MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/July 2016

= Proposed additions = =Completed Proposed additions=

sancharexpress.com
Non-WP:RS scandal site ("articles" being spammed on BLPs today: #1, #2, #3, #4) spammed on articles relating to India by multiple IPs, both as refspam and linkspam. Thomas.W talk 13:50, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've made a link seach, and removed all links I found, but the contributions of the IPs show the spamming. Thomas.W talk 14:28, 21 July 2015 (UTC)


 * another burst in March 2016.  to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 07:01, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

thereportertimes.com


I've been seeing this added to the project here and there, like in this edit, which looks an awful lot like reference spam to me--why do we need a reference to support the title of a movie that other sites are talking about? It's yet another cookie-cutter blog with no clear editorial control. Their [www.thereportertimes.com/about-us/ About us] page says nothing. As of this note there are about two dozen instances of this site at the project. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:33, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:53, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

waset.org
See Reliable sources/Noticeboard for evidence of consensus. This small business seems to be a predatory publisher that schedules fake "international academic conferences". We will need a whitelist entry for World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology. I think I've removed all of the links used in the mainspace now, but feel free to ping me if you'd like a pre-emptive clean up of talk pages before entering this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:44, 11 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:11, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you whitelist World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology and its talk page? The official link to the org should probably be present in that article, and editors may want to discuss the website's contents on the talk page.
 * Is the blacklist working as expected? I was able to make an edit to that page without being prompted to remove the blacklisted link, despite the presence of a warning note about the link at the top of the page.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

clarionsafety.com and allstateinvestigation.com


Regularly spammed by IPs, three of the latest being

The last of the three is a currently blocked notorious spammer (check the number of links on the talk page), showing that it's organised spamming.

The two 59.* IPs have also spammed



Thomas.W talk 14:52, 11 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:50, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

mind.plus
being spammed by a spammer. Useless content aggregating site. I've removed all instances. Jytdog (talk) 09:14, 16 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:23, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

archive.ec


Another archive.is clone. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:18, 20 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:18, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

archive.fo


Another domain used to evade community consensus. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

yosuve.com


Used by a typical spammer, awaiting report to see what this is. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:55, 21 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:53, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

playputlocker.ga


Used by a typical spammer, awaiting report. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:44, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:31, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

= Denied Proposed additions =

maaboret.com
The above domain has been added to the articles of several authors, and includes literature by them which is maintly still copyrighted. Most of the links were added by: With additions from

These are all single-purpose accounts. They have also spammed the Hebrew Wikipedia and I could use your assistance reverting those because the interface is really hard for me to navigate because everything is flipped. Opencooper (talk) 12:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I managed to change the interface language and revert those as well. To see the involved editors, (including Oddty, Miri_Short, and שרודינגר again) check my contributions on hewiki. Opencooper (talk) 12:20, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Also sk.wikipedia (reverted). .  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:31, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:37, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Opencooper (talk) 13:07, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Since the editors started to talk, the rule has again been removed per WP:AGF. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:27, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

youtube.com/watch?v=5xmHT6ovroM
At Symphony for Organ No. 5 (Widor), editors have wearied from repeated unexplained deletion of content and/or addition of his own WP:LINKSPAM and WP:PROMOTION apparently from British teenager J.V.Clegg, using at least 9 single-purpose WP:SOCK accounts over 4 years with missing or false edit summaries. See these diffs from H114532 → Sr4498302 → SusanaB2008 → Nigelorgans → Caseyrosshampton7, MusicProff1963, London Organist → PipesUK, and now (3 times today) OrganMasterFrance and OrganMasterFrance and OrganMasterFrance. Instead of semi-protecting the article or issuing additional futile warnings, an admin recommended simply blacklisting the specific YouTube link that Clegg is obsessed with self-promoting. Thanks much. —Patrug (talk) 01:12, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting his latest disruptions to the article. The sockpuppet investigation concluded "There is nothing we can do here" to deter an editor who serially abuses & abandons multiple "throwaway" sock accounts for a day at a time. Since Clegg's self-promoting linkspam campaign has been a persistent long-term problem across years of account-hopping, can we please add his Youtube video to the blacklist, as another admin requested here? Thanks very much for your consideration & help. —Patrug (talk) 04:17, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I'm more inclined to block all the accounts and use long-term semi-protection. In this case, the spam blacklist is just as trivial to circumvent as an IP block. MER-C 07:25, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for the quick reply. I'll relay your expert opinion and post another request for semi-protection. —Patrug (talk) 08:43, 27 May 2016 (UTC)


 * , per MER-C. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:50, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

pornhub.com
Appears to be a website based upon pornographic content, as implied by title. Was part of an unconstructive spam contribution by, which, by the entirety of the website, further implies that this website contains pornographic material. HeatIsCool (talk) 02:14, 7 June 2016 (UTC)


 * already blacklisted (and that type of edits is exactly why ..). ❌. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:50, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

tenbike.com.vn
User has been adding this as an external links to lots of articles.  Anarchyte  ( work  &#124;  talk )   08:52, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * user is blocked, no other users found. For now . --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:48, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

= Stale Proposed additions =

binghamtontimes.com
Added under Bangalorean.net, is it related? Guy (Help!) 16:33, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

I think this is waiting for you. Brianhe (talk) 19:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no such entity in Binghamton. Contacts list it at Yonkers, New York and Bangalore, neither being very close.-- &#9790;Loriendrew&#9789;  &#9743;(ring-ring)  00:27, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not making this clearer - see my comment at 17:57, 27 July 2015 above. It was being used alongside Bangalorean.net in a spam article and the author was linked to the site. (and - note the lack of caps in my real username...) SmartSE (talk) 20:06, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

infibeam.com
Infibeam is one of the India's leading ecommerce website. Infibeam has become India's first E-commerce website to file IPO.Infibeam also owns the DotTripleO domain extension. .OOO — Preceding unsigned comment added by Akash207 (talk • contribs)


 * Fixed formatting: changed URLs to internal Wiki-links, added reflist and sig. No change in content. GermanJoe (talk) 13:18, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

nndb.com
NNDB has been declared an unreliable source many, many times at RSN but I keep finding instances of it. This should go on the blacklist. Note that we have a template for making ELs to this site that I have nominated for deletion for the same reason. Jytdog (talk) 22:15, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Being unreliable does not make a site spam. This is an abuse of the Spam-blacklist. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:45, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If it's being actively spammed by people with a conflict of interest, then it's a candidate for the blacklist. I cannot say whether or not that's been happening with nndb, but the RSN link referenced by Jytdog suggests that it has &mdash; and that is what's relevant here, not the reliability. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:53, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Well it is not. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:38, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

comicbookmovie.com


An unreliable source that relies on user-generated content that is frequently used by well-intentioned good faith but uninformed editors.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 12:45, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I see that there are 618 instances where this is linked, many of them references - it would be good that the bad references out of that list were removed first. Moreover, this list is mainly concerned with blocking links that are abused, and requests which solely rely on a source being an unreliable source are generally not granted.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:12, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Considering the frequent use, it is abuse. Also it being unreliable, makes them all bad references.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 13:21, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Sure. Let us know when you've reduced the mainspace link count close to zero and we'll blacklist it. Guy (Help!) 13:32, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅. Most of the remaining links are to Talk, User, Wikipedia, and File space.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 19:44, 7 October 2015 (UTC)


 * JzG, maybe it's best to hold off on the blacklisting in this case, per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film? A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * ...until the discussion is closed.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 20:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Fine, feel free to ping someone here when it's ground to a halt. Guy (Help!) 21:46, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * With this edit, I believe we have reached an agreement.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 08:23, 8 October 2015 (UTC)


 * JzG, as you may have seen, this matter is also being discussed at Reliable sources/Noticeboard. A WP:Permalink for it is here. So far, the discussion is leaning toward support for using this source for exclusive interviews. My concern is that if it's blacklisted, it will make it more difficult for this source to be used for exclusive interviews. A lot of Wikipedia editors, especially less experienced ones, don't even know about Wikipedia blacklisting and whitelisting. And once a source is blacklisted here, a good case has to be made for getting it whitelisted or an aspect of it whitelisted. An administrator here might feel that an exclusive interview is not enough. At the same time, I understand TriiipleThreat's concern about use of this source, and I don't think it should be used for anything other than exclusive interviews on Wikipedia. Maybe there is a way that you can blacklist the general URLs for this site, but not the type that would pertain to exclusive interviews? Flyer22 (talk) 22:14, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Nitpicking here: The majority of the support is for use of very limited basic information from exclusive interviews. This is compounded by the fact that these exclusive interviews make up only a fraction of the content on comicbookmovie.com. Out of the 400+ links we removed less than a handful were exclusive interviews. The abuse of this website far outweighs its benefits. Blacklisting is the only way to curb this excessive abuse. The few acceptable links can be white listed.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 22:46, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree, that you can't just black list the general, you have to blacklist the whole site. And then, if, in the very slim chance there is an exclusive interview that wants to be used, that specific url can be presented to the whitelist. But I feel even in that case, a reliable source would be bound to report on such interview, which could be used in stead. However, as I'm not super familiar with the black list, is there any way to make the text that appears for the black list state the parameters we've sort of defined here? That if it is an exclusive interview, one could go to the white list to request its use? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 22:52, 8 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I assessed some of the interviews, seeing if reliable sources reported on them, and I saw that reliable sources commonly had not done so (which doesn't mean that the interviews are not worth including). That's why I mentioned a few reliable media sources noting the site and pointing to such interviews. And Google Books sources citing comicbookmovie.com interviews were already pointed to by Erik. I'd have to assess more of the interviews, seeing if reliable sources reported on them to get a fuller picture of the matter. But even with reliable sources reporting on the interviews, we have to go to the original site to get the full interview. So there can also be cases where we cite comicbookmovie.com beside a more reliable source for an interview. Flyer22 (talk) 00:36, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay. But even still in that case, can't a user just bring the URL to the white list talk to get it made available? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:34, 9 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes. But, like I stated above, "A lot of Wikipedia editors, especially less experienced ones, don't even know about Wikipedia blacklisting and whitelisting. And once a source is blacklisted here, a good case has to be made for getting it whitelisted or an aspect of it whitelisted. An administrator here might feel that an exclusive interview is not enough." I wanted to know about the possibility of blacklisting a site without blacklisting all of it; I got the impression that this could be an option because of what Beetstra (Dirk Beetstra) stated in the aforementioned WP:Film discussion. If it's not an option and blacklisting this site is needed, then go ahead and do it. Like Ryk72, I don't see that blacklisting this site is needed (since I don't see the site as problematic or that editors have been using the site for WP:Spam reasons), but you made a counterargument for supporting blacklisting, and I'll leave this blacklisting matter up to administrators without a fight on it. Flyer22 (talk) 05:15, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

It appears discussion has ground to a halt as you predicted. It still seems that we have a loose concensus to blacklist the site and whitelist the few specific links when nessecary.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 02:46, 15 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi, While I respect the intent, and appreciate the frustration with included reference to this site, I do not concur that inclusion here is an appropriate usage of the spam blacklist - links to comicbookmovie.com are not being spammed on Wikipedia. I am happy to elaborate at the other Talk page, and will do so as soon as I have more than a few minutes spare. Of course, if the case can be made that spamming of links is occurring, then I have no issue with inclusion here. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:51, 15 October 2015 (UTC) Updated - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:58, 15 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi, your opinion has been duly noted as seen above. It has not changed my opinion which I've restated several times now. It's time a decesion be made.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 03:00, 15 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Almost all of the extant links to this site are on Talk pages (including Archives thereof), User or User talk pages and on File pages. I do not believe that there is an issue with the inclusion of this site in either of these spaces; indeed it is appropriate that sources from the site be discussed (and rejected where necessary). The file resources seem to be a worthwhile inclusion. The case for inclusion in the blacklist on the basis of spamming has not (to my knowledge) been made; I am happy for it to be made if possible. Some of the removals of links to this site were not appropriate; as the links were to primary sources in articles where we were documenting the site itself. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 03:12, 15 October 2015 (UTC)


