Wikipedia:Spam

This page documents an English Wikipedia [[:Category:Wikipedia WP:SPAM
WP:ADSs|WP:SPAM
WP:ADS]].

Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

[[Category:Wikipedia wp:spam
wp:adss|Spam]]

There are three types of wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, wide-scale external link spamming, and "Wikipedian-on-Wikipedian" spamming or, "canvassing" (also known as "internal spamming" and "cross-posting"). Articles considered advertisements include those that are solicitations for a business, product or service, or are public relations pieces designed to promote a company or individual. Wikispam articles are usually noted for sales-oriented language and external links to a commercial website. However, a differentiation should be made between spam articles and legitimate articles about commercial entities.

Template:Associations/Wikipedia Bad Things

Advertisements masquerading as articles

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

When an article on an otherwise encyclopedic topic has the tone of an advertisement, the article can often be salvaged by rewriting it in a neutral point of view.

External link spamming

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

If you see a bot inserting external links, please consider checking the other language wikis to see if the attack is widespread. If it is, please contact a sysop on the meta-wiki: they can put in a Wikimedia-wide text filter. Any meta sysop can edit the Wikimedia-wide spam blacklist to add or remove the patterns that are recognized by the filter, with the changes taking effect immediately. New links can also be added to the list if a new spammer should start making the rounds.

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

Sometimes, the way an article is phrased attracts spammers. For example,

Social networking has flourished with websites such as Friendster and Myspace, ...
Examples of detergents include Tide, ...
The most notable MLM companies are Amway, ...
Many blogs arose discussing this, see Some blog, ...

because it is far easier to add a link to the end of this sentence than to add encyclopedic content.

Canvassing

Canvassing (also known as "internal spamming" and "cross-posting") is overtly soliciting the opinions of other Wikipedians on their talk pages, and it is controversial. However, it is agreed that disruptive canvassing, even if it seems to be within guidelines below, is never acceptable. On at least one occasion, a provocative attempt to stack an ongoing poll by cross-posting has contributed towards an Arbitration Committee ruling of disruptive behavior that resulted in probation and eventual banning by the community². (Canvassing also includes the use of a custom signature to automatically append some promotional message to every signed post.)

A clarification has been offered on behalf of arbcom: "a reasonable amount of communication about issues is fine. Aggressive propaganda campaigns are not. The difference lies in the disruption involved."

Votestacking

Votestacking is sending mass talk messages out to editors who are on the record with a specific opinion and informing them of an upcoming vote, such as via a userbox or other user categorization. In the case of a re-consideration of a previous debate (such as a "no consensus" result on an AFD or CFD), it is similarly unacceptable to send mass talk messages to editors that expressed only a particular viewpoint on the previous debate, such as only "Keep" voters or only "Delete" voters.

Campaigning

A hard and fast rule does not exist with regard to selectively notifying certain editors who have or are thought to have a predetermined point of view on their talk pages in order to influence a vote. However, the greater the number of editors contacted, the more often this behavior is engaged in, and the greater the resulting disruption, the more likely it is that this behavior will result in warnings and/or sanctions. Some Wikipedians have suggested that informing editors on all "sides" of a debate (e.g., everyone who voted in a previous AfD on a given subject) may be acceptable.

The Arbitration Committee has ruled that "[t]he occasional light use of cross-posting to talk pages is part of Wikipedia's common practice. However, excessive cross-posting goes against current Wikipedia community norms. In a broader context, it is unwiki. "¹. Wikipedia editors are therefore not to engage in aggressive cross-posting in order to influence votes, discussions, requests for adminship, requests for comment, etc.

Friendly notice

If there are a small handful of editors who share your taste and/or philosophy, it is sometimes acceptable to contact them with regard to a specific issue as long as it does not become disruptive. This is more acceptable if they have made an unsolicited request to be kept informed, and absolutely unacceptable if they have asked you to stop.

If you canvass

It is best not to game the system, and instead respect Wikipedia's principle of consensus-building allowing the process to reflect the opinions of editors who were already actively involved in the matter at hand. Canvassing can be deleted on sight by admins and editors alike and, again, individuals found to have disrupted Wikipedia by canvassing are often blocked.

The following guidelines for cross-posting have wide acceptance among Wikipedians:

Clean up your mess. For example, after engaging in cross-posting to promote some election, be sure to remove those cross-posts after the election is complete.
Be open. Don't make cross-posts that initially appear to be individual messages.
Be polite. Wikiquette issues are extra-important when a message is likely to be read by many people.
Avoid redundancy. Rather than copying the same five page essay to twenty talk pages, write it once, in the place where it is most relevant, and then link to it.
Don't use a bot. If you're not willing to spend the time personally sending the messages, don't force us to spend the time reading it (or throwing it away).
Don't attempt to sway consensus by encouraging participation in a discussion by people that you already know have a certain point of view.

