MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/December 2017

topsupply.online
Has been added repeatedly to Egg carton (diffs:   ; also just discovered it on Packaging Machinery Technology (diff). Trivialist (talk) 23:51, 30 November 2017 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:34, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

greatplacetowork.in
Concerted spamming by 3 SPA accounts, continued after warning: Site for "great to work for" pseudo rankings (non-notable PR fluff). No foreseeable encyclopedic usage. GermanJoe (talk) 12:14, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * seeing the report from COIBot, I guess you missed most of the accounts (as they were already reverted). Anyway, that doesn't matter:  to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

salvadorcentral.com
— Berean Hunter   (talk)  23:43, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Just blocked a user for spamming it, is not a reliable source, there is zero chance it can be used as a WP:RS, so blacklisting prevents a series of blocks if they come back, which is common. See contribs: Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 16:39, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I've blocked as a sock of the above and they claim in edit summaries to be the site owner.

twitter.com/Stryxo
Being spammed as a result of a flood of vandalism. Please see this ANI thread for context.  Anarchyte ( work  &#124;  talk )  06:22, 8 December 2017 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:43, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

amren.com
Website of American Renaissance, a white supremacist group. I have been cleaning up references tot his site and have found a number which are copyright material, e.g.. There's no credible reason for linking tot his site in more than one or two articles directly related to American Renaissance. Guy (Help!) 09:10, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

pulseoxadvocacy.com
Repeatedly spammed by IP editors. Nothing encyclopedic can be sourced from this site. Jytdog (talk) 22:10, 10 December 2017 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:16, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Fansite abuse - Frozen 2
Repeatedly spammed to Frozen 2:



Enough is enough. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Eltoro.com on Blacklist 12 December 2017


Please remove \beltoro\.com\b from the blacklist on Wikipedia. The old web master no longer works at this company and got our URL banned because he was blatantly using it for SEO. I would just like to add our URL to our company page. Thank you! Notseinfeldkramer85 (talk) 21:11, 12 December 2017 (UTC)Kramer
 * How could this domain now be considered a reliable source, or what purpose could any link to this domain serve other than spam? Other than the one use you are requesting.  I'm not inclined to remove without better justification, myself. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 01:45, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, please tell us the article you are referring to. I don't see Eltoro.com or Eltoro here.  Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 01:48, 13 December 2017 (UTC)


 * , this is related to the Sockpuppet_investigations/Orangemoody long-term abuse.  for specific links on this domain, though you will have to show how the link you propose is going to be used and why, otherwise they will be summarily declined. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:17, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

econlib.org
Please remove "econlib.org" from your blacklist. I have no connection to the site, other than browsing it for my own private research. However, it is a useful and widely respected resource for understanding a certain political point of view. I have read through as much of the discussion of blacklisting this site as I can find. The original argument for blacklisting seems to be that some entity called Vipul once posted a bunch of spam links to this site. The general attitude of the blacklist administrators seems to be that anyone who wants this site reinstated must first track down Vipul and extinguish it/him/them. My skills are in history and economics, not computer-hackery. Assuming I can't track down Vipul, what CAN I do to encourage you to remove the blacklist of this extremely useful reference?

(added) It seems that the Vipul spam gave an opening to a specific editor with a dislike of libertarian and/or "think-tank" sites. More recent discussion seems to focus on the perceived value of the site itself, rather than the Vipul spam, which appears to have stopped. All of the recent arguments given for continuing to blacklist econlib appear to apply equally to politically opposed organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (except that SPLC does not host a large library in addition to its primary-source content). Treating politically opposed organizations differently invites accusations of non-NPOV conduct. 67.188.225.244 (talk) 07:28, 5 December 2017 (UTC)