 * That's because and myself removed over 400 links from article space. The presistent usage of this site is abuse. Also a source is still unreliable even if it's being used as a primary source. Again, there isn't much in way of original content from this site, and can easily be replaced by more reliable sources. But like I said, it appears discussion has come to an impasse. Let's see what the admin thinks.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 03:25, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

wfplaw.com

 * Recent spamming by multiple accounts, e.g.: //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asset_Management_Plan&diff=prev&oldid=686131774, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Administration_%28probate_law%29&diff=prev&oldid=685983617, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Probate&diff=prev&oldid=685966108, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Estate_planning&diff=prev&oldid=686144702, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Estate_planning&diff=685154744&oldid=684229890 Mean as custard (talk) 09:01, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

One of the editors spammed this along with:



Lets get some reports on these links as well. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I stand corrected, some of the editors spammed the other links as well. I've added even more to the list, and there seems to be more. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:51, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Not a big problem yet (reverted), just for the sake of completeness: new addition for thegoldrushexchange.com by
 * GermanJoe (talk) 03:30, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

londonleathers.com
Spam by throwaway accounts: I've deleted lots more links to londonleathers.com from multiple pages from single-use accounts but it's not so easy to search back and find them all. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:56, 22 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I see only three SPA's (including above 2), with three additions. Unless I miss a lot of them, I would say that this is still reasonably controllable.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:45, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Is there a tool that I can use to search the histories of multiple articles for deleted additions of londonleathers.com? I've been removing these links for something like 5 years from a half dozen article that I watch. I just don't have a list of every example now. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:59, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It appears then that those additions were already pretty old, our current db is at least since the beginning of 2014 and though it contains some holes due to bot downtime, it would be too accidental if all additions are in those holes. But now that you reported it here, the bots will be alerted by it.
 * Regarding the tool, there was once something like wikiblame, which could search in the history of a page who added a certain string of text. I don't know if that is still alive.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:09, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Heh, not only does it exist, it is even built in to the history-tabs: WikiBlame. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:11, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:16, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * - you asked for a tool to see if londonleathers.com was deleted/added to certain pages, that is WikiBlame. Do you recall on which pages you removed it yourself, we can then see by who and when it was added.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:04, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No, that's the problem. I don't remember which articles besides motorcycle training and motorcycle personal protective equipment. And even with those two known examples, I'm not finding any hits at WikiBlame. It does work if I search for something that's currently in the article, like nytimes.com, but not spam that was removed. The hard part is searching old versions across large numbers of articles, like everything in the motorcycle and clothing categories. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:18, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah .. the tool only works for something that is still there, it is not actually just parsing the each revid of the two pages and see if it was added/removed.
 * Let's keep an eye on it for now, and then we can always blacklist it if it returns. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:30, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * OK. Thanks for your help! --Dennis Bratland (talk) 18:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

bfwa.in



 * He created two templates related to BFWA which were deleted today. Check his talk page history. The spamming is continuing with the help of other spammers. The latest being new Bollywood movie Shaandaar that i removed today previously added by a user named variation 25 few weeks ago. I have mentioned the details in Sockpuppet investigations/Rikki233752. A group of editors are involved in this. The Avengers (talk) 17:55, 22 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that this is spammy, but the last additions are already some weeks ago, and low-speed. If this continues, we'll pull the trigger.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:42, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , I am . Anyway I checked the COIbot report and the result shows that User talk:Sukhmeer69 who is blocked as some Orangemoody sock was spamming this website. bfwa.in is being used to create the page Hiral Mei. --Galaxy Kid (talk) 09:39, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

skjbollywoodnews.com
Unreliable Bollywood movie website. Spammed by somebody in Bollywood articles. The website is created by a popular movie critic, but the notability of the movie critic doesn't make the website notable. There is no third party source other than itself. Can't track the user who is spamming this. --The Avengers (talk) 16:47, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There should be a new COIBot report on its way (there is one from 2013 ..), but a direct querying of the database does not show obvious spammers (the editors who added this most seem regulars / are regulars with a wide variety of other links that they add). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:49, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What is COIbot? I found some links added by a user named Vaibhav.times. Whether he is adding all links in critical reception section or not, needs some time to check. It may not be spam, but it's like Using the popularity of Wikipedia to promote this website.Sometimes experienced spammers edit other articles and add links of some reliable website to avoid being blamed for promoting a single website.--The Avengers (talk) 02:25, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * COIBot = User:COIBot, a tool originally written to catch editors who seemed to have a relation to the data they were adding (most obvious in user 'blah' adding 'blah.com' or user 'blah' editing Wikipage 'blah'), but now also doing all spam-related reporting work. Behind COIBot there is m:User:LiWa3, the linkwatcher, who is constantly parsing every content-related diff on the 700+ wikis for added external links (including references).  COIBot reads from that database and saves reports on the enabled wikis (here and meta) that might need attention (say an IP who adds only domain to many pages, a behaviour that might suggest the editor is spamming), and reports that are requested (it monitors e.g. this page for added 'LinkSummary' templates, and when one is added it extracts the domain inside, and saves a report, see the 'COIBot'-links in the template at the top of this section.  Off-wiki we have more tools to query the database (by now the report is up-to-date, and that shows).
 * It appears indeed that most of the links are added by the user you named (about 1/3 of the total recorded). However, if I go through his edits they seem very genuine, significant upgrades to the pages and using many other domains, and the way these references are added seems genuine and fine - if anything it is that maybe these reviews are irrelevant, but I do not believe that this is spam.  I do see however a couple of IPs who just do one edit, or edit one page which includes this link.
 * The use of these review sites is endemic, and has been fought before, and some are indeed spammed. I still wonder whether most of these reviews, which are merely opinions of (hopefully) specialists, are encyclopedic information and should be specifically named (a general 'the obtained good/bad/mixed criticism', with a couple of well-established review websites should be enough).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:30, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

matpal.com
Articles of popular Bollywood actors and politicians are under watchlist of many users, so this website exist in articles of lesser known actors. I don't know whether a group or a single user is spamming them.--The Avengers (talk) 00:39, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

IP grabbers
These sites are used exclusively to determine the IP addressed of other users. They allow users to create links that when accessed (presumably by an unsuspecting third party) will collect the IP address to email to whoever created the link. This facilitates a crude sort of doxxing and nothing else. I'm sure there are many others, but these are the ones I'm aware of.

Not strictly spam, but highly malicious and of no benefit to Wikipedia. Hypothetically, even briefly showing the link could cause WP:OUTING or hypothetically lead to off-site harassment, so preventative blacklisting seems appropriate. Grayfell (talk) 07:57, 6 November 2015 (UTC).


 * Interesting catch, . I was interested, so I used TOR at whatstheirip.com to generate a few links. It produced one to bvog.com as reported by you, but also links to:


 * and


 * If the anti-spam guys consider this request, they might want to consider adding these domains as well, since these are the domains that host the personalized, IP-revealing links. bvog and hondachat produce innocuous-looking 404s, while youramonkey.com displays an image of a monkey, your IP, and the grammatically flawed text "Your a monkey, your ip and geo location info has just been emailed to whoever sent you this link." Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:39, 6 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Cool, good finds. bvog has already been added, per this at ANI. Grayfell (talk) 03:01, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

indianetzone.com/
-- Aryan fromहि है (talk) 10:26, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

hdradio.com
This is a commercial HD radio advertising site with hundreds of links to radio station articles added by one user: It's not an independent reliable source and it's clear that it's being used for marketing and promotion. I'd like to have it blacklisted so a bot can clean up all the links and block new additions. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

johntfloyd.com


List of links I found

Attorney website from Texas that just updated the article on White Collar Crimes at this link. I reverted the edit as the statement made is not true as it was NOT adopted, only proposed. The IP address who added the citation is from...guess where....Texas! A search of Wikipedia shows that there are a half dozen other articles with links to the same website. Not sure if this will ever be a useful site for Wikipedia and would propose adding it to the list to keep future additions from being made. --CNMall41 (talk) 20:04, 25 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Hello? Is there anybody in here? Just nod if you can hear me. --CNMall41 (talk) 23:36, 8 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Two more links added in the month of December. --CNMall41 (talk) 22:16, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Recently spammed by:



within some random "content" contribution (aka WP:CITESPAM). Spam has been cleaned up now. Please block - reliable single pages could still be whitelisted. GermanJoe (talk) 07:53, 24 December 2015 (UTC))

owlstand.com




A commercial artwork site which main page says "Interested in buying art?". I don't think the links are useful as sources, since it seems they merely contain contents of wikipedia (shared under cc-by-sa) and pictures which can be found on Commons. This user also posted links on various wikis, and this is his only type of edits, which I think is suspicious. I had found 2 ip users (62.133.24.143, 2.102.178.176) posting links on various wikipedias but have done no edits on enwiki. Their editing behavior are similar, though. There might be other accounts posting links on enwiki, but I did not bother to check. Sorry if my English is not good, hope this is clear to you.--578985s (talk) 15:32, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Happening-life.com


Self-improvement site, being promoted via linkspam in articles.  General Ization  Talk   17:07, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

anidramas.com


Video streaming site being added to articles as linkspam.  General Ization  Talk   18:55, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

angelopedia.com
India based blog & aggregater of user submitted content. It appears anyone can create an account and add stuff. Pageant area is full of promotional pushing and false info. Many users adding links so can't be dealt with on a user level. Legacypac (talk) 14:24, 12 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Enderse Seems part of a campaign to promote and push pageants. The Banner talk 17:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

ohhmybox.com
Continued spam to web shop after talkpage warning. GermanJoe (talk) 16:44, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

actia-asso.eu
Editor has been spamming a book reference into several articles for a month now, persists after being reverted. Jytdog (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * User has started discussing. MER-C 03:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

loveitchat4u.com (NSFW)
Porn chat-forum. Spam and vandalism in BLP-article by
 * GermanJoe (talk) 17:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

bitcoin-mixing.com
Phishing site detected via this edit on Cryptocurrency tumbler Deku-shrub (talk) 20:06, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Pageantopolis.com


Obviously non-reliable source (see homepage with lists owner's name and asks for user corrections) heavily used by pageant focused editors, including many spammers for years. Then the site crashed leaving us with about 959 dead links. Can these links be scrubbed by a bot and then this site blacklisted so it can't be used anymore as a source?I'm very familiar with this topic and see no other way to stop the army of socks and throwaway accounts from adding material and calling it sourced from this fansite. Legacypac (talk) 12:56, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Enderse Seems part of a campaign to promote and push pageants. The Banner talk 17:07, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

howtowriteanarticle.org
spammed by Domain has been spammed in the past. Misleading edit summaries. GermanJoe (talk) 15:32, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

secureguntrust.com



 * Spamming by multiple single-use accounts. sites selling "gun trusts" or advertising lawyers who do. No value to the encyclopedia. Jytdog (talk) 07:26, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

diabetes-articles.com
Scam site offering quick cures for diabetes. Site's owner has been posting articles at Wikipedia linking to this site, apparently in an effort to drive traffic to his site. (See Articles for deletion/Diabetes, sexuality and pregnancy and Sockpuppet investigations/Namun01.) WikiDan61  ChatMe!ReadMe!! 18:21, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

brain-waves-technology.com
Has now been spammed into Wikipedia at least twice. The first attempt I saw was at least honest, although still a violation of our WP:PROMO policy. The second replaced a URL within a valid EL with their URL. Please blacklist.Jytdog (talk) 19:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

= Proposed removals = =Completed Proposed removals=

archive.is (after RfC)


Per the result of the RfC at Requests for comment/Archive.is RFC 4, there is a consensus to remove archive.is from the blacklist. Thanks in advance, Mdann52 (talk) 14:45, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank goodness. Presumably, this also supports removing the alias domains, , ,  , and  . These were added to a number of pages following the April March blacklisting of archive.is. (When the mass blacklisting happened, no effort was made to communicate with the community; the most accessible resource was WP:ARCHIVEIS, which, at that time, suggested that archive.is links should be replaced with one of those alternate domains.)  Rebb  ing  16:16, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * archive.limited is unrelated, as you can see by visiting the site, it's completely different. nyuszika7h (talk) 16:25, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Whoops. Thank you. Rebb  ing  16:30, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note that it was already blacklisted using an edit filter for a long time, it was simply migrated to the spam blacklist recently. nyuszika7h (talk) 16:36, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * True, but it only became a public nuisance when it was added to the blacklist because Cyberbot II templated every affected article. Concerned and uninformed editors reacted poorly, doing drive-by removals of affected citations, switching to alternate domains, and using clever workarounds. Rebb  ing  16:57, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * from MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:10, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

thehindu.com
The Hindu is "the second most circulated English-language newspaper in India". The whole site is blacklisted with no log entry. Eperoton (talk) 13:20, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree, this is a major world newspaper and a main source, why is it blocked? Atlantic306 (talk) 19:30, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Still not fixed... This is a major issue. Thanks and regards, Biwom (talk) 05:37, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Removed. Sorry about that. MER-C 07:07, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you.erahulkulkarni 07:07, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

=Denied proposed removals=

Timesofbook.com
How the link can be useful? Timesofbook contains information more about trending books and about the authors. Users who want to know about the book and their author information and their life style at once place this site should helps to them. Also newbie can share her/him thought against the book/author and can read others opinion on that.

