MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/July 2018

freebitco.in


Free bitcoin scheme site, occasional spamming by IPs and SPAs - currently ongoing. No encyclopedic usage. GermanJoe (talk) 14:46, 6 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Ugh, I was not aware the problem was that widespread (see COIBot report). Maybe global blacklist instead? Just a thought, I have not enough experience with the global side of this feature. GermanJoe (talk) 15:07, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I've nominated for global blacklisting. MER-C 16:31, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

badcredit.org


This domain was left out of the previous discussion. I have already removed or changed almost all of the links pointing to this domain. Examples:
 * GreatNonprofits
 * LendingClub
 * OverDrive, Inc.
 * PayScale
 * GoFundMe
 * Financial Ombudsman Service
 * Housing Works
 * LendUp
 * SaveUp
 * CaringBridge

There were more links than listed above. Please advise if action should be taken against the user as well. Newslinger (talk) 12:08, 11 July 2018 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

xxxcame.com


Repeated spam for XXX video site after several warnings. Circumvention of autoconfirmed protection with nonsensical batch edits. No foreseeable "encyclopedic" usage. GermanJoe (talk) 10:40, 12 July 2018 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

malebodymods.com


Repeatedly spammed, continued after level 4 warning which earned a 48 h. block. Starting here to get a record, blacklist if still persisting. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:14, 14 July 2018 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. User is persisting, has just evaded the block to reinsert by IP. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:20, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

hdfull.us
Spammed by Changing external links in movie articles to point to a movie viewing site. Geraldo Perez (talk) 02:47, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * MER-C 15:04, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

altogenlabs.com

 * Company sent multiple socks to spam in their website. See sockfarm at Sockpuppet investigations/Altowiki.  I have cleaned up all their spamming. Jytdog (talk) 13:43, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Added to title and spam blacklists. MER-C 15:04, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Company sent multiple socks to spam in their website. See sockfarm at Sockpuppet investigations/Altowiki.  I have cleaned up all their spamming. Jytdog (talk) 13:43, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Added to title and spam blacklists. MER-C 15:04, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

travelagencies.online


The link was inserted here by. It's a malware link that Cunard reverted here. Can it be blacklisted? Tactical Fiend (talk) 15:51, 12 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Moved to requested additions, misplaced in proposed removals. GermanJoe (talk) 12:57, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

lendingkart.com


Repeated spamming from various SPA IPs for an online loan site (all inclusive with a 15 minute online application, cash in only 3 days). This looks like SEO activity (IP 122.176.47.147 had been warned). The site has no foreseeable encyclopedic usage. GermanJoe (talk) 12:48, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:55, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

abengalcat.com


Should be globally blacklisted. See User talk:Lepardland for the gist. There's a "spamming war" going on between a pair of Bengal cat breeders in Europe, across multiple editions of Wikipedia. Lepardland is one of them and is utterly convinced that his GatoBengali.net (blacklisted yesterday) is a reliable source and has a right to be an ext. link on Wikipedia, (English, Spanish, etc.) just because ABengalCat.com, his competitor, got away with injecting spam links into Bengala (gato), and so on. I've manually removed ABengalCat.com from the Spanish and a few other articles, but they could be anywhere. This just needs to stop. We might want to consider some kind of "speedy listing criterion" for animal breeders, because this sort of thing is a constant headache for anti-spam patrollers. Breeders (of everything – pigs, dogs, goats, pigeons, etc.) are always trying to inject their websites as either ext. links or as actual sources, and in roughly 0.0% of cases is this appropriate. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * , cross-wiki problem. We're on both cases speedy enough, one or two persistent injections of external links can be enough if utility is zero.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:15, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Handled on meta. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:18, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

google cse

 * google.com/cse/

I suggest removing google.com/cse/ because in an AFD I was just in, I tried to link to the results from the Anime and manga Wikiproject's custom Google search and it blocked it. The AFDs should have a link to any custom search for any wikiproject the nominated page is part of, that'd make it easier for people to find valid sources. I searched the archives and don't see any reason listed as to why it was blocked in the first place other than one place they said to use Wikipedia search, upset people were using Google to search for articles on Wikipedia instead. I don't think that's a problem anymore though.  D r e a m Focus  00:57, 7 July 2018 (UTC)


