd like to think that we can all try for a little more "good faith" --Herby ^{talk thyme} 19:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Wikipedia is NOT a "repository of links" or a "vehicle for advertising". Wikipedia policy is quite clear on this type of abuse, and is very reson we have a spam-whitelist.--Hu12 (talk) 19:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - These links have obvious merit. If someone from Project Gutenberg "spammed" us with links to their full-text versions of various literary works, I doubt anyone would be so upset. Except in this case, congressional staff salary information is not so easy to find with Google. I am disappointed that there are so many admins who support delisting that do not have the courage to delist it themselves. Boowah59 (talk) 05:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Look, I don't deny that blacklisting the site was a legitimate and good faith judgment. I have not once said that Guy abused his power. That said, I see no sane reason this should wait. Ehheh's proposal is good. I would therefore like to propose an RfC along the lines of Should legistorm.com be removed from the blacklist in light of its neutrally-presented content (See WP:EL links to include #3) in spite of being initially added by mass spammers? Any proposed refinements to the questions we should ask? Cool Hand Luke 20:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An RfC would be a good idea... if only to take it to other editors uninvolved in this discussion; there seems to be a bit of bad blood and entrenchment here, likely due to the tenor of some of the comments made here, and a fresh perspective would be helpful. Ehheh's suggestion is an excellent one should this be removed from the blacklist. Personally I'd word it as Should legistorm.com be removed from the blacklist based solely on content (See WP:EL links to include #3) in spite of being initially added by mass spammers? Let editors make their own decisions on how neutral the content is by actually reading the link rather than suggesting POV/NPOV to them. --Isotope23 ^talk 20:59, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- I think that's exactly what happened. We would have been better off it this hadn't been used as a vehicle to criticize Guy and accuse him (and possibly others) of admin abuse. I agree he was working in good faith, and the accusations weren't helpful. Your wording is better because it's less leading. Thanks. Cool Hand Luke 21:04, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you start the RfC, I'll certify it with you. We're in a bit of an "echo chamber" here, where even a legitimate compromise like Alansohn proposed is shot down. As you said, there's no rational reason to wait. I have communicated with Jowers over e-mail, and I don't think there's any real reason to worry that anyone is going to "spam" this legitimate link again. But from the hardening of the positions I see above, with regards to Alan's attempt to propose a solution, I think an RfC might be our only option to get things moving. This "after the holidays" stuff has no rational basis at all. Mr Which ??? 21:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would help if the proposal being made were not done with a dose of sardonicism, and I think Luke it the best one to undertake an RfC.--Isotope23 ^talk 21:21, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand the connection between Jowers and legistorm. --A. B. ^(talk) 21:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is one, other that Guy was involved in both situations and both involved political external links. Jowers was not adding Legistorm related links from what I see... Those were being added by other editors and an IP that has already been communicated with via the unblock mailing list.--Isotope23 ^talk 21:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have the two issues confused in my mind. Jowers was indef blocked by Guy for "spamming." I confused him with one of the five "related SPAs" referred to above. My apologies for the confusion. Mr Which ??? 21:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(To Isotope, RE: "Sardonic) Other than the last two sentences--which could be left off without changing the substance of the proposal--the proposal was sound, succinct, and rational. The sardonicism (nice word, BTW ;) ) was simply an add-on, and probably done in response to similar "the world won't end without this link" rhetoric from those who support keeping the link blacklisted. Mr Which ??? 21:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to get involved in further characterizing other editor's actions; I'll simply leave it that a neutrally worded RfC opened by a person not substantially involved here, minus rhetoric, is much more likely to achieve a consensus everyone can live with if not agree upon.--Isotope23 ^talk 21:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

At any rate, per Isotope23's wise suggestion, I think we should wait at least 24 hours for an RfC. That will do two things: (1) force another night's rest, which should cool-down both sides, and (2) allow for more commentary on the RfC question.