Why the blacklisting is not necessary anymore? Because this site was block listed on many years ago and still its not required to continue in blacklist. Due to some worst situation it may happen long back now i think its fine to remove from blacklist. My concern is this site having some good info related with Indian railway and some other familiar things in india that what indian people want. No one cannot inform at anyplace that this site was spam. so it's not required to blacklist in wiki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.89.154.131 (talk • contribs)
 * No, again. OhNo itsJamie Talk 17:57, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

softwaresuggest.com

 * SoftwareSuggest is india's largest business software discovery and recommendation platform. We have helped more than 60K businesses find the right software for their business.
 * The reason provided while blacklisting was that we are software "suggestions" and customer advice site, yes we are software "recommendation" site which recommend right software to the businesses. Which is very helpful in todays scenario where software selection has become too much confusing with huge list of softwares available. So it is our humble request to remove us from blacklisting.
 * We would like to remove all the links which as been added previously. Requesting you to remove us from Blacklist.
 * DhruvPPatel (talk) 10:02, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * DhruvPPatel (talk) 10:02, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The article for this subject was deemed not notable and (speedy) deleted. The links itself were spammed (including tactics to replace other links) to Wikipedia, and users did not deem that helpful either.  The reason for blacklisting was that spamming.  Hence, .  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:43, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, we don't act on requests from site owners or anyone who has a conflict of interest. If a trusted, high-volume contributor believes softwaresuggest.com should be linked in Wikipedia, we will consider that request. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:38, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

kifdatabase.no-ip.org


How can the site be useful Contains hundreds of recorded shogi games by professional players that grouped into 16 opening classifications. It's useful for folks studying opening strategies. There's nothing else like it.

Why it should not be blacklisted I don't know why it should be blacklisted. Seems to be related to the no-ip part of its URL. – ishwar  (speak)  20:53, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * . no-ip.org is globally blacklisted.  You can ask for whitelisting of this specific domain - .  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 13:05, 1 May 2016 (UTC)


 * ok, thanks. i'll do that then. – ishwar  (speak)  15:23, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Petitions.MoveOn.org


This is not spam, but rather, I need it to source the existence of a petition site, similar to Change.org, owned and operated by MoveOn.org (essentially, Pepsi if Change.org were Coca-Cola). Please Delist so I can do that. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:05, 10 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Petitions are often spammed, as people are often trying to use Wikipedia as a vehicle to get votes for their cause. You only need to mention a petition if independent sources significantly reported about them, in which case a direct link is not needed.  For the (rare) case that a petition needs to be linked it can be whitelisted.  Here, .  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:32, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * (reping – I got the name wrong, sorry). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:36, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
 * All right, I came up with a compromise just so that sentence doesn't end up being removed as unsourced. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 04:15, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MoveOn.org&diff=prev&oldid=719846573 that] is not the way. The information is available from their about-page, and I have replaced your 'reference' with that.  I do think however that more of the intro should be independently sourced.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:55, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

allinexporters.com


How can the site be useful A ligimiate resource for getting information regarding origin, therapeutic properties, use and precautions related to natural essential oils, attars, floral absolutes, carrier and base oils.

Why it should not be blacklisted Since this website was blacklisted by talk during an attempt to block all edited links made by some suspecious users User:Robert nilson, User:Kristen Upton and User:Kate jonson for different websites. Maybe those users were employed to either promote or demote these websites but this is not the way things get done. A website full of informative resources may be used by someone to ammend facts and figures(either legimiate or non-legimiate) should must not be blocked forever. what about those links and sources on this website that are legimiate and helps thousands of visitors? Similar things should also be reviewed for other websites blacklisted under the accounts of User:Robert nilson, User:Kristen Upton and User:Kate jonson if those were actually faulty or just pawned by these fake users. As a avid reader and researcher of natural essential oils, I would highly prefer this website for free information about the essential oils. It would be great if allinexporters.com can be lifted up from banned list so that the readers can take references of the content published on this website to clear off their doubts. Madhur Bhushan (talk) 10:35, 20 June 2016 (UTC) User:Madhur Bhushan


 * . You say that it is of use, then I would like to see first a couple of granted whitelist requests for specific cases where these links are of actual use for Wikipedia.   for some specific cases.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:54, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * - sorry, script pinged the wrong user. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:55, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * - Nevermind! Can you please remove that DECLINED tag otherwise the moderators may think that this request has been declined if they fail to read the second comment. Thanks in advance! Madhur Bhushan (talk) 13:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)[User:Madhur_Bhushan]
 * If I had seen this request before Beetstra, I would have declined it too. This was a request to remove an entry from the blacklist. That request was declined, with a suggestion to defer to the whitelist request page to white-list individual links rather than the whole site. The fact that Beetstra used two tags in the response doesn't detract from other administrators' ability to read it. Personally I would not have even suggested deferring to the whitelist request page; I have explored the allinexporters.com site and I haven't yet seen a single link that would be appropriate for Wikipedia. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:59, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no reason to remove the decline – the request to remove is declined, the rest is just a suggestion (you say the site is of use, lets see then for specific cases whether you can make a case based that follows our inclusion standards, per Amatulić, I also doubt that there is really use for the material on wikipedia). It will help editors on the whitelist when they handle a request to see what the reasons are why it ended up here, and to see whether complete delisting would be an option (which is now clear it is not).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:20, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

=Stale or otherwise past relevance proposed removals=

petitions.whitehouse.gov/response

 * petitions.whitehouse.gov/response
 * petitions.whitehouse.gov/response

How can the site be useful Official White House responses are an excellent point for political discussion. People need to know the results of the whitehouse.gov petitions rather than going to a random blog where the petition is analyzed and the actual link to the petition is provided.

Why it should not be blacklisted This section of the website is responses only. This section only applies to petitions that have already been completed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbrasga (talk • contribs)
 * This is a case for whitelisting, which was already implemented (see MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Log). http://petitions.whitehouse.gov/responses should work (note, you missed an 's' at the end of your url, the site without the 's' is a 404, and will indeed not save on Wikipedia as it is not whitelisted).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:08, 29 July 2015 (UTC) (adapted --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:18, 29 July 2015 (UTC))
 * And I stand corrected, the 'homepage' is the /responses one, but all the individual responses are in the /response/ 'tree'. Implemented per this thread.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:20, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * (should have read this request completely) - ".. rather than going to a random blog where the petition is analyzed .." - if all people have is a random blog and the original, then the fact that the whole petition is performed is likely not notable and should not be included in Wikipedia. If there are no independent, reliable sources mentioning the petition, it should go.  Information based on the petition should NOT go by primary sources only.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:12, 29 July 2015 (UTC)


 * - Sorry for the confusion. Thank you for looking into my request. I will try to find a reliable source and cite that instead of the petition response. At the time of the request, no reliable sources had mentioned the specific petition response as it was only made public within that hour. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.49.224.62 (talk • contribs)
 * You're welcome. I hope that you can find a reliable source to strengthen your statement.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:41, 30 July 2015 (UTC)


 * This should not be blacklisted. The rationale is that part of this site is petitions, and another major part is content which meets Wikipedia's WP:RS guidelines as it is secondary sources by United States government experts. See previous discussion at
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/April 2013
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/September(1) 2012
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/November 2014
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2013/12
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2015/08
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2013/06
 * Do not blacklist this website.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  18:11, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * - the site is blacklisted as it is and was regularly abused (I've recently looked into the blacklist hits, and it showed a case where the petition part was clearly used for soapboxing – which is and was a continuing problem with petition sites ('sign [here] to save the poor wallywolly from being eaten by the president!'). As argued above, the only moment a petition is notable to be mentioned is if independent sources have mentioned the petition.  There is simply no need to link to (open) petitions.  There may be rare cases where there is reason to primary source the petition after it is closed, but a) then there is the blanket whitelisted /responses, and b) there is the whitelist.  The problems with petition sites massively outweigh the minor cases where they need to be linked, and as I said, if you can make your case, those will be happily whitelisted.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:13, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The reason why the site should not be blacklisted is because it is not a petition site. It is unfortunately named. It is primarily a website for publishing personal statements from policy experts and those are worth citing because they are secondary sources written by the most expert government employees which can be identified.
 * As you say – petitions are not appropriate for citation, nor are primary sources. This domain is useful because it has so many secondary sources (government interpretations of a lot of primary data) written for a layman audience by a diversity of experts.
 * I cannot say how troublesome it is that people link to petitions here when they should not. It is a lot of trouble for users to figure out how to make whitelist requests when they wish to cite a secondary source here. The confusion about this website repeats itself. I agree that petition websites should be routinely blacklisted.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  11:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Also save the wallywollies.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  11:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * About what part of the website are you now talking? If you are talking about petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ - then you are talking about a petition site which should be blocked.  If you are talking about petitions.whitehouse.gov/responses/, then you are talking about the reasonably secondary source.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As a clarification to by above question, see e.g. petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/demand-independent-journalism-america-we-simply-cannot-stand-anything-less-truth, "WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Demand independent Journalism for America, as We simply cannot stand for anything less than the truth ..." .. that is a cause that people want votes for, and that is what Wikipedia has been abused for to get votes for (the site even suggests to promote the petition on twitter and facebook, some did make the step to go to Wikipedia). petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/balanced-approach-reforming-postal-service on the other hand, is the "OFFICIAL OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET RESPONSE TO" ..  the petition "A Balanced Approach to Reforming the Postal Service".  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Let me confirm that I see the abuse, and that I do not want Wikipedia to link to petitions. I want to clarify that I am not advocating that petitions should be linked here.
 * I was unaware of the responses section. I wonder if I missed it, or if it is new. Still, responses appear in multiple places. If there are multiple petitions on the same topic, then they all have the response, and the response will be in the petition space. It seems like the responses will not have a link to the mirror at the /response/ space.
 * The first link you gave ("Demand independent Journalism") would be petition spam on Wikipedia because it is just a petition. The second link has no petition ("Reforming the Postal Service"), and is just a response. However, check "Reforming the Postal Service" in this link – petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/preserve-6-day-mail-delivery . It is the same response, just posted on the same page as a petition, and also there is no link from this page that I see to the response page. The petition signatures are there, but it seems like it might not be active and that no one can sign now. I would say that this is also a valid source to which to link. The response is the same. I am not sure which is the original source and which is the mirror. Also it is not easy to know that there is a special /response/ section also giving the information.
 * I think it would be find to only link to what is in the responses section, but also, for older petitions (1-2 years ago?) there seems to be no mirror in the response section, or I cannot find them. Not sure...  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The /response section is not blacklisted, and can be linked to.
 * I agree that there are older petitions that might not have a response, and might be a suitable reference, and that is why we have the blacklist. Same goes for petitions where there is a response answered in the petition page.  Unfortunately, barring someone blanket whitelisting all closed petitions preemptively, there is no way to filter those automatically as they are on the same path.  I do still think though, that even if the office replied, that it does not mean that the petition itself is notable, or that the petition needs to be mentioned in Wikipedia.
 * Therefore, seeing that there is regular abuse of petition sites (up to the official ones like this one of the US government) I think that some form of control is needed, and I think that the whitelist can easily handle those cases where a petition is needed. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

in-cubator.org
I was adding in-cubator.org as external link to open source open innovation platform at open innovation wikipedia page. please explain what I did wrong and I'll avoid doing it. Thank you for your help.
 * It was added to the blacklist recently due to apparent attempts to linkspam the site to Wikipedia articles. to request that a specific page on that site be whitelisted for a specific purpose. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

some .guru URLs caught by new filter
In addition to the case, that Sphilbrick mentioned, there are a few more guru-related cases that have been introduced with the latest guru filter-change. I was able to work around some of the easier cases to avoid using the blacklisted links, and have compiled a (hopefully) complete list of the remaining open cases:


 * Gambas – gambas.guru/Welcome
 * Guru.com – www.guru.com
 * IBooks Author – www.ibooksauthor.guru/article
 * Guru Josh – www.guru-josh.com and www.guru-josh.com/biography.php
 * Serhiy Kravchenko (footballer born 1983) – news.guru.ua/news/51535/Sergej_Kravchenko_V_Poltave_govorili_chto_ja_ne_ukrainec_FOTO.html
 * Paul List – lib.guru.ua/CHESS/morozowa.txt
 * Rene Portland – www.guru.psu.edu/policies/Ad42.html
 * Romina Power – www.rominapower.guru and www.rominapower.guru/#!about/c10fk
 * Grigori Kuzmin – agora.guru.ru/display.php?conf=DOGtale&page=item005&PHPSESSID=b1b649f7259bfdd9b37df3a31bd0fb5f
 * Ynusis – www.timeseries.guru is black-listed but is an actual product that should be linked in Time series database article

All those cases seem to be valid (or borderline-valid) usages, certainly not spam per se. I am not sure, if anything can be done about them without weakening the guru filter, just bringing those cases to the attention of more knowledgeable filter editors to discuss. Feel free to move this to "Discussion", if necessary. GermanJoe (talk) 22:36, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅. I know this is an old request, just following up: there was a bug in the .guru TLD blacklist entry, which was fixed some time ago. ~Amatulić (talk) 07:36, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for looking into this. But almost all links above, except Guru Josh and Rene Portland, are still blocked. To test this, I activated the above links adding http:// in front of them ==> red error message is shown, when I try to save. Anyway, this was just a somewhat nitpicky cleanup request - "nice to have", but not absolutely necessary. GermanJoe (talk) 09:00, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I do think the ones still blocked but necessary should be enabled by whitelisting -> . --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:14, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, the existing regex \b[_\-0-9a-z]+\.guru\b is doing this. I experimented with modifications that would allow the string ".guru" to be blocked only if appended by a slash or nothing, and I couldn't quite figure it out. ~Amatulić (talk) 11:24, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Would 'guru(?!\.)' not do that (basically, this should block any attempts at urls with 'guru' which are NOT followed by a '.'). This could also work next to a specific guru (e.g. if there is also a rule 'guru\.com\b' then that one would be excluded as well, even if allowed by the other guru link).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:46, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

bunkerpictures.nl

 * This is in the blacklist, it's not merely a side effect of "*pictures.nl" or similar, but I can find no discussion as to why it was added. I can only assume that this was in response to, who was indeffed years ago for spamming ELs to this site's homepage. Even so, five spammings of a relevant EL (albeit very bluntly dumped) is heavy-handed for an indef and way over the top for blacklisting the whole site.
 * In this case, I'm trying to add a ref /Klein%20Heidelberg-Hugh%20Griffiths.pdf to an expanded copy of an article from an IEEE journal as a ref to Laus (radar). Andy Dingley (talk) 02:26, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, 5 local edits would not likely have made it to the blacklist, though 40 edits to 8 wikis over a period of years, while being warned several times does make your link end up on the meta blacklist (and maybe this was not the only account used?). Especially if an account on one of those wikis got blocked after several unheeded warnings (well, the username likely also violates our username policy), and still continued on other Wikis.
 * Anyway, we can not do anything about it here, so either for a complete delisting, or  to have this specific link, or the whole domain, whitelisted (the latter may be helping in the cause to get it delisted on meta).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:21, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Either way seems like a bad blacklist, IMHO. User behavioural issues should be addressed with the user (and blocking the user seems to have solved it), there's no reason why the site itself can't be linked.  This is generally a good site for specific resources within it, but we just don't like site-level links as they're too broad.
 * I wish it was "five links" easy to get the incessant coding tutorial spammers blacklisted! They're more likely to generate a "Remember this is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" stern warning from the more blinkered admins. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:53, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Blocking the editor 'seems to have solved it'? He was blocked on en.wikipedia, but not on the other wikis.  Moreover, the editor switched to an IP directly after being blocked on en.wikipedia (OK, one edit only).  Apparently, the block on en.wikipedia did not (necessarily) solve anything.  Spam is a user behavioural issue, and one that they are unlikely to stop with.
 * For other links, I am sometimes less forgiving, getting close to the point that I (meta-)blacklist it before 5 additions (as I say, spammers tend to be persistent, it pays their bills). Report them (the incessant coding tutorial spammers) to WT:WPSPAM with the suggestion to feed them to XLinkBot – my threshold there is often even lower (I can even give you access to a 'private revertlist' for that).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:10, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * For other links, I am sometimes less forgiving, getting close to the point that I (meta-)blacklist it before 5 additions (as I say, spammers tend to be persistent, it pays their bills). Report them (the incessant coding tutorial spammers) to WT:WPSPAM with the suggestion to feed them to XLinkBot – my threshold there is often even lower (I can even give you access to a 'private revertlist' for that).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:10, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

pv-magazine.com
I am writing several articles related to the solar power (photovoltaic) industry, and PV Magazine is an important source for them. It is a respected industry publication that reports current news related to this fast-changing and growing industry. It will be very difficult to document this growth, etc., without a source like PV Magazine. I have absolutely no affiliation with the publication, other than to use it as a source. I'm not sure why it is blacklisted. But I respectfully request that you remove it from the blacklist. Mary Bufe (talk) 02:27, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
 * No it isn't, and you're a writer for business so you need to see our conflict of interest policies. Guy (Help!) 22:56, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I have updated my user page so that it now discloses that, yes, I am a professional writer/professor/journalist who has been retained by a company to help create its wikipedia page. I thought I had written that in to some form that I filled out when I started this process, but I have now learned that I needed to complete a special disclosure template, which you will now find on my user page. With that all said, can we now discuss the blacklisting of the PV-magazine.com site? It has been published since 2008 and has several international editions and is a respected source in the solar industry. I have not had similar problems with several other solar publications that are comparable in stature. Thank you for (I hope) considering it as a legitimate source. Mary Bufe (talk) 18:48, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Sure. It has been spammed, and it is not a reliable independent source because it's a trade magazine and therefore unlikely to be terribly critical of self-serving claims in press releases and the like. If the facts you want are not included in as better source, then they should be left out. Guy (Help!) 19:15, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I am the editor in chief of pv magazine global, so therefore definitely have a vested interest in this. We are trade press, but that does not mean we publish all claims made by the solar industry and related industries at face value and without critical analysis or journalist rigour. We employ a team of journalists and editors specialized in the solar industry and report from location at events and in key solar markets around the world. We frequently break stories and publish independently researched and authoritative articles and analysis. This material often can not be sourced elsewhere. We clearly have an editorial position, that we are pro solar, but we evaluate companies, technologies, policies in a critical fashion and do not simply parrot announcements. There is a page on the pv magazine site where we upload unedited press releases, but it is clearly marked as such. We occasionally run "native content" but again, clearly identified. I know there was a problem with spamming 4 – 5 years ago, and that is deeply regrettable and before my joining the team and greatly enhancing our editorial activities, but no such behavior has occurred since. I dispute the assertion that pv magazine is "unlikely to be terribly critical of self-serving claims" and indeed if that is the bar by which all sources are to be evaluated, are you suggesting that all trade press should be blacklisted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.138.207.243 (talk) 14:48, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Google book service


I am trying to add this link google.com/url?id=pZ6CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA180, but it says that it's blacklisted. Why is a google book blacklisted? Why are you telling me what book to use & not to use? The author died 100 years ago, so I have no interest connected with the author. Wikibreaking (talk) 21:29, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In case this needs to be said, I was demanding this book to be removed from the blacklist so that I can link it as a reference.

Wikibreaking (talk) 23:11, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The link you provided is coming up as an invalid url. Most google book links have the domain books.google.com/blahblahblah.  I see new google book links quite often, so I'd be surprised if that was blacklisted entirely. Also, consider asking, rather than demanding.  You might get better results that way.  Ravensfire  (talk) 23:32, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's the link I meant. I tried to link books.google.com/url?id=pZ6CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA180 and I got this message "The following link has triggered a protection filter: google.com/url?id=pZ6CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA180". Who blocks a Google book?

Wikibreaking (talk) 23:38, 13 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Easy one – the answer is in the blacklist warning page you got. The second bullet point under "To save your changes now" says this - "Links containing 'google.com/url?' are resulting from a copy/paste from the result page of a Google search – please follow the link on the result page, and copy/paste the contents of the address bar of your web-browser after the page has loaded"  Look closely at the link you are trying to add – it has google.com/url in it and thus blocked.  Google Books will give you a good URL though.  Open that link in a different browser window.  You'll see some buttons above the book pages, one of them looks like two chain links.  Click on that and you'll get a URL that you can use for pasting the link in an e-mail.  Copy THAT link (which doesn't have the /url) and use it.  Simple.  Ravensfire  (talk) 01:11, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Fixing url to books fixed the link error. However, I am still not sure why the url version was blacklisted whilst that link also works. Anyway, this problem is solved.

Wikibreaking (talk) 01:45, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The /url? links of google are the results that come out of the search results, they are not actual results in themselves. Google in the search results does not directly link to the result, they link to an internal page that redirects to the real result.  If there are 10 results, each has it's own redirect, and by clicking one of the 10, Google records which result you are interested in before sending you to the result.  Over many searches, that results in statistics on 'people looking for a are generally looking for result b', the core of search engine optimisation.  For a spammer, take that link and post it somewhere else and hope that it gets clicked, and google will think you are interested in that result, and hence that it should come high in future search results lists – that is what Search Enginge Optimisation is about.  We therefore blacklist that link.
 * The /url? version that you linked above, google.com/url?id=pZ6CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA180, in itself does not work for me. When I paste that link into the address bar of my browser, it fails.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:30, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Cloudways.com
Hello,

I am a long time contributor to Wikipedia. I currently work for Cloudways, a Managed Cloud Web Hosting Solution Provider. While posting a request for article creation for Cloudways, following the necessary guidelines and disclosing my conflict of interest, I realized that our homepage URL is blacklisted. Persons who worked in the marketing department of this company back then were ignorant of Wikipedia policies and netiquettes. Our homepage link was being inserted into articles of competitors, which is why it was blacklisted. I assure you, the marketing department of Cloudways is now thoroughly professional, and will not indulge in link spamming. I am requesting for removing our homepage from the blacklist, because I have requested an article through the proper procedure. You may see the article request here. Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies. You may also visit my profile page to see my disclosure of my conflict of interest regarding Cloudways.com