 * , for specific custom search engines.  This feature has been actively abused to go around blacklisting (write a /cse giving only your result, link it from here and voila, two birds with one stone: you link what you want ánd anyone following the link tells google that they are interested (so search ranking improves). Perfect tool for SEO.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 02:54, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, these really do need to be whitelisted on a case-by-case basis.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:44, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

shortingking.com and clc.to and bitly.fi

 * Special:Contributions/106.210.0.0/16
 * Special:Contributions/106.210.0.0/16
 * Special:Contributions/106.210.0.0/16
 * Special:Contributions/106.210.0.0/16

Three url shortening services being actively abused by the IP range to try to get around the blacklist. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:57, 20 July 2018 (UTC)


 * , cross-wiki problem. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:59, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, I filed the request there. Thanks, -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:02, 20 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Handled on meta. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:03, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

More


, there are way more - I found a handful but we may be overlooking some. I have overruled the target of the redirects on XLinkBot (for as far as the bots detect that the site is actually a redirect site) and made XLinkBot report editors to AIV immediately.



All done on meta. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:21, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

caradvice.com
This website appears to have been accidentally grouped together with non-valid sites when it was proposed for blacklisting (see here). I request that this website not be blacklisted, as I have used this website countless times for citations, only for it to be rejected when I click publish on an article. It is a news website about cars, and is no different to other motoring publications such as MotorTrend or Car And Driver. Jonathan35is (talk) Jonathan35is (talk) 06:00, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. I cleaned up most of the spam links from MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/February 2018. The domain caradvice.com isn't part of 's "Digital Brands" company, and should not be blacklisted for that reason. Look up "digital brands" "our brands" in a search engine to confirm for yourself. — Newslinger  talk  15:14, 20 July 2018 (UTC)


 * from MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:24, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

scmresearch.org
This website plays a huge role in the academic SCM community, which is indicated by the large number of followers and high-quality guest posts from famous academics and CEOs. I cannot see why this should be spam or anything else that would require Wikipedia to blacklist this website. 80.71.142.166 (talk) 10:59, 21 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Not blacklisted locally, to request global removal, or  to ask for local whitelisting of specific links.  However, I'm going to note already that the site was spammed to many wikis by IPs only, and the delisting requests that I can find are only by IPs as well.  That being said, you may have the best chance when you can convince local admins about specific links for specific use (full link to content on this site, and how you want to use it on a page).  If that can be shown for multiple entries, delisting may in the future be considered.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 11:33, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

searates.com
This website plays a huge role in the shipping community, which is indicated by the large number of followers/registered users and high-quality information provided by the world's biggest shipping lines, carriers, ports, terminals and freight forwarders. I cannot see why this should be spam or anything else that would require Wikipedia to blacklist this website. The resource is informational and encyclopedia-based. After reviewing of several articles [1][2] it was mentioned that links to the website were added by bots or anyone else - not administration of the website (in ads purposes), in far 2015. Currently there are no articles on Wikipedia with any links to the website in order to promote it. The website itself is acknoledged and used by me and many colleagues of mine to represent similar resource for international shipping, as Booking.com - for hotels.