Poor framing can make an RfC useless. I don't want the RfC to put any admins on the defensive, or to be used as a forum to attack Guy. An RfC question should squarely ask about the pivotal disagreement. I take it that the problem is counterbalancing massive spamming abuse against the site's utility, but I might have missed something. Cool Hand Luke 21:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. While I think the best solution would be for some admin to be bold and remove it, per the fact that it's useful and improves the encyclopedia, it doesn't appear that any admins here are willing to do that. As such, I'll certify the RfC with you, in whatever form you choose to frame it. I agree with your concerns about it not becoming a forum to attack Guy. Though I have taken issue with a few of his decisions recently, this RfC should point squarely at the usefulness of this link, and whether or not it needs to be blacklisted. Thanks in advance for putting it together. Regards, Mr Which ??? 21:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between being bold and starting a wheel war. Three admins, who are expert spam fighters, have already expressed opposition to removing the site. In this case, I think we need more outside comment and less direct confrontation. Cool Hand Luke 21:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mr Which, Are you suggesting disruption in pursuit of WP:POINT ?. the suggestion more preferable is as Cool Hand Luke mentioned, to attempt to get input from impartial editors and/or administrators.--Hu12 (talk) 22:16, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "consensus", a word used frequently above. I checked the WP:ANI threads as well as this one. It's a little fuzzy, since some people did not exactly say "this is spam" or "this is not spam". Over 20 editors have expressed themselves on these links somewhere in one of these threads. A couple were neutral and slightly more than half seemed to think the links were spam. Some of those that seemed to think the links were spam appeared to think the links could be useful if the spam behaviour could be controlled. So a slight majority seems to think these links were spam (per the WP:SPAM definition) and a slight majority seems to think that, added by regular editors, these links have value. So as I see it, at this moment in time, there's no consensus here on anything.

Based on my experience with other disputes around here that get people upset, as people take a break and come back to this topic later, consensus will begin to form. It'll happen faster if some olive branches are extended. --A. B. ^(talk) 21:58, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to offer a compromise filled with both wisdom and sarcasm, only to have my deep brooding sense of cynicism completely fulfilled. Can any among those naysayers who want to push this off until after the holidays specify what exactly is supposed to happen between now and then that will engender the despamification of the legistorm.com site? And which holidays are we referring too? Is this Christmas and New Years, or should we throw Martin Luther King Day into the mix, as well? Do we observe Catholic / Protestant Christmas or the Eastern Orthodox / Coptic version in putting off this issue for no apparent reason? Is there any connection between the forthcoming commemoration of the virgin birth of a widely-popular lord and savior and the rebirth of legistorm.com as a valid external link? Will I run out of questions? Alansohn (talk) 22:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the problem is that your sarcasm and wit went wrong somewhere. Maybe people took your comments to heart. Appear to cut folks down and a mutually agreeable solution gets harder.

As for which holiday, mostly I was trying to find a way, as I already tried to explain on your talk page, to get people calmed down and working together towards a solution. Sometimes taking a break from an issue helps. So Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Three Kings Day, even Festivus -- I'm open to any of those holidays, too. One way or another, most of those involved in this discussion are probably taking some sort of wiki break anyways in the next 10 days. The point is to try to find a way to figure this out collegially.

I'm open to other ideas to defuse the solution. Ultimately, it's worse for the encyclopedia to have a bunch of normally high volume, useful editors upset than it is to either keep or delete these links. --A. B. ^(talk) 22:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Allowing a blacklist to remain in place, with an illogical and patronizing "wait until after the holidays" excuse, only allows an unjustifiable situation to further fester, guaranteeing that you will keep a bunch of normally high volume, useful editors upset. The best way to address the issue is to address the issue, not to push it off until some unspecified time when there is clearly nothing to justify the delay. Alansohn (talk) 22:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please Don't marginalize others . If you dismiss other points of view, or attempt to marginalize the people who hold them, your position may actually be the marginal one. Especialy if "the truth" becomes "what one wants to hear", rather than "what's best for the project".--Hu12 (talk) 23:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alan, you may very well be right about all this. Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, --A. B. ^(talk) —Preceding comment was added at 23:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, back to the RfC question

I think it's unproductive to question the motives of editors. It's clear that no one is being intentionally obstructive, and I beg those who want the site un-blacklisted to stay focused on the merits of the links, not the contributers. WP:CIVIL. Coming here on a whirlwind after the spam attack put these admins on the defensive, and we should try to ease tensions. For that reason, I would add this subtext to the RfC:

Should legistorm.com be removed from the blacklist based solely on content (See WP:EL links to include #3) in spite of being initially added by mass spammers?