 * . As I said elsewhere: "The argument for blacklisting seems to be that some entity called Vipul once posted a bunch of spam links to this site." - no, the editing ring that Vipul was the leader of created articles, and there is a clear and direct link between Vipul and the site. Since this is then related to a form of meatpuppetry/paid editing, maybe we should get it into our minds that there is a clear conflict of interest and a clear spam aspect to this site. Apparently this site, just like the other sites that were spammed, need to use SEO techniques to get linked.
 * ".. which appears to have stopped .." ..  and on what is that based, I have cases of spammers on my watchlist who keep spamming for 7 years in a row (if not longer)?
 * Your political arguments fail: the argument has always been that someone with a clear and open relation to the site in question was paying editors / editing himself in violation of our terms of use. Moreover, for the last three links I evaluated, alternatives exist.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:47, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * (Please forgive me for any formatting or protocol mistakes. I'm trying to cut-and-paste formatting codes in appropriate ways, but the codes are rather cryptic and intimidating for newcomers. Preview has been helpful.)  You say "Apparently this site, just like the other sites that were spammed, need to use SEO techniques to get linked." Econlib has been around for at least fifteen years.  I was reading through their material more than a decade ago.  I know the reputations of some of the people involved with the site, and I would give pretty good odds that the site operators themselves are not engaging in SEO spam.  They seem to me to be innocent victims of the Vipul entity, just as Wikipedia was. To repeat, (1) what can I do to encourage you to remove the blacklist of this extremely useful reference?  (2) What could the people in charge of econlib do, if they were so inclined (and assuming that they are indeed innocent victims)? (3) If the answer to the previous two questions amounts to "nothing", have you considered the incentives this creates for ideologically motivated malicious entities? (4) If a reporter for the New York Times engaged in malicious spamming, how long would it take you to blacklist the New York Times website?  And what could the Times do about it, after being blacklisted, to become whitelisted again? (5) What if it were the Los Angeles Times rather than the New York Times? Or the Houston Chronicle? Or some small-town newspaper in Iowa? Do the same answers apply? (6) What if the spammer were someone merely pretending to be said reporter? 67.188.225.244 (talk) 07:03, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "I would give pretty good odds that the site operators themselves are not engaging in SEO spam" .. Vipul engaged in paid editing, as he clearly stated in his editing. He also paid other editors for their editing.  That is all disclosed (and I commend Vipul for that).  Nonetheless, the editing was .. way less than optimal, and blocks have been handed out (disclosure is one thing, it does not necessarily make it fine what is being actually done).
 * There is also a clear connection between Vipul and the owners of the site. That has been documented earlier, they worked together on websites.  Moreover, Vipul created pages on-wiki regarding econlib-related sites.  Those pages have been deleted.
 * Now, thirdly, most of the information on econlib is available elsewhere. Quite some of that material is even out of copyright, and could be uploaded to WikiSource.  By far most of the material is replaceable, and I have done that for some of the leftover links.  Econlib is a library .. it has books .. those books are everywhere, and do not even need a direct link to the book, if I tell you it is on page 20 of the bible, then you can check it, you do not need a link to an online version of it.  And that the core of WP:V/WP:RS.
 * Your questions: 1) you don't have to convince me, convince the community, until now I (or the community) have not seen any necessity (I have replaced three with exactly the same document); 2) we do respond very little to owners of websites, we respond to a website having a genuine necessity to be used; 3) I am very well aware of such incentives, and do take that into account; 4) that is an 'other crap exists' reasoning. There are such cases, and sometimes the community has to cope with that type of crap - the community will revert, block editors, record sockpuppet investigations, etc. etc. .. bad publicity.  That is what happens if you do paid editing / spamming / SEO; 5) yes; 6) I have to be rhetoric here: do you understand what the blacklist is for?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:10, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I stand somewhat corrected, some of these are available on WikiSource. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:35, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It's basically a think-tank, we should not be citing it anywhere near as much as we do. Many of the links were to texts that are now copyright expired, there have been a lot of discussions about the inappropriateness of linking to "convenience" copies of texts on sites promoting an agenda. The problem here is that think tanks promote themselves as neutral repositories or arbiters of fact, but they are not. This is a "library" curated from sources that support an ideology, and it was promoted by a paid editing ring which shared that ideology. We have had the same issue with Occupy and left-leaning ideologies. If the NYT spammed Wikipedia, the NYT would undoubtedly be banned, but it's unlikely to happen. Guy (Help!) 13:59, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This link needs removing from David Hume, but I am unable to find it, sorry. Could someone remove it for me, please? Patient Zerotalk 14:56, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, I have found it and removed it. Thanks, Patient Zerotalk 15:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to add some comments to the blacklist explaining this? I was looking at Jevons paradox, and econlib has a nice presentation of Jevons' seminal work on coal <at http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnCQ0.html. Yes, it's available other places, but archive.org's version isn't as nice. So I'm inclined to leave the link as-is without a better reason than my distaste for the site's libertarian politics.

