User:JzG/Fisheaters

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This is my working summary of issues with links to a site, www.fisheaters.com. It's kept to save time at the recurrent requests for delisting by the site owner at m:Talk:Spam blacklist.

Background

My attention was drawn (how I can't remember) to two RfCs, one against Dominick and one against Used2BAnonymous. The dispute centred on the addition of links to a website maintained by Used2BAnonymous (asserted by Dominick, never disputed). In particular a quick look at the user history here showed a suspicious number of edits to "external links" in quick succession. It turns out that this was part of an exercise to switch from the old domain name www.kensmen.com/Catholic to the new domain www.fisheaters.com.

Having searched Wikipedia I found at least 100 articles with links to this site. After a bit more digging I established the facts which I later summarised as follows (note: these may now be out of date as some time has passed):

This: [1] showed over 140 links to fisheaters from Wikipedia
This [2]) showed just over 400 offsite links to that site in total
This [3] showed that there were few links to the old domain, many of which were irrelevant (the old site was a subpage) so at the time of checking:
Wikipedia accounted for over one third of external links to fisheaters.com
This [4] shows U2BA switching the links over from the old domain
This [5] shows the falloff of traffic to the old domain as those changes were made
This [6] shows the traffic ramping up to the new domain, and incidentally indicates it is much flatter since the linkspamming was reverted.
Alexa reports show Wikipedia as the major site linking in to the old domain, the new one has too low a ranking for the report to be there yet I think.
It is reported that the forum attached to this site has 6 moderators and 300 members; this does not address the concern that the site itself appears to be a monograph. There is no evidence of the site being run by an organisation (or even a person) independently recognised as an authority on catholicism in general (per the breadth of linking) or even on traditional catholicism (re the proposed restricted linking).

I set about removing the links, and there was a brief edit war with some anons, in which I and a number of other wikispam crusaders removed the links.

Since then the lniks have been re-inserted in various places with various (or, more usually, no) edit summaries and with various different descriptions, few if any of which make clear the fact that this is a dissenting website rather than what one might understand and expect a "traditional Catholic" view to be. Just zis Guy you know? 21:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

About spam

The Fisheaters website owner finds the use of the word "spamming" offensive. There is a specific definition of the term on Wikipedia, which is different from the commonly understood defnition on the Internet. Most people use the term spamming to describe the sending of unsolicited commercial email. Wikipedia defines it at WP:SPAM:

There are four types of wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, wide-scale external link spamming, bandspam (tangential references instead of disambiguation which promote some entity) 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.

The links added by the site owner met the second definition: widescale external linking. This is contrary to our external links and conflict of interest guidelines. The Fisheaters site owner has stated several times that these policies did not exist at the time the links were added. That is an evasion. WP:EL existed and was pointed out during her edit war over removal of the links, and ignored; and both are in any case simply descriptions of the consensus view within the community. Linking your own site has never been acceptable. Agitating for links to your own site has always been seen as disruption.

However, as she finds the term offensive I will endeavour to use the word "wikispamming" instead, which at least is specific to our definition.

About fisheaters.com

The site is run by a single person or possibly a very small group of people who adhere to a particular strand of Catholicism, which strand is apparently regarded as a minority dissenting voice by the Catholic establishment. There is some discussion of this in Traditionalist Catholic, and it was rapidly agreed that a link from that article was probably appropriate.

For the rest, most of the articles were not even specific to Catholicism, let alone the disputed branch of Traditionalist Catholicism. Some of the content linked appears superficially neutral (although the overall tone of the site is not); many of the links failed to include sufficient text to inform the Wikipedia reader beforehand that the site represented a minority view, and the breadth and format of the links triggered the spam radar.

Many of the links were identified as "traditional Catholic view of foo" or "Catholic view of foo". As identified subsequently on Traditionalist Catholic, traditional is ambiguous in context, arguably implying elements of Catholic tradition, whereas this is traditionalist, i.e. dissenting from Vatican-II, a minority group within Catholicism. To state that a ytraditionalist view is a traditional is likely to mislead readers unaware of the distinction (let's not forget the readers, eh?).

The links were re-inserted to numerous articles over time, usually by an anonymous IP (which suggests the site owner, who usually edits anonymously). This means that it is hard to find eviodence of the site owner adding content rather than just links. In almost all cases adding the link was the totality of the edit, no content was added at the same time. In at least one case the link was to the text of a document which originated with the Vatican, and for which the original was available (in English) form the Vatican website.

Altogether there is a strong pattern implying that it is links to the site, not representation of the (strong and often aggressively pushed) POV which is the main aim.

Since the site was blacklisted the site owner has tried very hard indeed to get it removed, with numerous requests to the spam blacklist for removal, emails to admins and to Jimbo Wales, a campaign page on the Fisheaters website and other activities. At no point has she added content, or campaigned for the site to be considered as supporting content. Links are what she wants, and she points to her success at getting links from elsewhere as "proof" that she should be allowed to link from here. Per WP:ATT there is not and never has been any assertion that the site constitutes a reliable source. The site owner does not even identify herself or her credentials. It is a website of no objectively provable authority.

The articles

There follows a list of articles from which I personally removed links (on en:, in that batch; I subsequently found others in other language versions and some new links have been added in new articles over time). Some had more than one link, in some the fisheaters link was the sole external link, in others it was added above other, widely recognised authorities. Many are general articles on Christian subjects, topical in the run-up to Christmas. Other links had been added to, for example, the Bell disambiguation page, apparently "a mistake", and removed. I tend not to add links to my own website to unrelated articles "by mistake" myself; call me quirky.