I hope my request will be considered. Thank you. Za indy٨٧ 12:13, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I see only a request, not a draft or whatever. I don't think that this is needed until the article exists, at which time we can make the choice to either de-blacklist or whitelist an index.htm or about.htm.  Note that the spamming seemed to occur through an SEO, respectable companies do hire SEO companies to get their search engine results optimised, and they sometimes inadvertently do the spamming for them.  What happened here certainly was spamming, which continued after an applied block expired, and from multiple IPs.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:46, 14 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response. It would be difficult to convince anyone to draft an article on the company, without providing the homepage address of our website. I have provided independent references pertaining to our company on the request article page, but unlike the other requests, I'm unable to provide the actual homepage of our company. Regards. Za indy٨٧ 07:55, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "It would be difficult to convince anyone to draft an article on the company, without providing the homepage address of our website." - you, e.g., could draft the page based on knowledge and what reliable sources say about the company. That does not need the external link in any form.  You can also request that people go to cloudways.com itself to have a look – it is an inconvenience that it is not a clickable link, however clicking on the address bar and typing the 13 characters is not too much effort, nor is copying the domain and pasting it in the address bar of your browser.  I still do not see the need until there is a draft ready to go into mainspace.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:04, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

mpoc.org.my


The link is the official website of Malaysian Palm Oil Council. Actually the council is under the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities (Malaysia). May I know why mpoc.org.my was blacklisted before? Kindly hope the link is removed from blacklist. Alexander Iskandar (talk) 12:29, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Used the search page and found this – MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/March 2009.  Ravensfire  (talk) 14:16, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

The link should not be added in the external links of the article palm oil.. Is it vandalism or the user is not experienced about editing in Wikipedia or what?
 * However, the link is appropriate for relevant article such as Malaysian Palm Oil Council or palm oil in Malaysia. Maybe, the link is useful to be a reference in 2016 in Malaysia for current news about MPOC slams France for imposing taxes on palm oil importers. The decision to blacklist this link should be kindly revised. Alexander Iskandar (talk) 20:58, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

archive.is


Update: Archive.is RFC 4 has been started to vote and discuss this issue. -- 05:36, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Archive.is is a very useful tool used to preserve sources and prevent WP:LINKROT. The use of archive.is is widespread but should not be considered spam as it is not a commercial site nor is it promoted by any single purpose accounts.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 16:09, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I completely agree, but it has not been newly blocked, simply moved from abuse filter to spam blacklist. Unfortunately, it was blocked a while ago following Archive.is RFC, and there was no consensus to overturn that in Archive.is RFC 3. In my opinion, removal of mass additions without community consensus is understandable, but blocking the site is simply disruptive as often it's the only available archive, or the only one that can properly preserve certain elements on the website when archiving. For now you can still use Memento to indirectly link to it, at least until some people decide we should block that too just because it offers Archive.is as an option. – nyuszika7h (talk) 16:16, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Whenever I have a reason to visit this blacklist page, I have a feeling like visiting a doctor who's only medicine against a headache is a guillotine. Blacklisting archive.is is the best example of secondary goals (avoiding spammers) taking over the main purpose of Wikipedia and making more harm than an average spammer is able to make. I really hope that archive.is will be whitelisted soon. Beagel (talk) 18:15, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I would also support removing this from the blacklist, or locally whitelisting, or whatever mechanism works to stop having this mess up the English Wikipedia. I don't know what recently happened here, but my watchlist today is replete with bot edits flagging the links, and if experience is any guide normal edits in the future will be disallowed unless the flagged but quite respectable existing references are removed.  That's not progress. TJRC (talk) 20:37, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

There has been a consensus, since November 2013 (~2 1/2 years ..), that the links were to be removed, and that the additions to the site should be blocked. That consensus was not overturned in the following RfC. That has been enforced with a filter since, which basically did the same as blacklisting. I know that there was opposition against the filter, as is there now against blacklisting but there has been ample time to find alternatives. None has taken the effort to do so, people have run regularly into the block of archive.is, and have probably regularly found proper alternatives (a whitelisting request for an archive.is link of a couple of hours ago was self-declined because the editor found an alternative), I guess now it is time to clean up, and see how much of the current still existing archive.is links can be replaced, and how many really do not have alternatives. The community has now for 2 1/2 years ignored the consensus, and it shows how the community is willing to ignore the pillars that this encyclopedia is built on.

I would strongly advise against overturning this blacklisting without a proper RfC that overturns the previous consensus.

Note that using timetravel.mementoweb.org to evade the blacklist is a blockable offense, and would go against the consensus reached in the RfCs. --Dirk Beetstra T C 03:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

One of the reasons given as to why archive.is should not be linked to was that it was a new service that did not have a good track record of continuing to exist and hence might not be reliable. Since that discussion was held several years have passed and archive.is still works and appears to still be the only site filling that particular niche of an on demand archiving service. Perhaps the discussion should be revisited now that the issues with bad bot behaviour are historical and the site has proved to be reliable and not started using ads. (drt24) 2001:630:212:238:222:4DFF:FE52:17BF (talk) 17:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

archive.is (along with its equivalent domain archive.today) is a useful site that will archive any requested web page and make it available for future reference. Linking to such an archive, preferably in addition to linking to the original web page, helps prevent link rot. Such a site will obviously also be misused. Such misuse does not make the site itself a spam site. Even if somebody archives a spam web page and then links to it, that does not make archive.is itself a spam site. And I don't know of any good equivalent to archive.is, so blacklisting it prevents us from using a useful tool found nowhere else. It should be removed from the black list. Rahul (talk) 05:08, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I can think of archive.org which has a great deal of archives, and they also preserve header information. Archive.is is banned on enwiki because it's owners used illegal methods, on and off wiki, to, among other things, spam its presence on Wikipedia.  archive.is has been banned since and the consensus for this ban has yet to be overturned.  So the blacklisting is a result of the community discussions banning archive.is.—cyberpower  Chat :Offline 06:41, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to program Cyberbot II to extract the original weblinks from these archive.is links and replace them with the relevant archives from archive.org? It would save a lot of editors' time if they should not do it manually (and in most cases the link will be probably just removed by editors instead of tracking down the original article). Something similar was proposed during the community discussion but it was not included in the conclusion. Beagel (talk) 09:27, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Don't do that. Archive.org links are not of the same quality. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:05, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Not all of them are taken from Archive.org, some of them are scraped directly. It might be possible to make it link to find an alternative archived version from Memento which offers the user multiple choices for archives. nyuszika7h (talk) 20:11, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I am sorry if I made an impression that archive.is links are taken from archive.org. This was not my intention. The core of my proposal was to find the original links instead of archive.is links and then, if the original link is dead but archived by some legal web archive, to add the relevant archive links. I mentioned archive.org because this is what Cyberbot II adds to the dead links in articles and by my understanding it would be easier to modify that bot to take a care of archive.is. Beagel (talk) 20:23, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
 * At current Cyberbot can only recognize archive.org archives, but I am planning to have it acknowledge other archives, and I can set it to flag archive.is links as invalid.—cyberpower Chat :Limited Access 00:17, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

"Note that using timetravel.mementoweb.org to evade the blacklist is a blockable offense" – Are you serious? This kind of attitude actively harms the encyclopedia. It does not redirect directly to Archive.is, it gives the user a choice. It may be the case that the only functioning link is from Archive.is. That's like saying telling users to search for an archived version is a bannable offense if it's only available on Archive.is. Though I understand that it's not really ideal, and the problem needs to be solved at its root, which is not easy. The community needs to realize that by blocking Archive.is, they are doing nothing more but harm to the encyclopedia. None of their fears (e.g. the site turning into a malware site – which can happen to other sites, e.g. if the domain expires and is taken over by someone else – no reason to single out Archive.is) have been proven right. Sure, if it's available in say, the Internet Archive, it's okay to replace the link with that, but making it impossible to give readers a working link because the only copy is on Archive.is just harms the encyclopedia. nyuszika7h (talk) 20:24, 9 April 2016 (UTC)


 * If it is as you say, that timetravel,mementoweb.org can have specific links that redirect to archive.is then yes, then adding thos link to Wikipedia in order to circumvent the blacklist is a blockable offense. You know then that there are administrative reasons to have it blacklisted and you intentionally circumvent that, you intentionally evade the community consensus that has been established that we are not to link to archive.is.  The instructions are clear – find alternatives, or either get it de-blacklisted or whitelisted.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:28, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The "consensus" was a tiny group of editors, based upon an alleged link between the site owner and a spammer. Consensus to remove the links was overturned, so they remain, but not the block itself. Current consensus is that the block indeed damages the encyclopedia, but there is no way to whitelist the site. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:05, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you provide a link to that, because this says otherwise.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-11ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Offline 07:21, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * "the block indeed damages the encyclopedia, but there is no way to whitelist the site"? Can you expand on that?  What is the actual current damage (except for 'ugly tags', for which there are solutions through whitelisting or ignoring), and why do you think that there is no way to whitelist the site (it could be blanket-whitelisted on Cyberbot so it does not tag the 'offending pages', or really all the individual links could be whitelisted)?
 * There is in principle nothing that stops someone from creating a full list of all now existing links to archive.is in mainspace, going through them to see whether they are replaceable and needed (which may be for a significant part be answered with 'no and yes', indeed, though the first withdrawn whitelist requests do suggest that there are some which will be 'yes and yes/no'), and then whitelist all for which are needed. Thát is what should have been done, in principle at the end if the first RfC (though that called for a complete removal, which has been overturned in the second RfC), but for sure after the second RfC, and 18 months is quite a long time to get it done.  I have suggested that earlier, here 16 months ago.
 * So, repeating my earlier advice, I would strongly advise against overturning this blacklisting without a proper RfC that overturns the previous consensus, and I am adding here now that I would therefore suggest to solve the problem though selective whitelisting (and best in one big well researched request and not 100 single-link requests). --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:43, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * From [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki_talk%3ASpam-whitelist&type=revision&diff=715036785&oldid=714933627 these edits] it is clear that individual whitelisting in this case can't be done, so what was the reason to propose it? Beagel (talk) 11:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * No, that's what I'm saying, it does have links that go directly there, as far as I know, just links that provide a list of available archived sources around the given time. I can somewhat understand how it may count as circumvention if the intent is to point readers to Archive.is, but anyway, as I said, the issue needs to be addressed at its root, as the outcome of the Archive.is RFC is just harming the encyclopedia – exactly as  says, "based upon an alleged link between the site owner and a spammer" (and other fears like the site turning malicious, which could happen to pretty much  site). Indeed, it would need a proper RfC, I wasn't suggesting going around that. nyuszika7h (talk) 08:59, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, I wasn't aware that individual whitelisting is possible. That's good to hear. nyuszika7h (talk) 08:59, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you tell me how to do it? Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:56, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * You can try, of course, but I don't believe you will succeed to whitelist any archive.is links. There are several requests at the moment at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist and it is not promising. Over years I have made some requests to whitelist some specific sites and so far succeeded to get only some arrogant responses. My last request was made back in February and after one unhelpful response it has been just ignored for almost two months. So, you can make your request at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist but I have serious doubts about the outcome. Beagel (talk) 10:05, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I am still unsure in which way this is harming the encyclopedia. Additions of archive.is have been blocked for 18 months or so (and discouraged for almost 30), and people seem to have generally found alternatives.  That suggests to me that for many of the current archive.is links that is also possible (and from one of the first whitelist requests there was also at least one case where after the initial request quickly an alternative was found).  mementoweb may be a suitable source to find those alternatives, or provide an alternative in itself if more archives are available.  So the only way this 'harms' the encyclopedia is as any of our maintenance tags is harming Wikipedia, and a simple solution is to solve the problem ..
 * By the way (guess this is more to Hawkeye7), I don't think that whether the owner of the site is involved or not, the use of spambots, sockpuppets etc. etc. to push links onto Wikipedia (and that cleary happen in this case) is, in itself, the offense and a violation of our core policies.  It would only be worse if the owner of the site themselves would do that (which may not be proven in this case), but no undiscussed mass edits (especially using unapproved bots and sockpuppets) should be performed, let alone continued, when concerns were expressed.  Cyberbot II has the consensus to tag these pages, and if they would not have that they would be stopped by any means necessary, however useful.  That type of behaviour by bot owners has brought them to ArbCom and has resulted in site bans.  The edits from the IPs and named accounts that precipitated this whole situation with archive.is is not dissimilar from that.
 * Again, the initial decision to blacklist and remove is almost 2.5 years ago, ample time for solving the problems and/or re-evaluating the situation. Editors were aware of this since the beginning (ani threads, 2 RfCs, edits to pages on their watchlists, etc. etc.) and nothing has been done (maybe the issue has not been ignored long enough for everyone to forget it …).  As I said earlier, it shows that the community is willing to ignore the pillars that this encyclopedia is based on if it is not convenient to them.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:59, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * In most cases there are alternatives, but for one example, recently I tried to archive a Zap2it TV listing page showing the premiere of a series because their episode guide for that series (Looped) is a mess and also shows premieres from other, presumably English-speaking countries without any indication of the country or channel. I tried WebCite, but the archived version did not contain the "PREMIERE" tag, which is pretty much the point. Archive.is manage to archive it correctly, but since it's not currently allowed on enwiki, I couldn't add it. nyuszika7h (talk) 11:03, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * And that is exactly what the whitelist is for: those cases where there is no alternative. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:12, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * All I get is comments along the lines of "become an admin and whitelist it yourself". As you say, the blacklisting was a violation of our principles and our pillars. A strange recent development is that Cyberbot II removed all the tags from archive.is pages that it had placed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:21, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I doubt I would give that advice, so I'd like to see those diffs. And I did not say that the blacklisting is a violation of our principles and our pillars.  Well, archive.is is still blacklisted, so someone must have whitelisted it on Cyberbot so it does not want to tag them .. a good way to ignore the problem longer (or to start a proper RfC so that we can see whether consensus has changed or not).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:23, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, this block is utterly ridiculous. Wikipedia should not be blocking one of the web's most popular tools to stop link rot.  There's no good reason to treat it like a spam site. 209.6.165.133 (talk) 06:21, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, additions of this site have been blocked for more than 18 months. And I seriously wonder how this site became the 'web's most popular tool[s] to stop link rot'.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * One reason is nearly every other archive service plays nice and respects the robots.txt of the host. The people behind this site don't give a crap about anyone else (see their massive bot and ip hopping here that got them blacklisted) and ignore it.  Do we want to encourage that or show respect towards content producers?  Ravensfire  (talk) 13:47, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