The request isn't clear and lacks the justification given here. Without this information, I would definitely think the blacklisting was in error; the site clearly doesn't fall into the category of "immigration law" which that mass request claims to be covering. 23.83.37.241 (talk) 08:47, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Even if econlib is an odd one out - the links are clear, SEO/COI editing. Regarding the econlib.org version of Jevons' book The Coal Question: 'econlib has a nice presentation', ' isn't as nice' .. those are not reasons to include econlib (by the way, Google has it as well (scanned), as well as Gutenberg (plaintext)).
 * Albeit unrelated to the blacklisting, I do not understand the insistence of people to HAVE to link to material on sites which have a clear agenda to push while there are many alternatives available on servers of neutral, independent organisations. One of the links that was hotly debated and 'pushed' in this latest set (including a pointy replacement by the same document on another website which is pushing the same agenda) is fully available on WikiSource (and all of these could be there).
 * I've replaced the econlib links in the documents with Google, or removed them altogether. Arguably, the Gutenberg plaintext version is better.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:53, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "those are not reasons to include econlib" Er... yes, they are.  I prefer a link to no link, a non-paywalled link to a paywalled on, a stable link to an unstable one, a source link to a reprint, and an uncluttered page to a cluttered one.  Presentation isn't the most important thing, but it's on the list of factors that make a source useful to a Wikipedia reader.
 * Railing against sites with an agenda seems to me like Canute complaining that the tide won't obey him. (Wikipedia's agenda may be public-spirited, but that doesn't mean it lacks one.)  Where that leads to biased information, that makes a source unreliable, but in this case the site is accurately reproducing a useful historical document.  I don't see grounds to complain.  I've linked to lots of product manufacturer's informational web pages.  I don't trust them to accurately compare their competitor's products, but they can be a good source of information about non-standards like 1″-14 vs. 1″-12 threaded fasteners, C7P power couplers, or OIML class E0 mass standards.
 * Lastly and most importantly, the link was there when I got to the article. I need a reason to change it, and "it's on our blacklist" isn't itself a reason, it's just a claim that a reason exists.  For most blacklisted sites, the reason is glaringly obvious, but it's not in this case.  My request is that someone cut & paste the reason into the blacklist to make it easier to find.  E.g.:
 * "Part of a network of scam sites and Wikipedia spammers, this is a 'respectable front' site which reproduces a lot of public domain material as an SEO strategy. All of it has alternate sources; please use one."
 * For reasons of simplicity if nothing else, I'd prefer to evaluate the link rather than the whole site unless it's a scammy phishing/malware site which I don't trust to maintain stable archives. It's not that I like econlib (never heard of it, actually), it's just that the particular page looked perfectly good, even the home page looked respectable, and I didn't understand why there was a big bot blacklisting notice.  23.83.37.241 (talk) 17:43, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You never heard of it, yet you are willing to argue and argue that its links should be promoted at Wikipedia? Articles would be overrun with junk if ILIKEIT commentary was a good reason to accept spam. Like the world in general, Wikipedia is not perfect but opposing spam is vital. Johnuniq (talk) 23:14, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I am not arguing that its links should be promoted. I'm complaining about the dearth of easily accessible justification for demoting its links.  In the absence of justification, there's no reason to change a facially useful link.
 * I have never even claimed that the link should be kept, just that removal needs justification, and that except for this somewhat hidden talk page discussion, no justification has been offered. My only defense of the site is that it's not obvious why it's problematic.
 * I was looking up Jevons paradox for completely unrelated reasons. I saw the bot-generated message box.  I followed the link.  I wondered what the problem was; the linked page was as described, relevant, pleasantly legible.  I poked around the econlib site a little more, and didn't find any red flags.  Obviously libertarian, but that doesn't infect the linked page.  I looked at the blacklist entry.  I followed the documentation link there to the original request.  I was confused because the site doesn't have anything to do with immigration law.  Could it be a mistake?  I STFW for other copies.  archive.org has one, but it's an extra click to read due to the various forms.
 * At that point, I was inclined to call it a false positive. I searched WP and found this talk page discussion, where I finally found an intelligible reason for the blacklisting. (I still haven't seen the evidence, but I'll AGF and assume that  is accurately describing the situation.)
 * Basically, I'm chiming in with a "me, too". I was also confused about what the problem with the site is, and I suspect I won't be the last one.
 * So, primarily so we can avoid having the discussion again with the next confused editor, I asked for a comment on the blacklist entry because it's not obvious. 23.83.37.241 (talk) 06:22, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, you cannot see the evidence, the pages have been deleted. And the reason is obvious, links get blacklisted because they were spammed/abused.  Is it so difficult to get around the idea that websites use SEO techniques, especially since there are people here (totally unrelated to the site) who keep insisting that THIS site needs to be linked in favour of neutral sites carrying exactly the same information.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:51, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "And the reason is obvious, links get blacklisted because they were spammed/abused." Well, then, you might want to update the blacklist documentation and Template:Blacklisted-links explain this, because they misled me into the hopelessly naïve assumption that looking at the linked page might be relevant.  If it's not possible for a random editor to figure out if something is a false positive, then why does Template:Blacklisted-links ask people to judge?
 * Again, I'm not disagreeing with the ban, just asking for better documentation.
 * (I should probably mention that "you should know the site is bad because we blacklisted it" is queasily similar to a police state's "you should know he's guilty because we arrested him.") 23.83.37.241 (talk) 22:32, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The evidence is linked, or do you expect that we leave the spam so that it does it job, just so that it enables you to find it? --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:33, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

newshour.online
Please remove "newshour.online" from your blacklist. This is a news site which needs to be cited to different articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gmilon (talk • contribs)


 * , not blacklisted. 'needs to be cited' .. no, that I disagree with.  Looking into this, as this looks like it is/was spam(med).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:56, 19 December 2017 (UTC)


 * How it could be saved from being spammed?

inside university net
Have started a discussion here about using the blacklist to prevent students from linking to the inside net of your university. These links are useless for anyone who does not have a password to that specific institution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:31, 4 December 2017 (UTC)