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

How not to be a spammer

Sometimes, people come to Wikipedia with the intention of spamming -- creating articles which are mere advertisements or self-promotion, or spewing external links to a Web site over many articles.

Some people spam Wikipedia without meaning to. That is, they do things which Wikipedians consider to be spamming, without realizing that their actions are not in line with building an encyclopedia. A new editor who owns a business may see that there are articles about other businesses on Wikipedia, and conclude that it would be appropriate to create his own such article. A Web site operator may see many places in Wikipedia where his or her site would be relevant, and quickly add several dozen links to it.

The following guidelines are intended to suggest how not to be a spammer -- that is, how to mention a Web site, product, business, or other resource without appearing to the Wikipedia community that you are trying to abuse Wikipedia for self-promotion.

Review your intentions. Wikipedia is not a space for personal promotion or the promotion of products, services, Web sites, fandoms, ideologies, or other memes. If you're here to tell readers how great something is, or to get exposure for an idea or product that nobody's heard of yet, you're in the wrong place. Likewise, if you're here to make sure that the famous Wikipedia cites you as the authority on something (and possibly pull up your sagging PageRank) you'll probably be disappointed.
Contribute cited text, not bare links. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a link farm. If you have a source to contribute, first contribute some facts that you learned from that source, then cite the source. Don't simply direct readers to another site for the useful facts; add useful facts to the article, then cite the site where you found them. You're here to improve Wikipedia -- not just to funnel readers off Wikipedia and onto some other site, right? (If not, see #1 above.)
The References section is for references. A reference directs the reader to a work that the writer(s) referred to while writing the article. The References section of a Wikipedia article isn't just a list of related works; it is specifically the list of works used as sources. Therefore, it can never be correct to add a link or reference to References sections if nobody editing the text of the article has actually referred to it.
Don't make a new article for your own product or Web site. Most often, when a person creates a new article describing his or her own work, it's because the work is not yet notable enough to have attracted anyone else's attention. Articles of this sort are known as vanity pages and are usually deleted. Wikipedia does indeed have articles about popular products and Web sites, but it is not acceptable to use Wikipedia to popularize them.
Don't gratuitously set off our spam radar. There are certain stylistic behaviors that will say "spam!" loud and clear to anyone who's watching:
- Adding a link to the top of an unordered list. This is an A-number-1, red-flag, hot-button spam sign. It suggests that you want people to look at your link FIRST FIRST FIRST! You wouldn't butt in at the head of a queue; don't put your link first.
- Adding a link that's snazzier than any of the others. If there's a list of products that gives just their names, and you add a product with a short blurb about how great it is, we'll all know why you did it. The same applies to adding a list item that is in a larger or otherwise more prominent font than the other items.
- Adding many links to (or mentions of) the same site or product. Going through an article and adding the name of your product to every paragraph where it seems relevant is just going to attract the revert button.
- Adding the same link to many articles. The first person who notices you doing this will go through all your recent contributions with an itchy trigger finger on the revert button. And that's not much fun.
If your product is truly relevant to an article, others will agree -- try the talk page. We usually recommend that editors be bold in adding directly to articles. But if the above advice makes you concerned that others will regard your contribution as spam, you can find out without taking that risk: Describe your work on the article's talk page, asking other editors if it is relevant.
Do not add an external link to your signature. However, external links to Wikimedia projects are acceptable. For example, Talk page.

Warning spammers

Template:Spam is a useful "first warning" to put on the Talk page of a spammer (adding {{spam}} or {{spam-n|Article name}} if you want to specify the name of the article that got spammed); subsequent offences can be tagged with {{spam2}} or {{spam2a}}, then {{spam3}} (warning of possible block) and {{spam4}} (final warning). The template {{spam5}} indicates that the spammer has been blocked.

Please remember to substitute these templates using for example {{subst:spam}} instead of {{spam}}.

Tagging articles prone to spam

Some articles, especially those pertaining to Internet topics, are prone to aggressive spamming from multiple websites. Please tag them with {{Cleanup-spam}} to advise the Wikipedia community to watch the article for abuse. This template expands to the following:

It's a good idea to remove this tag once the attacks die down.

Another possible tag to use is {{advert}}, which expands to the following:

External links