Note: this is not a forum for critisizing other editors. Uncivil ccomments will be plated under a {{hat}} and warnings issued as appropriate.

I also intend to enforce that beginning now. I won't tolerate further incivility. Comments? Cool Hand Luke 23:56, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is a legitimate question. Do you intend to enforce that on Hu12 as well? He has accused me of being "disruptive and tendentious" at A.B.'s talkpage. Does that (accusing someone of being disruptive and tendentious simply because they disagree vigorously with you) not qualify as incivility? Until these accusations bubbled up, I was not angry at all. Now I am extremely so. I'm of a mind that you can disagree with others (even vigorously so) without attacking the man. I feel as if a few editors have attempted to make it about who is supporting removal than if removal is the right option, based upon the accusations leveled against me at A.B.'s talkpage. Mr Which ??? 01:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Now to the wording of the RfC. I have no serious issues with how the text is worded. The last bit about "mass spammers" is probably unnecessary, but if that's what it takes to get a useful website unblacklisted, so be it. Mr Which??? 01:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Agree with Luke and I will absolutely back him on the civility issue. We've had quite enough incivility distracting from the real issues here.--Isotope23 ^talk 02:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely yes - These links have obvious merit. If someone from Project Gutenberg "spammed" us with links to their full-text versions of various literary works, I doubt anyone would be so upset. Except in this case, congressional staff salary information is not so easy to find with Google. I am disappointed that there are so many admins who support delisting that do not have the courage to delist it themselves. Boowah59 (talk) 05:56, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Your last point is what I was referring to above when I said I wished some admin would just be bold and remove it. I was then accused of encouraging "disruption", so I now support the RfC. Mr Which??? 14:02, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Being bold is great... sometimes. In this particular situation where the matter has been a bit contentious, having a discussion and a consensus to point back to is a much preferable path to take. Just because an admin has the ability to delist at will doesn't mean it is a very good idea for one to do so when there isn't a clear consensus. I'd be happy to delist this once a consensus has been established. If everyone states their opinions calmly, reasonably, and minimizes the jibes at other editors, I don't think consensus should be difficult to reach or take very long to achieve.--Isotope23 ^talk 14:23, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - In my view, this is the ideal time to be bold, as there seems to be no real dissent as to whether the link is valuable, but rather whether the way it was added was proper. As such, a bold move wouldn't necessarily create much drama, especially since the blacklist is supposed to be a last resort, and there is no clear consensus for keeping the link there. That was my only point. Mr Which??? 15:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - No, the three editors above expressed their opposition specifically to re-adding the template. They probably haven't changed their minds, they just haven't edited for a few hours. At any rate, I'm poisting the RFC below. Cool Hand Luke 21:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

legistorm.com de-blacklisting RfC

Should legistorm.com be removed from the blacklist based solely on content in spite of being initially added by mass spammers? (See WP:EL links to include #3)

Note: this is not a forum for criticizing other editors. Uncivil comments will be placed under a {{hat}} and warnings issued as appropriate.