That's a complicated situation. Other archive sites may also remove useful archived content if someone else takes over the site and blocks robots in robots.txt. As far as I know, Archive.is has a takedown process now, I don't know how requests are handled though. Also, please do not make such accusations as you have absolutely no proof the botnet was associated with the site's owner. Neither did anyone in the original RfC. (What next, if someone spams google.com links, are we going to block that too?) nyuszika7h (talk) 16:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't object to blacklisting "archive.is" in general, but the way that Cyberbot II is doing it is inept. See [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slingshot_%28water_vapor_distillation_system%29&type=revision&diff=713673986&oldid=713045839]. Here, the main URL is allowed and valid, and the archive URL links back to the main URL.  Only the "archiveurl" parameter points to "archive.is".  That didn't need to be flagged for human attention. The bot should have figured out on its own that the "archiveurl" link was OK, or converted it to an "archive.org" URL, instead of presuming to bother humans.  Bots should not be work generators for humans. John Nagle (talk) 21:52, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
 * the bot can't convert it blindly to an archive.org link, that is a different archive and for some may very well not be applicable. The bot is not creating more work, the work needs to be done anyway whether or not it gets flagged (with the flagging you only know that it needs to be done).  All other interactions (changing the url, removing it altogether, request whitelisting) need human interaction.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:10, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Links which have a main "url" field could non-blindly be converted to an archive.org link. Check archive.org for the copy, if any, closest to the date on which the url field was added to Wikipedia. Read that page and the direct url page, discard all HTML markup, and diff the human-readable text.  If the text is within 95% of being the same, use the archive.org link as "archiveurl". Otherwise, ask for human help.  John Nagle (talk) 05:10, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * (this is not personally to you, Nagle, but to the community): the community had almost 2.5 years to come up with this solution, implement it and execute it. Link additions have been blocked for a significant time (editfilter), and many of the editors arguing against the blacklisting have been in situations where their edits were blocked by the edit filter.  They knew this was coming up, and this exact suggestion was made to decline the initial blacklisting.  2.5 years is a long time (900 days, 10.000 situations, that is 11 links to be removed per day – with hundreds of editors that is even humanly possible).  The point is, the community does not do it, but is the first there to complain if their consensus is executed / enforced, and is even then not there to actually solve the issue.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:32, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

regarding the 'What next, if someone spams google.com links, are we going to block that too?' Blacklisting is a community process, though often the discussions here do not have a lot of community input, or are, in a way, WP:SNOW-executed. There are some which are or turn out to be on the edge (where a definitely spammed link is also used by regulars) and solutions then need to be adapted (XLinkBot, edit-filters; this is one of the reasons why I am quite cross with the WMF development team as requests for a more flexible blacklist-system are categorically ignored). It is in all cases weighing the amount of disruption caused by the additions (and needed cleanup) versus the amount of disruption being caused by not being able to add the links that are there (and sometimes mistakes are made there).

For some links, wider community consultation is needed (beyond a 'discussion' on this page), and archive.is did go through two of those, and the result of the community decision was not immediately executed (blacklisting was temporarily declined, by me, because the community should first clean the existing links and/or find solutions – that did not happen, and I see now that there are even those who intentionally circumvented the edit-filter that was placed as an alternative as they do not agree with the outcome of the earlier community decisions, resulting in an increase of the number of links). If someone were to decide to spam google.com then that would need also broad community consultation (RfCs) and decisions would be made based on that.

You bring up (again) the alternative of other archive sites – as far as I understand, there are many of them. Some of them are 'incomplete' or in other ways not satisfactory, but I would like to see a proper analysis of a significant subset of currently existing archive.is links, and whether there are, for most of them, really no alternatives. The edit filter has been active for a long time, and people seem to have been able to live without adding archive.is quite well, which suggests that alternatives are easily found or the omission of the archive.is link was deemed not detrimental to the encyclopedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:12, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It is funny how same comment in one sentence berates editors for using workarounds, while in other sentence claiming that people seem to be doing fine without it anyway. I wonder how many years it will take for hysteria surrounding this topic to die down.--Staberinde (talk) 19:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I am still WP:AGF-ing enough on our editors to assume that when they run into a block of some kind, that they respect the reasons behind that and find alternative sources, ask for help, or convince the community to remove the block. There are always those few (and I hope it is just a few, or even just one) that find the need to evade it, and perform the action despite the consensus that is against them. , it just tells me who to take serious.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:25, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * All editors are not so familiar with Wikipedia's arcane internal politics as people here on this page. There is nothing particularly surprising if editor thinks that block must be just a temporary en.wiki technical issue, after all the site itself is normal archiving site, there already are existing links, and it also works fine in other language wikis. I doubt that there are many "archive.is-militants" who use such workarounds just because they oppose The System.--Staberinde (talk) 19:13, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The fact that so many pages continue to point at archive.is points to the lack of alternatives. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:26, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I am talking about editors who are understanding the technical parts of Wikipedia and use that knowledge to circumvent the block – I am not talking about new editors who in good faith manage to work around a block (and I haven't seen any of these). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:18, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * ❌. Start a new RfC if you want to change the consensus. Guy (Help!) 22:10, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * What is the right venue for this RfC? Beagel (talk) 11:46, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * My inclination would be to say Archive.is RFC 4, in line with Archive.is RFC, Archive.is RFC 2 and Archive.is RFC 3, but I am not a specialist in starting/conducting/&c. RfCs. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:53, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I started Archive.is RFC 4. Hopefully, it's an acceptable RFC.  This debate has been ongoing for years, let's get it started again!
 * -- 04:31, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The page is confusing, where do I add my !vote / comment? nyuszika7h (talk) 10:27, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the page is confusing and does not indicate where the !vote / comment. Moreover, it does not give a proper background of the first RfCs, and why the decisions that were made were made – and does not indicate what the community needs to know to make a decision.  I think that this needs still quite some work before it can go life.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:31, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * How about now? Clearer? -- 05:29, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * - I think you need to, neutrally, present the points that are the conclusions of the previous RfC to the introduction. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:33, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh thank God, it looks like that RFC passed two days ago! About a week ago I tried to add an archive.is link and had to settle for text, because copying and pasting the link text works at least 20 times faster than archive.org for me.  (My patience was limited) Wnt (talk) 22:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh thank God, it looks like that RFC passed two days ago! About a week ago I tried to add an archive.is link and had to settle for text, because copying and pasting the link text works at least 20 times faster than archive.org for me.  (My patience was limited) Wnt (talk) 22:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

farecompare.com
This website sells airline tickets but also has a section with articles. Some of the articles have information that is useful to Wikipedia. I present this link www.farecompare.com/news/american-airlines-discontinues-aadvantage-miles-with-no-expiration-date/#/

This link has information on when AAdvantage changed from non-expiry of miles to expiration. This cause a lot of controversy about 25 years ago. The American Airlines website doesn't cover this important part of history of the article because corporate news releases often highlight good news.

I don't think this is a spam website at all, at least by my examination of this link. Thank you for your consideration so that this website can be used as a citation. Ensign Hapuna of the Royal Hawaiian Navy (talk) 21:33, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Textbook case for whitelisting if no other ref is available; . OhNo itsJamie Talk 21:49, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

tinapa.com.ng
I don't understand why this website was blocked, but it is the official website of the Tinapa project and the block prevents me from adding the website as an official website to one of the pages that I'm working on: Tinapa Shopping Complex.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 04:45, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
 * this is globally blocked (which generally means that this was globally spammed. You could either ask there  or ask for whitelisting locally (generally an about-page on this site, or specific documents on the site - ).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:56, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Water-Technology.net

 * water-technology.net/projects/aswan-high-dam-nile-sudan-egypt/
 * water-technology.net/projects/aswan-high-dam-nile-sudan-egypt/

i've not done this before, and find the 'instructions' daunting (at least tonight). i went to the spam blacklist.log page to try to find the reason, but couldn't figure that page out either. maybe because the bot flagged this site back in 2014. anyway, i was on the Aswan Dam article, went to its Talk page, and saw that a link on the page had been blacklisted. it just got me curious, as it didn't SEEM to be a spam site, based on the name. i checked a couple other WP articles about dams and noticed that link/s had also been flagged on those pages, but had been 'Resolved' on them. (List of conventional hydroelectric power stations) finally, i just went to the blacklisted site listed on the Aswan Dam Talk page. it seems fine. i mean, it's a corporate site (put up by some group that makes money/whatever), but it doesn't seem like spam, and it does have information relevant to...dams. going to 'Preview' this now and see if the 'Eagle' thing tells me something i need to know/do.

nope. all it said was that no pages use that link. there was no commentary on the Aswan Dam Talk page to indicate that anyone (other than the bot) had removed the link. nor was there a follow-up from the bot that the issue had been 'Resolved.' (as on the List of...power stations Talk page.) anyway, this is likely no big deal. don't know who would be trying to access that blacklisted site except for me, but it seemed strange, and protocol seemed to be to mention it here.Colbey84 (talk) 08:44, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * thanks for your question. It may not seem to be spam, it was however part of a rather significant spam-campaign.  The relevant page is Sockpuppet investigations/Dee82/Archive.  However, I don't think that this is currently blacklisted .. so I think that that discussion is also resolved.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 12:44, 16 May 2016 (UTC)


 * thank you! that one was weird, so...whatever.  next one...not so weird.
 * oh, nevermind. i was going to put another request here, but i don't need to.  it was an archive.is link (here:  Marcelite J. Harris)  which i see has a long section above.  but i found a replacement link.Colbey84 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 12:11, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

ifscswiftcodes.com
How this site will be use full:- this site is only information website of all banks branch ifsc codes. it will be usefull to do online transaction like NEFT & RGTS in india. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.22.117.77 (talk • contribs)
 * ❌ Per abusive spamming. Wikipedia is not a web directory, and links to this site don't address any needs of Wikipedia. OhNo itsJamie Talk 14:21, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Palace Theatre


to link to Palace Theatre, Melbourne

palace.com has been blacklisted, however the completely seperate page palace.com.au has been included in this process. This website is very useful as it is the official site for the Palace Theatre, and includes a history section which I propose to be whitelisted. Alfiecooper (talk) 12:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Since this entry is on meta, it needs to be fixed there. (They should replace the final \b with (?:[:/?\x{23}]|$), like we did for our examiner.com entry). Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:49, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

supercars.com


This is the official website for the championship formerly known as V8 Supercars, now Supercars, with news articles which will be used as references on all Supercars series, season and event pages. I am currently working around the block by redirecting from the old domain (v8supercars.com.au) but I do not think the redirect will work forever. –  Ky  ta  bu   05:29, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
 * This domain is blacklisted globally. You'll have to request delisting at m:Talk:Spam blacklist. MER-C 05:29, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you. –  Ky  ta  bu   01:24, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