Stefrogovskiy (talk) 15:58, 21 July 2018 (UTC)Stefrogovskiy


 * . this editis utterly inappropriate, and shows a misunderstanding of Wikipedia's purpose. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:46, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

NithyanandaTruth.org
I'm not sure if this is warranted for blacklisting yet, but serious BLP violations resulted from links to images on that site claiming to be medical records of a victim. Since these needed revdelete, I nowiki-commented the above, in case it would disclose too much (I'm not sure if COIBot will report revdeleted instances, this may be problematic if so)... Additional note: I think that this is the official site of Nithyananda's organization. Thanks, — Paleo Neonate  – 22:47, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * More context: Talk:Swami Nithyananda — Paleo Neonate  – 22:49, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: fixed a typo in the domain and removed the braces, as coibot still acted with nowiki. — Paleo  Neonate  – 22:57, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * (for now) this is unlikely a solution to the problem. If persistent, offenders should be blocked, revisions deleted, and pages protected (I will delete COIBot report for now). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:09, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * (repair ping --Dirk Beetstra T  C 04:12, 18 July 2018 (UTC))
 * I can't see anything good whatsoever coming out of linking to NithyanandaTruth.org; it's just anti-Nithyananda propaganda, and more to the point, it has copies of scans of medical records (of living people) on it that WP:SPAs are linking to here, with the specific intent of maligning the people to whom that medical information pertains. I think the same principle of "we don't link to copyvio farms" would apply even more strongly to this. I gather that the records got included in that website because they were used in a legal case and the case wasn't sealed, which seems like an error on the court's part, but I'm not entirely sure how they got that information, or if it's even correct.  We have no way I know of to verify them. This is primary sourcing mediated  more primary sourcing, and with a specific hand-waving intent. It's thrice as suspect and one-third as reputable as usual for a primary source. Given that there are other articles about Nithyananda on other Wikipedias, this might really be more of a global blacklist matter than an en.WP one, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:48, 18 July 2018 (UTC); revised 02:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * to that I totally agree .. but with these type of POV editors blacklisting often does not help - you will just see redirects/mirrors/other sites coming up. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 08:40, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * So 'list them too. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:48, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, — Paleo Neonate  – 14:54, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * No opinion on blacklisting, defer to others who have more experience/understanding of this situation. DMacks (talk) 17:30, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Guru domain block
Does anyone known why .guru domain is blocked? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist \b[_\-0-9a-z]+\.guru\b — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.251.114.131 (talk) 21:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The .guru domains are handed out too liberally, resulting in them being abused for spamming. Genuine domains on this tld will be whitelisted easily.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 21:09, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

twitter.com/search

 * twitter.com/search

I would be very interest to know why this has been blacklisted. I have found myself wanting to link a twitter search in talk pages, but it always triggers the protection filter. Could it at least be allowed in talk pages and the user namespace? - Radiphus  17:32, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately that is technically impossible - the spam blacklist works everywhere (with upgrades to change it requested to WMF for years now). What is the reason this search capability is so hard needed on talkpages .. can't you just search for things on Twitter and give the result that you need?  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It would just be faster and easier to have a link to an advanced search in an article's talk page, instead of requiring from others to do it by themselves. Verified social media accounts are often used as reliable sources and this could help involved editors to keep up with new info on specific subjects. - Radiphus  18:14, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you show me some examples of those that are currently in use on a talkpage? (a possible work-around that I can think of is creating a custom search engine on google, get that one whitelisted, and create a namespace-specific template to include such searches on talkpages).  I've been looking, and this functionality was globally abused by spambots and these links should really never appear in mainspace.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:34, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you mean examples like these? I might look into the CSE thing, though i don't how this works or if it would be fit for its purpose. Thanks anyway. - Radiphus  19:07, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, those are the ones I mean. Hmmm .. that bloody grey area between abuse on one side, and disabling discussion on the other ..  Seen how it is used, I indeed doubt that google's CSE will fit the purpose of this type of discussions.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:34, 21 July 2018 (UTC)