Yes; the site neutrally presents data beyond what we would host here. It appears to satisfy our guidelines both as a reference and an external link from U.S. Congressional articles. It appears to be the definitive online source for Congressional staff salary information, and it also hosts primary financial disclosure documents. The site was added by spammers, but the problem of future spam can be ameliorated by listing the site with AntiSpamBot, as suggested by User:Ehheh. Even while the site was being spammed, long-time editors recognized its merits. (See this ANI report) Blacklisting the site was an appropriate countermeasure, but de-blacklisting the site is now appropriate. Cool Hand Luke 21:11, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; the site presents data helpful to the project, unavailable in other places, in a non-biased manner. Mr Which ??? 21:19, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support removal as recommended above, a clear distinction needs to be made between alleged spamming from those with a connection to the site, and the present issue of making useful, relevant and encyclopedic information available to third-party Wikipedia editors. No other source has this information, and this information should be neutrally available both as a link and as a reference on congressional articles. While it may have been possible to justify the blacklist in the initial hysteria of a possible spam attack, now that the dust has settled, no valid justification exists to retain the blacklist. Alansohn (talk) 21:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I will be away for much of the next 10 days. Here are my comments:
1. It appears that whitelisting these links or removing them from the spam blacklist is a foregone conclusion.
2. I think I read somewhere that the whitelist consumes a lot more overhead than the blacklist. We're not supposed to worry about overhead normally, but if we go to add 535 links to the whitelist, it may be an issue if what I'm saying is true. In that case, blacklist removal may be the right thing. There are some pages somewhere on either Meta or MediaWiki that discuss this. If overhead's not an issue, then I suggest whitelisting. The link's proponents should then compile the list of URLs for some admin to add to the whitelist. Once an admin gets the list, it should be easy to put them in whitelist's regex format if they're handy with a text editor.
3. I don't know how Storming Media arranges their website. If it's along the lines of
  - legistorm.com/SalaryPages/congressman438.html
  then whitelisting is a no-brainer, since just one whitelist entry is required.
4. If the decision is made to remove the site from the blacklist, then it should only be done after the links' advocates have the list together of 535 good URLs. Otherwise it will make future spam detection and cleanup harder.
5. There needs to be some sort of bot monitoring and recording all link additions.
6. Bot or not, the editors that most want these links need to take responsibility for policing any spam we get from Storming Media LLC. If they can't confine these links to just those added by established editors without a conflict of interest, then the links will have to go back on the blacklist. From experience, bots don't reverse all link additions.
7. The RfC record should show that there was massive COI spamming; these were not innocent sockpuppets, contrary to prevailing opinion. That will make it easier to address any recurrences. It's also a precedent for dealing with the rest of Storming Media LLC's spam, which has not even been dealt with yet. Here's a link to the spamming evidence. It represents many hours of Hu12 stepping through hundreds of editor diffs:
  - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Storming Media LLC Spamming
    - 5 sock/meatpuppeting single purpose accounts, plus a Storming Media LLC IP. Why bother with sockpuppets if you don't think someone will question your edits?
    - >600 links spammed.
    - No other content added besides links.
8. I recommend running a checkuser on the accounts involved. I think this is important for the record and should be part of the RfC record. Any sockpuppets should be indefinitely blocked.
9. Somewhere there's a list of the entire Storming Media LLC IP range. I recommend blocking it indefinitely or at least for several years. I know long IP blocks are anathema around here, but it's in the best interest of editorial control of our encyclopaedia. It's the encyclopaedia everyone can edit, but not from the offices of a known spammer.
10. Should the RfC include the other 4 domains? We have over two hundred more links that no one has even started to go through. The editors accused of "abusive" behaviour and "bad faith" backed off of cleaning any of these up or blacklisting them.
  1. Our 200+ patentstorm.us links, for instance, go to pages that offer nothing more than scraped content from the US Patent and Trademark's free available website. Nothing more, that is, except ads. Example:
    - Patent storm page
    - US Patent Office page
  2. Then there are our 40+ stormingmedia.us links:
    - stormingmedia.us' abstract (18.95 to buy the full document from Storming Media LLC
    - Defense Technical Information Center's abstract of the same document
      - DTIC's full length version available for free
11. Blacklisting on meta blocks a domain not just on all 700+ Wikimedia wikis, but also every one of Wikia's 1000s of wikis and a substantial portion of the 20,000+ other, unrelated wikis that run on MediaWiki software and elect to incorporate our blacklist in their filtering. If blacklisted on meta instead of just en.wikipedia, Storming Media would have to request whitelisting on each individual wiki where they wanted links. There are also reports that some search engines may be using the meta list in evaluating web sites for link-spamming penalization. It's possible that we could blacklist on meta, then whitelist here. If so, that would really stick it to Storming Media. It would be good for both sides (them and us) if they somehow know better than to "play chicken" with us on spamming more links once we take them off our local blacklist. Blacklisting on meta for such a reason is antithetical to our whole way of doing things (user blocks are preventative, etc.) but not out of the question if they insist on forcing our hand.
12. It may be worth someone (mature) sending a carefully worded, professional, nonhostile e-mail or letter to the CEO of Storming Media and laying out our concerns. (It should state that the sender is acting purely on their own as a volunteer and not officially on behalf of the Foundation.) I've done this before with publishers that have spammed useless links to otherwise useful domains with valuable references for our articles. I didn't threaten or mention all the collateral damage of a meta blacklisting -- I just laid out that we wanted to be able to link to their sites but that uncontrollable spam would force us to blacklist them; this would be a loss for both sides. It could also be a potential PR embarrassment should someone like a competitor or unhappy Congressional staffer use Wikiscanner and publicize their spamming.
13. I hate to sound pessimistic but I've seen so many of these. As of about a month ago, I had been involved with cleaning up 1750 spam domains. Once they've spammed enough times ("tasted enough spam blood") and seen the traffic increases on their sites, 80% of spammers just can't resist spamming us again sooner or later. That's true whether it's Leisure Suit Larry peddling Viagra or an urbane PR flack with an Oxford diploma and a Harvard MBA. Really your best chance of pulling this off is getting the CEO interested -- if he's not part of the problem. legistorm.us seems like a "classy" enough operation but the two other domains look more like classic spammy sites; I hope that doesn't reflect the organisation's values.