=Troubleshooting and problems=

youtu.be
A few moments ago, I got a "we could not post because your link was on the blacklist" error when I tried to comment on something with a link to a youtube video. I checked the blacklist, and the actual domain url I used ( https://youtu.be ) was not there. The full link was. I swapped out the link for the full url of the video and that got through. I'm thinking maybe it set off a regex entry, but I'll be damned if I can find which one. Does anyone else have any ideas? MjolnirPants  Tell me all about it.  14:15, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
 * youtu.be is explicitly on the global spam blacklist and it will not be removed because it is a redirect domain. MER-C 02:07, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Wait a second... Are you saying that all redirect domains are on the blacklist, even known owned ones? MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  02:29, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
 * With very, very few exceptions, yes. There is very little real use for them, in practically all cases the full link is available and suitable for linking.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:44, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * But youtu.be link are generated by YouTube itself when you do right-click->link to video at this time. This is not a case of a malicious editor deliberately going through an URL shortener to bypass the filter. Wanting to link to a YouTube video gotten this way is very reasonable, and it will be very unintuitive for non-technical users to manually rewrite the link. Wouldn't it be better to remove youtu.be from the blacklist, to make life easier for non-malicious editors? Thue (talk) 10:43, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but that does not change the situation. Truth is that there are several youtube links on all the different blacklists (while there is good material, there is definitely also a lot of really bad material, and there is also true spam on YouTube).  Those blacklist rules do not make much sense if we leave the back-door open.  So yes, youtu.be IS being used to maliciously go around the filter.  And as with all redirects, they are not needed, there are alternatives.  Making life easier for non-malicious editors would mean clearing out the whole spam blacklist, as all those rules make life more difficult for non-malicious editors ... but also for the spammers.  If only we had enough manpower to .. make sure that we could keep the floodgates closed without blacklists ....  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 17:22, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it be quite easy to just fix the ~9 YouTube blacklist entries to also handle youtu.be? For example the current entry "\byoutube\.com/watch\?v=(?:_cyR-XJtPN|9JDLl1CMuNs|cmdkmm1ohha|eAaQNACwaLw|edikv0zbAlU|gdsUmAZFaVA)" would become "\b(?:youtube\.com|youtu\.be)/.*(?:_cyR-XJtPN|9JDLl1CMuNs|cmdkmm1ohha|eAaQNACwaLw|edikv0zbAlU|gdsUmAZFaVA)". Given how simple that solutions seems, I see no reason to block youtu.be . Thue (talk) 23:10, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * .. and add the other possibilities (it is not the only 'shortcut service' of YouTube), and do that for all ~800 Wikis (and the many outside of Wikimedia's control; please note again that this rule is not here, it is on meta). External_links is clear, and there is simply no need to use the redirect service.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Are there other redirection sites which are generated by YouTube itself? And as I said just above, and you have apparently already forgotten, there will be many users who will be tripped by the official youtu.be links generated by YouTube itself. That would be a very good reason to allow youtu.be. Thue (talk) 00:55, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I did not forget, you did not use that argument just above (you use an argument about non-technical users ..). You've been here for 13 years, and since the logs opened on the spam blacklist you've been hitting the blacklist 5 times, 3 times with youtu.be (one obviously a test).  And based on that one situation you say now that it must be a problem for many genuine users.  You'd need to do a full analysis of a representative number of hits and see whether the editor behind the hits is non-technical enough not to bother to find out the solution and whether the link should be used in the first place.  And then assess whether that leads to situations that are worse than for good faith additions of goo.gl, google.com-search result links, or other redirect services.  (there are two or so more youtube-redirects, but this is the most used; malicious editors know their way around, we are currently 'fighting' a 'netflix spammer' that is deliberately trying to find redirect services that we did not blacklist yet - they also have a facebook and a youtube channel ..).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:41, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Information request

 * I would like to know why nextiva.com was blacklisted about 6 years ago on Wikipedia. Thanks in advance. Kagundu Wanna Chat? 13:49, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
 * If you examine the links generated in the template you posted above ("tracked"), you'll find a link your answer . OhNo itsJamie Talk 14:37, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

A Voice for Men - by the back door?
Erin Pizzey's 'current work' section has a number of links to A Voice for Men made via WebCite, which is blacklisted (list of IP editor's 14 contributions 10 of which are for Pizzey).

Also a heads-up that the second International Conference on Men’s Issues – ICMI16 run by Justice for Men and Boys in association with AVfM is happening in London 8-10 July, 2016, which may lead to attempted edits / queries. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 03:20, 15 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hmm, to me this looks somewhat like blacklist evasion (though maybe done in good faith). On the other hand, this looks actually like a url shortening service for which I do not see any other use than to indirectly link to sources - which can be done directly.  Tracking to get some more data on this.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:48, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Belay that - it is more like an archiving service. Nonetheless ....  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:49, 17 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I've left the content but added "citation needed" templates. Thanks. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 03:29, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

= Discussion =

Blacklist handler 'gadget'
On meta, there is a script available (admins there only) to help adding links to and removing links from the global blacklist. I have some time ago advertised to some that I was working to get this script available here as well (I asked first to have it ported). I have now finished porting it (first to WT:SBL; later to others), and adapting it to the greatly different environment available here on en.wikipedia. Here is serves multiple source pages (discussions here, WT:SPAM, XLinkBot's revertlist and the local COIBot reports), and 2 target pages (the blacklist and the revertlist).

The script can be found here. The easiest way of activating it on your admin account on en.wikipedia (it should refuse to work on non-admin accounts) is by including  as a line in your vector.js (user: /vector.js).

The script adds buttons next to the respective edit-section-buttons for the specific sections on:
 * WT:WPSPAM, every section
 * 'add RL' to add to XLinkBot RevertList
 * 'add BL' to add to the Spam-blacklist
 * MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist
 * 'add RL' to add to XLinkBot RevertList on the addition request section headers
 * 'add BL' to add to the Spam-blacklist on the addition request section headers
 * 'remove BL' to remove from the Spam-blacklist on the removal request section headers
 * 'decline' buttons to both the addition and removal request section headers (to quick decline addition/removal).
 * the domain pages under the tree 'Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/Local' (see Category:Local_COIBot_Reports - especially the open ones which tend to be recent)
 * 'add RL' to add to XLinkBot's RevertList on the addition request section headers
 * 'add BL' to add to the Spam-blacklist on the addition request section headers
 * 'close' to quick-close the report
 * 'reverted' to note that you reverted all additions (also results in the report being closed)
 * User talk:XLinkBot/RevertList
 * 'add RL' to add to XLinkBot's RevertList on the addition request section headers
 * 'add BL' to add to the Spam-blacklist on the addition request section headers
 * 'remove RL' to remove from XLinkBot's RevertList on the removal request section headers
 * 'decline' buttons to both the addition and removal request section headers (to quick decline addition/removal).

Upon clicking the add/remove buttons, the respective section is opened for editing (and text can be added to both the section text as well as the summary), and the code extracts the domain(s) from the 'LinkSummary' template(s) in the respective sections on WT:WPSPAM, MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist and User talk:XLinkBot/RevertList, or the domain from the pagename for the /Local reports. And after pressing 'save and ..' the domain(s) is/are converted to (a) regex(es), and is/are added to the respective target list. After confirming (whether the addition is processed correctly) it will also automatically create a log-item in the log for the page which includes your username, the source discussion for the decision, and a link to the addition/removal diff (removals are logged as a new log item, it does not remove the old addition from the log).

Please let me know if there are still things that don't function properly, bugs or considerations. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:22, 7 October 2015 (UTC) cross-posted to WT:WPSPAM; User:JzG is acknowledged for inadvertently showing me bugs and errors while using the script.

Noting offending 'blacklisted' sites
This morning, I attempted to make a good-faith edit to the article List of premature obituaries and cited the Examiner.com website as one of the sources. I then got a red warning message saying that a spam link had been added, but no indication of what the offending website was; just that I had to remove it. I figured out, through some research, that it was Examiner.com had indeed been blacklisted for the reasons suggested when originally proposed for this status in October 2009, almost 6 1/2 years ago.

Which leads my suggestion: Many editors -- not all -- do make good-faith edits using these website links but when they get this message, they have no idea of what website link is triggering the red warning message ... just an explanatory comment that said link has to be removed. I think it would be helpful to note what the offending website link(s) is/are and that they need to be removed. It may help the editor find better/alternate sources, for instance.

I think that if we can do all we can to help our editors, including those who might not have the forethought to investigate what websites might be triggering their error message, it would be most helpful. Said explanation would only need to refer to the link, not why it is on the list or so forth. If I am missing something or overlooked something, I apologize. Thanks! Briguy52748 (talk) 15:00, 1 March 2016 (UTC)]]
 * It should be obvious. The information you want is shown immediately underneath the pink message box. In your case you would have seen this:
 * The following link has triggered a protection filter: examiner.com/
 * Are you suggesting that this message be put it in its own box to emphasize it? ~Amatulić (talk) 18:55, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you are suggesting that when you add 'examiner.com', it should block with a message why examiner.com is blocked, and similar, when you add a link using a url-shortening service, it should tell you the reason why that link was blocked. I agree that that would resolve many issues, including the frustration that this sometimes gives, but currently unfortunately technically impossible.  An overhaul of the whole blacklist system has been requested (as it has many other issues), and this would be a good feature addition for that.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Amatulic and Beetstra: I think your suggestions would help. Again, no need to get into the details about why a certain site is blacklisted, just that it is -- as per Amatulic's post -- and that the link needs to be removed for an edit to be accepted. The thing is, an editor may, in a single edit, have perhaps 10 different reference links, and with this message, he doesn't have to guess at which ones point to acceptable sites and which one(s) is/are blacklisted, especially if he is unaware that a specific site is on the blacklist.Briguy52748 (talk) 14:14, 2 March 2016 (UTC)]]

Page length
At the time of writing, this page is 192,554 bytes long. That makes it hard for some of our colleagues to use. Can it be split, or archived more regularly, or reduced in some other way? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I was just noticing the archives linked in the archive box don't cover the last few years. Is there a reason it uses the manually archived according to month method rather than the basic automatic numbered method of archiving? &mdash; Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 13:40, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

UK Parliament website
When trying to save an edit which included a link to petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215, I was informed that the website is blacklisted. I find it hard to comprehend why the British Parliament website, or its petition site which serves as the basis for parliamentary debates and/or official responses from the Government, should be blacklisted. --Tataral (talk) 19:14, 24 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It looks like the rule tripping you up is  (every domain with ,  , or   as a path component)—a fairly large net. There's no log entry for it; the closest I can find is the far more specific entry by  blocking bpetitiononline.com over original research, spam, and canvassing concerns. This seems like overkill, and I think the custom is that a filter will typically be removed on request when, as here, it hasn't been properly entered in the log.  Rebb  ing  22:45, 24 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The continuous problem with any petition site is that they get spammed or canvassed (e.g. diff was preceded by 4 attempts to include a link to an active petition; example external links section (where someone tried to add yet another petition), petition mentioned here - does that belong? (I can't check, blocked where I am)?, ...). That is combined with the fact that they are at best primary sources for information which is not notable except when there is significant independent coverage for them (i.e., sufficient secondary sources exist, which often makes the need for the primary source minimal).  Petition sites are therefore blanket blocked, but will be whitelisted if a case can be made for the specific petition (and this specific one seems to be one of those cases, I'll whitelist this one).
 * Rebbing, it is not true that we remove sites when they are not properly been entered in the log - we remove when there is no evidence anymore for continued abuse, or when no evidence for the initial abuse can be found. The log helps in finding that information, but it would be bureaucratic if clear abuse links were removed solely on the reason that they were not logged appropriately.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:37, 26 June 2016 (UTC)


 * . Thank you for explaining. Now that I stop to think about it, I can't imagine even one situation in which it would be appropriate to cite or link to an online petition. Rebb  ing  06:58, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, as I said, the petition mentioned here is probably one of the very, very few exceptions (where the actual increase in votes may be something of a current-event-like importance), as well as rare cases of closed ones where the petition statement itself is of interest as a primary source. Language should be kept neutral, though.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 09:18, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

EthniCelebs.com
As noted at the Reliable Source Noticeboard here, EthniCelebs.com in its own Terms of Service says: "The information on Ethnicelebs is provided for entertainment purposes only. Although we may vet information to ensure its accuracy, we make no assurances that all information on our Site is accurate. You agree that you will not rely on our Service for any purposes which could result in a loss to you if our Service did not perform as expected and, in any event, you hereby release Ethnicelebs from any liability relating to our Service."

