Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2018 Archive Oct 1

Handling of phone number spam
What's the best way to handle specific spammed telephone numbers and where would one report such a problem? Is there an edit filter or other blocking/revert feature for this kind of spam available? Just noticed a very minor incident, but just wondering in general for future issues. GermanJoe (talk) 18:58, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * There's been a significant surge in fraud-related phone numbers being inserted into Indian banks which has recently spread to other companies. I don't think the number insertion you removed was related, but may start a similar pattern. I've been using edit filter 793, but I'm not sure how well that's going behave as it expands. The ranges were almost unblockable (most of northern India). Recent conversation with  about it on my talk page here. Also a discussion on the filter noticeboard here. I'm not clear on an easy solution, would appreciate any creative ideas.  Kuru   (talk)  20:27, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information, . Unfortunately I cannot help with this filter-related aspect, as my request for simple viewer rights to assist in such occasional matters was rejected (after 7 years of editing on Wikipedia without issues). Oh well. I'll keep an eye on the minor issue of course but for now it looks like occasional drive-by spam, not a systematic approach. GermanJoe (talk) 23:25, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I fear that while now it is occasional drive-by spam, it will only escalate in the way that any successful (and I regret to say that as long as it's possible to sneak the edits into Wikipedia temporarily, it will be successful) phishing method does. The recent run on AWS-related pages was not a welcome development, given it was all Indian banks until now. Pinkbeast (talk) 08:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)


 * An edit filter to stop is a good one (just add them to 793), and a second edit filter to regex anything that looks like a phone-number would be good as well (knowing that they are notoriously difficult to filter properly, ISBNs are not significantly different as a number, except that there is ISBN in front of them). --Dirk Beetstra T  C 10:17, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * If there's any articles that are frequently targeted, please let me know so that I can semi-protect them. MER-C 10:31, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Addition of Wikimapia links


and earlier IP addresses have been adding links to Wikimapia that may be considered spam. Please see the discussion at Help desk. -Arch dude (talk) 23:16, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I suggest that we simply continue the conversation on Template talk:Wikimapia cat so that the content of the conversation is preserved.--Sa57arc (talk) 00:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the suggestion to continue the conversation on the page, Template talk:Wikimapia cat is a useful way forward. There has already been plenty of talk around this topic. What is required is a determination as to whether the links constitute spam, and whether they should be removed from articles where they do not appear to be relevant. Therefore, the matter belongs here, at WikiProject Spam, where editors and administrators with considerable experience in such matters can weigh up both sides of the discussion and reach a decision. BronHiggs (talk) 02:59, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Concur. That's why I brought it here. Has declared his COI (or non-COI) status? Separate from any off-Wiki COI, I know from personal experience that the creator of a cool template ends up with completely understandable vested interest in using that template. -Arch dude (talk) 03:52, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The proper place to discuss external links like these is WP:External links/Noticeboard. Johnuniq (talk) 04:11, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Well, I guess that a WP:ELN discussion would not hurt, but this behaviour is clear spamming, even if we do agree that this link is appropriate in by far of the majority of the cases where it is added (which, as I will comment in a discussion on WP:ELN, I think that it is not, adding to the conception of spam). These mass-additions are completely not in line with our inclusion standards and therefore should first be mass-reverted and then inclusion can be discussed. User:Sa57arc, can you please self-revert ALL additions and get consensus for inclusion? --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I will start reverting myself, but it might take me a few days to get them all. How is having the discussion on the template talk page inappropriate? Anywhere else and the conversation will eventually be lost to archiving. Here, how about this as an anti-spam anti-external link campaign. For every usage of Wikimapia cat that I remove, I will also remove a usage of IMDb name, starting with A-list celebrities. I decided to start with Reese Witherspoon because that is a featured article. Shall I continue? Please folks: let us talk about the issues rather than these silly labels. How is the template "clearly" spam?--Sa57arc (talk) 01:48, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The matter of addition is clearly spamming. Discussion about spamming is here.
 * The question of (general) suitability of an external link is on WP:ELN. If you ask me there, I will state that for the cases that I checked, that link fails our inclusion standards.  (and FYI, that is not the case for imdb).  --Dirk Beetstra T  C 03:44, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Please take a look at WP:POINT and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Don't let your understandable annoyance lead you into actions that weaken your position in this discussion. Also, please tell us whether or not you have any involvement with Wikimapia outside of Wikipedia. -Arch dude (talk) 03:48, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I have started a thread on WP:ELN regarding linking to wikimapia. In that course, I also saw a lot of inappropriate sourcing to WikiMapia. Not sure where to bring that one. --Dirk Beetstra T C 07:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Somebody has already started a deletion for this template. I have been removing uses of the template for the pages I added it to. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Wikimapia cat is down from 90 to less than 50. I will finish in the next 48 hours or so.--Sa57arc (talk) 04:13, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

User:Brotter121


User:Brotter121 seems to be adding a lot of citations to specialized journal articles, probably his/her own articles.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:41, 28 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I ran my bot User:BadCitationBot over it, and though the journals are specialized, none of them seem in any way suspect. This doesn't mean that they're necessarily legitimate, only that the cited works have likely been peer reviewed. The user claims to have a PHD in materials science, and does not seem to have recently added anything form a predator, weak or fraudulent journal.Ethanpet113 (talk) 03:43, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

stoppestinfo.com
Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:49, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

sleepxp.com
Have cleaned up. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:35, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

spammer on google doodle of the day article
Article in question - diff

Chkiss (talk) 07:08, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Unusual situation: zipcodezoo.com
I've run across an interesting issue; apparently, the "zipcodezoo.com" site, which is used as a reference on a large number of pages, recently expired and was snapped up by an SEO firm. Here's a link to an archive, and the way it looks now. The group that previous ran the site (BayScience Foundation, Inc.) dissolved in 2010. The current domain owner is a "SEO Expert" in Dubai.

The reference is used on 1,167 pages as of this morning. Most, if not all, of these links are broken and re-direct to the root page of the new SEO site. The new site is a small collection of articles, mostly copied from here as far as I could tell.

Is there a bot that can force links to archive pages? All of those active links need to be removed, but I hate to just remove them blindly since they were, at one time, good references (I think). Thoughts? Kuru  (talk)  18:48, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
 * @Kuru: This page is for hard-core spammers and you might not get a good answer here. The situation you describe occurs from time to time. InternetArchiveBot is the tool but I have not used it and I don't know to write a citation which only uses the archive and not the now-SEO page which we definitely want to remove. You could try asking at WP:VPMISC, or WP:AN if desperate. Johnuniq (talk) 08:17, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

HubSpot (hubspot.com)
HubSpot is a company that sells software for inbound marketing and SEO, among other things. The company recommends content marketing to its clients, and also uses the strategy themselves by publishing their own content. Their blog posts are cited in quite a few articles related to marketing, but since the HubSpot blog is a self-promotional self-published source, the citations should be removed. Would blacklisting hubspot.com be appropriate (with the domain whitelisted for the HubSpot article)? —  Newslinger  talk   16:44, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

New Wikibot BadCitationBot
I've created a new Wikibot with the aim of checking citations for valid contents (right now it only checks for suspicious journals, social sites and weak or missing dates).

If you would like to test or contribute to it you can clone it from its git repository: https://github.com/awiebe/mw-citation-check

Remember to run

Just give it a list of articles you want checked and it will spit out information about whether it has things wrong with it. Bad date formats, suspicious journals and social media links — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ethanpet113 (talk • contribs) 03:55, 13 October 2018 (UTC)