I know my comments have been long, but then this is a much more complex case than most regular editors deal with. Big, complex spam campaigns are why we have a WikiProject just for spam and 10 to 20 editors that specialize in spotting and cleaning these things up. Likewise, I know it involves considerable work by the link's advocates, both upfront and on an ongoing basis. I'm afraid that just goes with the territory when you can't use the blacklist on something this big.

Good luck and Season's Greetings, --A. B. ^(talk) 22:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, this RfC does not and should not include the other domains. I think patent storm should be blacklisted. Unlike this site, it has no added value. I'm totally baffled why legistorm has been blacklisted, but not the other sites, and I have no idea what being accused of bad faith has to do with it.

Checkuser the spam accounts against who, exactly? I don't think anyone doubts they are spam accounts whether or not they were all done from the same IP. Cool Hand Luke 22:21, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You'll notice that I never denied the links were added in a spam campaign, that the RfC question clearly states this fact, and that I've already volunteered to watch the links. Cool Hand Luke 22:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't doubt these were spam accounts either, however that assertion has been has been disputed several times by others, which is why suggested checkusering them. If everyone agrees these were corporate spam accounts, then I agree, don't bother checkusering.

I agree it makes things cleaner and neater to only address the legistorm links in this RfC. --A. B. ^(talk) 22:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, remove from the blacklist. Our purpose is to improve the encyclopedia, and links from all individual U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative articles would be an improvement. Alansohn's comment at 21:22, 21 December makes an excellent case that this site is valuable for Wikipedia to link to. I think A.B. makes a number of very good points in his long post above, although "sticking it to Storming Media" isn't one of them. We shouldn't cut off our nose to spite our face. Encyclopedia-building must take precedence over punishing/protecting unless lack of protection would harm the encyclopedia more -- and that case hasn't been made. Noroton (talk) 01:42, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Well as I said, "Blacklisting on meta for such a reason is antithetical to our whole way of doing things". We request blacklisting on Meta for a specific set of reasons where it's more appropriate than blacklisting locally. Collateral damage is not a factor in Meta admins' decision-making -- they don't try to cause it and, by the time they're forced to blacklist, they don't worry about causing it either. The only consideration is maintaining the integrity of Wikimedia's various Wikipedias, Wikiquotes, etc. In the particular case where we wanted to keep 535 good links but they used blacklist removal to keep spamming more links, playing hardball like that would be another option to getting rid of the good links we wanted to keep. That's an unusual step that would involve multiple editors all agreeing here and on meta and the primary reason would be content integrity. The Meta community's culture frowns on playing games and wary of en.wikipedia wikidramas spilling over to the rest of the Wikimedia world; it would be hard to find a Meta admin to cooperate unless they saw a good reason.