 * search results are not reliable sources in en-WP per #9 on WP:ELNO and so this is appropriately on the blacklist . User:Radiphus you should never be using any sort of search as citation in en-WP and per WP:PRIMARY we should be using twitter as a source rarely and only with great care .  And doing it on twitter which is social media and almost all about some current events is driving content toward news and gossip, and at least on en-WP what we do is WP:NOTNEWS and WP:NOTGOSSIP.
 * Please do not remove this from the spam list. Please no. Jytdog (talk) 19:12, 21 July 2018 (UTC) (redact Jytdog (talk) 19:39, 21 July 2018 (UTC))
 * I never said that a list of search results would be a reliable source. I said that tweets from verified accounts are often used as reliable sources on Wikipedia, and search links on talk pages would help editors find such tweets more easily. - Radiphus  19:19, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Less twitter not more. We are not a gossip or news site. Jytdog (talk) 19:20, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * So, all of these is gossip for you? - Radiphus  19:22, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * People can use, and do use, their editing privileges in all kinds of ways, many of them off-mission. Please review WP:NOT. I will not reply here again. Jytdog (talk) 19:25, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what you are saying and this was not a productive discussion. - Radiphus  19:28, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * We are talking here about use on talkpages, which is something different. No-one is talking about using these in mainspace, let alone as references or external links.  Twitter feeds are allowed as the only official website of a subject per WP:ELOFFICIAL, and specific tweets (not feeds) make sometimes appropriate references.  Discussion on talkpages about (finding those) is appropriate in all cases.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 19:34, 21 July 2018 (UTC):
 * I understand that and have redacted above to clarify since I obviously wrote it in a way that confused both of you. There is no good reason to remove this from the blacklist. Search results are not reliable sources (so the blacklist is appropriate with respect to that) and we should not be doing things to make it even easier for people to be citing twitter which is a primary source and generally oriented to gossip and recent events. Is that more clear? Jytdog (talk) 19:39, 21 July 2018 (UTC)


 * WP:BLACKLIST notes that blacklisting a URL should be used as a last resort against spammers. Would be a more appropriate way to deal with this functionality being abused by spambots? I believe a tracking category could also be created (i don't know how) that will list all pages in mainspace that include Twitter search links, and it could be used for maintenance purposes. -  Radiphus  05:00, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * These are spambots, they do not care about XLinkBot, they will continue until they get blocked and/or switch IP/account. At the speed some spambots work, they may even be faster than XLinkBot can revert them (XLinkBot takes a handful of seconds to do all the checks).  They also do not care where they spam, it does not have to be mainspace, they will try to insert their links everywhere (it may have been talk namespace in the first place).  They will NOT stop.  Spamming pays their bills.  I've just blacklisted a website that is a copy of a website that was originally blacklisted - they bought other webspace to be able to spam and earn money.  I blacklisted 7 redirect domains for redirects to another blacklisted site, they keep finding redirect sites so they can spam their links.  On another set, we've had spambots hammering our blacklists with hundreds of attempted edits, hoping that they find domains that we did not blacklist yet.
 * I know it is a nuisance, but seen the number of active discussions with these links I don't think that that nuisance is in any way proportional to the amount of nuisance that reverting spambots could cause. --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:27, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for explaining that to me. - Radiphus  06:32, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

watchotc.com


No encyclopedic use, spam. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:30, 26 July 2018 (UTC)


 * to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:30, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

bkacontent.com
WP:UGC, content farm. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:42, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * .. this would be pre-emptive? I don't see any additions ..  We generally don't blacklist for these reasons ...  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 06:06, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't diff one; it's a self-report. I was about to add one of their articles as an interim low-quality blog source for something non-controversial, had a suspicion, and quickly figured out it's a UGC linkfarm, and stopped myself. They have a lot of articles on misc. topics, so it'll happen eventually. If it can't be pre-emptive, well, okay. I don't really spend any time here, so I don't know the local-consensus culture on this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:24, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for the clarification. We'll see this report on first abuse/gross misuse and then will be faster in decision making.  En.wikipedia and meta basically need to see abuse/gross misuse before blacklisting, with as only exception redirect sites, which are the only ones we blacklist pre-emptively.  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 14:35, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Hokay dokay. But, hey, I was only  a gross abuser.  Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:57, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Still, you were the only one. Blacklist instructions say that blocking should be tried first :-).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 18:01, 28 July 2018 (UTC)