Despite this, Wikipedia has many links to, by its own admission, a non-WP:RS site. There doesn't seem any reason to ever use it. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:11, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
 * is this being spammed, or just being used in good faith as a reliable source? In the latter case, the spam-blacklist is generally not used for material that is not a reliable source but used in good faith.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:41, 28 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It's hard to tell — most of the citations in individual people's articles are written and cite-formatted in highly similar fashion, but since they were added over the course of some length of time it would be a huge task to go through the article histories for a pattern of who inserted them. I'll try a random few now. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:29, 28 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It seems like different editors at different times throughout the years. Still, would there be any possible reason to allow what's clearly a tempting yet wildly non-RS site? It can't ever be used, as it's such a WP:BLP vio. So leaving off the blacklist just addsTenebrae (talk) 18:36, 30 June 2016 (UTC) to the workload of more experienced editors who have to chase these cites down and remove them. --


 * I'd say put this in XLinkBot, which has a mode where an edit is reverted the first time a link is added. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:03, 1 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Hmm — unfamiliar with that ... but I'll give it a try!--Tenebrae (talk) 19:06, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

pakistanviews.org


I'm hoping to get some input from the anti-spam community on this one. The site looks like a typical cookie-cutter blog like the stuff we see every day. Circa early June 2016 I found this guy Hirahussain110 adding the blog to a number of pages, which required me to remove the pollution. He was also just copy/pasting content from the blog to articles, so that was disruptive as well. Since then, I've noticed Hirahussain110 create Draft:Pakistan Views - National & International News Portal, which looks like an attempt to either legitimize the source, or to straight-up promote it. After poking around a bit I also noticed Draft:Pakistan Views was declined three times. It might be time to blacklist this site. Thought I'd get some feedback first before I did it, though. Thanks. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:29, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

woodworkingplanspro.weebly.com


Spam, sales of woodworking plans. Persistently added to Carpentry and other woodworking topics. <span style="font-family: Gill Sans MT, Arial, Helvetica; font-weight:140;"> General Ization  Talk   03:05, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The spam blacklist will not prevent edits like this. The user has been blocked, if this continues please ask for semi-protection. MER-C 04:58, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

yourstory.co


This site is an alternate URL of yourstory.com, and yourstory.in, which have already been added. See MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/October 2015 and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/March 2016 for details. Grayfell (talk) 20:53, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
 * MER-C 05:00, 10 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Great, thank you. Grayfell (talk) 07:42, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Sixsigma-institute.com


Spam. Same diploma/certification mill as these guys: MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/July_2015. First link is being persistently added to their old stomping ground List of Six Sigma certification organizations again, with deceptive edit summaries. Second is the same company which is using the same boilerplate website template, so I'm proposing it as a preventative measure. Grayfell (talk) 08:18, 8 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:18, 10 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Nice, thanks! Grayfell (talk) 07:42, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

shaded-relief.com


How can the site be useful Terrain map for https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php currently in use at GeoTemplate

Why it should not be blacklisted Any attempt to edit GeoTemplate (for instance, to correct OpenStreetMap's licence from CC-BY-SA to ODbL) fails as shaded-relief.com and pro-gorod.ru are blacklisted links, despite being in use on the GeoHack page. K7L (talk) 15:45, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You added this to the blacklist in 2012 as part of a large group associated with a Fox spamming incident, but the log entry cases linked don't show this domain. Please shed some light. Do you have an objection to removing it from the blacklist? Alternatively we could whitelist the GeoTemplate URL. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * ping! ~Amatulić (talk) 22:56, 6 April 2015 (UTC)


 * This thing has really been under "consideration" for two years???? There have been multiple edits at GeoTemplate in 2015 and 2016, yet I see OpenStreetMap is still listed as CC-BY-SA (looking at the site, I actually think it is though).  Still, is there any plausible reason to blacklist a map site we use??? Wnt (talk) 21:53, 24 June 2016 (UTC)


 * The problem here is that the admin who blacklisted it appears to be retired. I was going to go ahead and just de-list it myself until I actually went there and was unable to make the site do anything useful. All links go to the same place except for one advertisement about shipping containers. The site seems to be abandoned or hijacked. So unless further information comes to light. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:13, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

cksdsolutions.net
//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Butler_International&diff=729309025&oldid=633018565, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Exult_Inc.&diff=729309366&oldid=567538929, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Advanced_Contact_Solutions&type=revision&diff=729311919&oldid=609132786, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canada_Systems_Group&diff=729312127&oldid=581257337, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canada_Systems_Group&diff=729312127&oldid=581257337 Mean as custard (talk) 15:53, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Spamming by multiple single-use accounts, e.g.:
 * MER-C 03:06, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

cbronline.com
Useful historical resource, legitimate business periodical, used in multiple articles about computers. Blacklisted for vague, unclear reasons possibly as a part of an IP rangeblock. Argyriou (talk) 06:29, 11 July 2016 (UTC)


 * . Usefulness and legitimacy isn't a valid reason for de-listing. They were pretty clearly identified in a pattern of spamming as far back as 2009, and were finally blacklisted the next year for continued infractions. It also isn't clear to me that this would be considered a reliable source regardless of how often it's currently used. According to the discussion at Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 166 from 2014, I don't really see a consensus there about reliability other than an agreement that it was a good source in the past until the new owner started spamming it on Wikipedia.


 * That said, because the person making this request is a well established and trusted editor, I don't have an objection to removing cbronline from the blacklist if a consensus emerges in a new discussion at WP:RSN. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The discussions of spamming didn't include the plethora of links which such discussions usually include; a quick scan through contributions by a user mentioned in the 2009 incident might be link-spamming, but might also be someone who'd read a bunch of news articles there and decided to add links to to appropriate articles, just like people do with other trade magazines. The WP:RS discussion had no consensus, just one WP editor who decided without evidence that the publication didn't have editorial control, and was therefore not a reliable source. Those are awfully thin reeds to blacklist a publication which is used in a good number of articles (NEC V60, MicroVAX, etc.), and would likely be used in more if it weren't such a pain in the ass to use it as a source.


 * I've submitted a request to whitelist the links I've used, but really, the evidence of linkspamming is awfully thin. Argyriou (talk) 01:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

This is part of a massive spamming campaign, which has been going on for years (the -business-review.com and -technology.com sites were spammed in similar ways / by same editors / are related by address or owner). Many of the sites related to this site are blacklisted (and more should be as they were actively spammed). The original 2009 report maybe only shows one editor, later reports on these sites show many more SPAs and IPs. It is a 'legitimate business periodical', though a lot of its data is regurgitated from company originals (sometimes with minimal rewriting) - it basically is a primary source, not a secondary source. In many cases the originals can still be found, and/or can be linked through archiving sites. The need of this is minimal, while the spamming (by many accounts) is significant (the original findings were of 2009, we had a long list added in 2010, and have been discussing another set in 2014 - that is 6 years worth of spamming that likely did not end 2 years ago). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:11, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

rppart.com


spam. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

chiefelectronics.net


Used by a spammer, awaiting report to see if this needs blacklisting. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:46, 13 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:32, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

topfreedownload.xyz


Spam socks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:33, 20 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:37, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

roadrouteindia.com and contactnumber.in




Spammed to multiple articles by multiple IPs. Deli nk (talk) 20:02, 12 July 2016 (UTC)






 * MER-C 10:32, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

pickdup.com


This link is being added to pages in a spammy way.  Anarchyte  ( work  &#124;  talk )   08:06, 15 July 2016 (UTC)




 * Certainly suspicious. MER-C 10:36, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

cammotc.com


Spam socks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:38, 24 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:38, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

myifsccodes.com


Repeated linkspamming/refspamming to this site by. - Brianhe (talk) 02:33, 25 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:16, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

sphoorthi.guru

 * I've submitted a request to whitelist the link specified above because it belongs to a spiritual organisation and the followers of guruji may have tried to create multiple wikipedia pages out of respect or as they feel they have to do something to popularise guruji. This is not the case of spamming or something else. It's clearly a mistake. Thanks. Rakesh1703 (talk) 09:15, 25 July 2016 (UTC)


 * , the whole TLD '.guru' is blacklisted as there were too many domains on the TLD that were abused. As such, we can't do anything here, just request whitelisting for the domain.  .  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:44, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

kosakchiro.com
//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sherman_College_of_Chiropractic&diff=prev&oldid=731412674, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dynamic_Chiropractic&diff=727728110&oldid=706569772, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wilk_v._American_Medical_Ass'n&diff=730991825&oldid=645331525, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_businesses_in_Omaha&type=revision&diff=730992556&oldid=722853528, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Council_on_Chiropractic_Education_–_USA&diff=731411911&oldid=640682999, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Southern_California_University_of_Health_Sciences&diff=731412131&oldid=671172719, //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Journal_of_Acupuncture_and_Meridian_Studies&diff=731413096&oldid=660474309. . . Mean as custard (talk) 18:14, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Spamming by multiple single-use accounts, e.g.:
 * MER-C 02:40, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

MyPayDesk.com


Spam. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:00, 27 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:44, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

t7melat.com
Spambot. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:29, 28 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:29, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Resist.com
IP-hopping vandal editor on Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory sourcing material from a PDF of Pike's Morals and Dogma. The work itself may or may not be under copyright (it depends on which edition it is, I think, but I'm not inclined to go look at the site to find out), but there's no way we should be sourcing material of questionable copyright from a white supremacist website. MSJapan (talk) 00:34, 29 July 2016 (UTC)


 * for now, considering reference reverts on XLinkBot. Page protected for a month.  However, there seem to be more pages under attack if I see the COIBot report ..??  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:02, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Sci-Hub
The Sci-Hub scholarly Russian pirate site has gone through a few domain name changes. Its sole purpose is to republish scholarly papers that are normally behind paywalls, without permission of the copyright owners. I recently had to block one persistent Russian IP address who kept re-adding a sci-hub link to a citation in violation of WP:COPYLINK. That IP address is hopping now, so I'm playing whack-a-mole.

While doing that, I looked at what links to those three sites and found numerous examples. I have corrected all the main space ones, leaving links on other pages alone. I cannot say that they resulted from any sort of coordinated effort, probably they were good-faith link additions.

Per the WP:COPYLINK policy, Wikipedia doesn't permit links to copyright violating content. If the IP hopping Russian editor(s) resume their activity, I'll seriously consider adding the sci-hub domains to the blacklist. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:29, 28 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. I've gone through the COIBot reports, and there are only few additions here, some in good faith. All are however accompanied with a DOI which is sufficient.  The only place that needs to go through a whitelisting is a landing page for the subject article (index.htm, about page or similar).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 05:56, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks. I was going to wait a while, since, as you observed, the past additions were likely done in good faith. But now that it's blacklisted, I have removed semi-protection for the article that was under attack.
 * We may want to consider an entry like \bsci-hub\.[a-z][a-z]\b to cover future sci-hub domains. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

final.cbstv.online


Spambot. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:03, 31 July 2016 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:13, 31 July 2016 (UTC)