It's something to keep in mind, not something to plan on. --A. B. ^(talk) 03:07, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Er. One reason this whitelist idea seems to strange to me is that we're contemplating adding the same links that were spammed. On related, when was this added to the meta spam list? Cool Hand Luke 03:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

legistorm was never added to the Meta blacklist. We were discussing a hypothetical strategy, fist mentioned in #11 above, for dealing with Storming Media should they try to exploit any removal from the blacklist by dumping more links on us besides the 535 that editors want. --A. B. ^(talk) 14:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, delist - This site doesn't just have "some" editorial merit. As far as I can tell, they are the only place that has compiled staff salary information for all of the members of congress, over several years. Even if they were wrong to go and add their links to too many articles, WP:IAR exists so that we can always go by the spirit rather than the letter of the law, and they are well within the spirit of Wikipedia's policies. MilesAgain (talk) 01:15, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that we DELIST NOW, as there doesn't seem to be any real resistance to the idea. Mr Which??? 17:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Support DELIST NOW - With clear consensus supporting making the site accessible, and given the lack of any justification to retain the site on the blacklist, it's time to take appropriate action and remove the blacklist entry for legistorm.com. Alansohn (talk) 19:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This RFC has gone a week without opposition, after voluminous discussion above. I suggest that legistorm.com be removed from the blacklist per WP:SNOW. Boowah59 (talk) 03:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and delisted it. There seems to be consensus that it was spammed, yes, but editors believe the links do have merit in certain locations, and adding them all to the whitelist is just plain annoying. Everyone can and should keep an eye on [25]. --- RockMFR 07:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good God. Removing RfC. This was pointlessly long and bureaucratic. Cool Hand Luke 08:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Post-blacklist follow-up

The legistorm.com site has been readded to the Template:CongLinks. In turn, CongLinks has been added to all 13 of the members of the House delegation from New Jersey. Feel free to review these entries at Template:NJ-FedRep for sample coding or to confirm that no spam-related tragedies have occurred due to the removal of the entry from the blacklist. Alansohn (talk) 15:25, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Troubleshooting and problems

Problem with the blacklist: I want to use the db-copyvio speedy deletion tag to get an article deleted. The db-copyvio tag has as a parameter the url of the website which is being copied. The website being copied is a blacklisted one, ezinearticles. Oops, the spam filter kicks in. This is bad.--Xyzzyplugh (talk) 19:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try adding without the http:, the checking admin will copy & paste to check it.--Hu12 (talk) 19:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Or don't provide the link in the db template, and add it below it (put <nowiki></nowiki> around). Or put it on my talk page and I'll have a look. -- lucasbfr ^talk 19:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

archive script

Eagle 101 said he had one running on meta, is it possible to get it up and going here?--Hu12 10:27, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Would be good - Eagle hasn't been working on Meta for a while though & I've not seen anything (there was supposed to be a logging script too!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:10, 15 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

blogspot.com

I added countingcrowsnew.blogspot.com, freemodlife.blogspot.com, and googlepackdownload.blogspot.com to the blacklist. I made a previous report about the blogspot sites and they're being spammed by the same blocked sockpuppet who I filed a report about here. Spellcast (talk) 22:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I've also added b5050-raffle.blogspot.com, gpd2008.blogspot.com, and itsleaked.blogspot.com. They were being spammed by the same blocked sock in that report. Spellcast (talk) 05:18, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to blacklist the domain then whitelist where needed but some heavy flak is likely to arrive? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From an en:Wikipedia mission perspective (though possibly not your personal perspective:) a bigger issue than the flak that will be generated is the disruption to editing. I believe a lot of pages, particularly biographies of living people, contain legitimate links to the subject's blog - many of which are hosted on blogspot. Simply blacklisting and then waiting for whitelisting requests will likely

overwhelm the whitelist page here and on meta (which given you are one of the most active admins on both, may not be ideal for you!)
be confusing and frustrating to a lot of editors especially newbies, but also any who are not familiar with the blacklist/whitelist set up
lead to a loss of legitimate links and legitimate edits as people struggle to work out whether to keep their edit and lose the link or the other way round while any whitelist request is ongoing.

I think a move like that will take some careful planning and preparation to avoid these issues (might also help cut down some of the heat). One way or another, I think we need human editors to assess the current blogspot links on article pages and enter appropriate ones on the whitelist before the blacklisting goes into effect. I don't think such a move will cut out most of the flak though, so we might want to ensure there are other admins involved to help spread the weight, and a nicely presented page of evidence of the issues the domain causes to point people to.

Blogspot certainly gets spammed a lot more than most domains, and I support blacklisting. But It's still a domain that has a lot of good links and I think it's important to think through how a move like that will impact people, and to adjust to the situation. -- SiobhanHansa 13:54, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Briefly - needs quite a bit of thought but equally is worth that amount of thought --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are many, many legitimate links to the domain, not only to blogs belonging to article subjects but to blogs belonging to Wikipedia contributors. Better to blacklist individual blogs as needed. --bainer (talk) 16:23, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why Wikipedia contributors would be adding their own blogs? A very limited number of blogs actualy meet WP:RS and even fewer still meet the requirements of WP:EL or are a blog that is the subject of the article or an official page of the articles subject. There are currently 32,916 blogspot.com Blog links on Wikipedia, if whitelisting even a thousand "legitimate links", its worth it.--Hu12 (talk) 17:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You've presented some convincing reasons to leave certain blog links out of Wikipedia, but not a reason to leave all blog links out. Wikipedia contributors might want to link to their blogs because, you know, it is possible for said contributors to frequent websites on the internet other than Wikipedia :P See WP:COMMUNITY. There is also a performance cost to whitelisting and blacklisting; as far as I can tell, 1000 whitelisted entries costs more computationally than 1000 blacklisted entries (instead of using one large regex, which is how the blacklist works, you're doing 1000 individual regex replacements). Gracenotes^T § 18:04, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was under the impression server load was something we were supposed to leave up to the developers to worry about. If they see an issue and ask for a reassessment that would be one thing, but its not a good argument against a tactic without their weight behind it.

The suggestion isn't that all blogs should be banned. the suggestion is that this particular domain gets spammed so much it would be beneficial to the project to blacklist it and only white list the ones that are appropriate. -- SiobhanHansa 18:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hu12 I think it's important not to overstate the case here. Not all of the ~32,000 links (assukming the 1K of good links estimate) that are not legitimate external links or citations will actually be harmful to Wikipedia. While editors' own blogs on their user pages aren't necessary to the project, in the vast majority of cases they do no harm and may help editors fell a bond that connects them to the project. Many more will be links from discussions and projects. While I don't think that's a reason for keeping a domain that is also being spammed so much - it's not the case that we do 32,000 links worth of "good" by removing them. For the most part we only really benefit from the spam and poorly placed article links that go. -- SiobhanHansa 18:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(unindent, crosspost my post from WT:WPSPAM)

The rule \bblogspot\.com is (currently) not on COIBot's monitorlist. Some of the sub-domains have been added via WT:WPSPAM, or have been caught by the automonitoring of COIBot (mainly because the name of the editor is the same as the name of the subdomain on blogspot.com).

Still, a linksearch on the resolved IP of blogspot.com (72.14.207.191) results in a mere 118 results (all COIBot linkreports)! Often the multiple use of the single subdomains is not a cause for blacklisting, as they may only have been used once or twice. Also, I suspect there are tens of thousands of blogspot sub-domains out there, but these are only the links that are caught because the wiki username overlaps with the domainname of the subdomain (or have been reported here). Would this cumulative behaviour warrant blacklisting of \bblogspot\.com .. here, or even on meta? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:37, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriate links may indeed be a problem, though the majority will fail some or many of the policies and guidelines here (or don't even have to be a notable fact, or do not need to be a working link while being mentioned; "Mr. X has a a blog on Blogspot.<ref>primary reliable source stating that the blog is the official blog</ref>"; we are not a linkfarm), and I would argue that the spam/coi part of the problem becomes a bit difficult to control... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:23, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

Crosspost spamlink template for blogspot.com to link this discussion to the linkreports from COIBot. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:31, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please try to remember how frustrating generic, unexpected spam blocks can be for new and incautious editors. Last time I "checked", if you make an edit with Internet Explorer and you post it directly without preview (two things you should never do), then if the spam blacklist comes up your text is gone. Back arrow gets you the original text of the article. Edits that die that way may not get remade, and they may sour the editor on further contributions. I don't think there should be any blocks on top-level domains or large general purpose Internet sites. 70.15.116.59 23:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have to disagree in this case - there's concern that the dynamic IP spamming it is using it to perpetrate scams or send out computer bugs. -Jéské ^{(Blah v^_^v)} 04:55, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way we can realistically do this. blogspot has an Alexa traffic rank of 12 - it's higher than Amazon.com - and has well over 30,000 links on en.wp alone. Adding this would be incredibly disruptive to thousands of articles. Unless someone wants to go through all 32,000 links to find the ones that can be kept so we can whitelist them, there's no way we can do this. The ones that are spam should be removed and blacklisted, but WP:EL and WP:RS are not very good reasons to completely forbid links to a domain. Mr.Z-man 16:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

wartpictures.blogspot.com

Herby added this one added at my request, but the wrong url ended up because I worded my request a bit confusingly. The domain to be blocked question is wartpictures.blogspot.com . See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#skin-disease-pictures.blogspot.com. Han-Kwang (t) 18:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed thanks & no problem I should have checked, cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. But now the spammer changed the URL into wart-pictures.blogspot.com. diff The blacklisting did help for all the other ones, though. Han-Kwang (t) 16:07, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Regex adjusted to include both, and other possible permutations. Mr.Z-man 16:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mr.Z-man, nicely done & appreciated --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:32, 8 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Citing a band's MySpace blog entries as references

I encountered the black list for the first time when I attempted to cite a band's blog entry as a reference in The Capricorns. Is this a restriction applying only to contributions from the unregistered? If not, is there a recommended way to get pass this black listing for such a reference? Thanks. — 68.167.252.41 (contribs) 07:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No the restriction is applying to everyone (I checked your link, and it is indeed blacklisted). blog.myspace.org seems to be blacklisted globally (ie on all projects using the spam filter, not only Wikipedia), you should probably request assistance there. -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That being said, it appears this was done from a request by Jimbo Wales, I don't know the specifics here. -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:10, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - this one has been discussed on Meta and Lucasbfr is correct. That said if an established editor has a valid rationale for a specific link I would certainly consider the request seriously --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the information. I'm an "established editor" in the sense that I've edited a lot of article in the past 4½ years (and created quite a few before the Seigenthaler controversy), but most of my contributions are made without logging in so I may not be established enough for the purpose. In The Capricorns, I introduced this reference for a quote and evidence of the band's inactivity (one of the infobox fields). If you follow that link you'll see the workaround was to link to their main myspace page and reference the blog entry by name. It would be better to link directly to the blog entry itself. I know that MySpace distinguishes "MySpace Music" from other areas of its social network, but I wasn't able to figure out if that would help get pass the spam blacklist. 67.100.128.85 (contribs) (fka 68.167.252.41 (contribs)) 06:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Maybe more correctly then a "named user". Nothing personal about you or your IP address but they are transient things and the IP above only has one day's edits on it. I wouldn't say no solely on that basis but more info about why a link is needed, whether the information can be got elsewhere, what specific link would be needed etc would be required. That said I would suggest you do create an account. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I fail to see the logic in allowing blogspot and disallowing Myspace blogs. Am I missing something? -- lucasbfr ^talk 14:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jimmy Wales ordered the ban on Myspace blogs, and he didn't order any ban on Blogspot blogs. Unfortunately, it's as simple as that. (further reading) Mike R (talk) 14:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Per Mike :) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spam-blacklist blocking.

Spam-blacklist is blocking editing on Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Hot/H. I can not find the link blocked on the page though. Taemyr (talk) 09:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

nm. found it. Taemyr (talk) 09:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

groups-beta.google.com

Would groups-beta.google.com be an appropriate blacklist? (Context in the recent history of Devic's disease) --Arcadian (talk) 01:18, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you mean (& have just removed the link again). Go for some dialogue with the user (seems to have created an account now) before it becomes a case for listing I think. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]