MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/November 2020

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softfeature.com[edit]

Makes the link then usually reverts it: [1], [2]. Djm-leighpark (talk) 14:41, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

5gappeal.eu[edit]

Led to e.g. [3], just deleted one user page full of anti-5G wibble that linked it, and removed an IP's addition from 5G (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Basically analogous to a petition site. Guy (help! - typo?) 21:19, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@JzG:  Defer to Global blacklist, cross-wiki problem. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:38, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

lyricsprinter.blogspot.com[edit]


Adding links to site, and often reverting XLinkBot after it removes the link. Ravensfire (talk) 20:01, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Guy (help! - typo?) 21:20, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
JzG, I looked at the COIBot report once it had generated and there's some cross-wiki spam here. Think it's worth taking to Meta? Ravensfire (talk) 23:13, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ravensfire, might be an idea .. not a fan of lyrics sites copyright-wise, and this one is being used on wikiquote? Dirk Beetstra T C 05:36, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Beetstra, that's my thinking as well. And not used as a "source" on wikiquote, just pure spam there. I'll take it over to meta. Ravensfire (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

ehsaashealthservice.com[edit]

Spamming from multiple IPs. plus Added OhNoitsJamie Talk 16:08, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

sonyprize.com[edit]

This is both spam and deception. All of the above sites are fakes, just trying to scam folks that visit them. The sony and kbc sites are for a television show Kaun Banega Crorepati (Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire), jioprize is for a lottery. I *think* those are the three being pushed right now, hoping the COIBot reports will give a better idea of anything else being pushed. Ravensfire (talk) 14:23, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was just about to report one of these myself. plus Added OhNoitsJamie Talk
Just added another. OhNoitsJamie Talk 13:59, 6 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ohnoitsjamie, thanks - just went here to request that one be added. Determined little gits, aren't they? Ravensfire (talk) 14:43, 6 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

travelwithmemoment.blogspot.com[edit]

Spamming in several articles a link to a suspicious travel blog. AmericanAir88(talk) 20:08, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

whatculture.com[edit]

I posted this proposal back on October 31, and it has not been answered and since archived, so here it is again. I have no evidence of spam, but WhatCulture is practically useless, with so many listicles, rumors, so much editorialization, speculation, and downright junk news that may or may not be fake, but is not to be trusted anyway. I do have evidence of a consensus considering the source to be useless, so nothing appears to be at stake when it comes to banning the domain. There is a Wikipedia article about it, so if it is notable, its main URL may need to be whitelisted. FreeMediaKid! 06:20, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

onbibi.com[edit]

Request to unlist onbibi.com from blacklist. Onbibi is a search engine and we don't know why it has been blocked from adding url on wikipedia ?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Giabaodiep (talk • contribs)

@Giabaodiep: The question for you to answer is: why would we want to link to onbibi.com? --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:44, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

csnumbers.com[edit]

plus Added At least 10 throwaway accounts spamming dog med adverts OhNoitsJamie Talk 04:21, 13 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Curious[edit]

Please see the edit request at Talk:Roblox#Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 14 November 2020. Roblox is on the blacklist in two spots, and when I tried to save my response to the editor, the blacklist would not let me save unless I disabled the Roblox link. And yet, there the link is on the article page as reference citation #2. Just curious: how is it that the same exact link can be saved and used on the article/subject page, but not on the discussion page? P.I. Ellsworth  ed. put'r there 04:50, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Paine Ellsworth, links that are already there when the site is blacklisted are not affected. They should however be whitelisted to avoid future problems (e.g. page breaking edits sometimes cannot be repaired without a revert and a manual redo). Dirk Beetstra T C 16:22, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Dirk Beetstra! I thought that might be the case, they're sort of "grandfathered in". Not sure what you mean by "they should be whitelisted"? Does that mean Roblox should come off the blacklist? P.I. Ellsworth  ed. put'r there 16:31, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

generaldispatch.whatfinger.com[edit]

Misinformation site, apparently attempted to be added to United States presidential elections in Nebraska with this edit. BD2412 T 21:51, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

BD2412, seems a tad early, one attempt by a now blocked IP, and I have no recorded additions in content space. Dirk Beetstra T C 10:15, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

cfwsports.com[edit]

plus Added OhNoitsJamie Talk 14:38, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

percona.com[edit]

According to the discussion when they were added to the spamlist, an IP was performing "Recurring promotional editing and recurring spam, immediately continued after several clear warnings and a previous block for the same IP." I would like to add a reference containing the latest release to the Percona Server for MySQL and Comparison of relational database management systems articles, and blacklisting the whole domain because of an anonymous IP's abuse seems an overkill. The user/s involved should rather received extended blocks. It is also only the company website on the relational database list that seems to be blacklisted in this way. Greenman (talk) 21:10, 14 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Greenman: I am going to  Defer to Whitelist on this. I find several blacklist hits on this by several IPs where I doubt the intentions of the additions (e.g. this). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:20, 15 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The spamming campaigns are unfortunate; I'd consider Percona to be a pretty solid source on database-related topics. That said, whitelisting still works. OhNoitsJamie Talk 15:43, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

investing.com[edit]

investing.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

I would like bring up an interesting yet easily solvable case - the website investing.com - a platform providing financial news/resources/tools etc. globally. Frankly I found it is banned by chance as I recently tried to use its link as a source for a trivial claim about economic investments in the developing world, only to get the surprising message that the link triggered a filter. I therefore started digging into it more and conducted a review of the matter; to sum it up here’s my honest analysis of what happened:

Investing.com has close to 50 million monthly unique visits and is now a top 185 website and one of the most authoritative websites in its field, alongside Forbes and MarketWatch (which are ranked behind at 285 and 443, consecutively). Naturally it also had an article on Wikipedia for many years (until a user proposed it for deletion 4 months ago, and after several rounds that should have ended in clear Keep or no consensus, it kept getting re-listed for some reason and was deleted in a equal overall keep-delete vote, but that’s another matter that can be resolved). After searching hard on MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/log and MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives I found the one incident, at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2018 Archive Mar 1 - it was blocked from en:wiki after an editor reported in March 2018 that several dozens website links were added to wiki articles in September 2014 and then again in 2017 by different IPs and should be viewed as a "spamlink campaign". Editors agreed that some of the edits were valid or done in good faith but due to the manner they were added and because most of these links were news-aggregations (at the time) decided they should replaced by the original news, and the closing editor took the rather simple action and banned all news links from the site, effectively all links except of a few I believe such as its about page.

Today it is clear that the website has original content, analysis, stats and tools and is trusted by millions in the financial community. It had no other "abuses" (the bizarre option that an unrelated third party did it to hurt their competitor is also a possibility that should be noted.) It is probably more notable and known than the vast majority of refs and ext. links on Wikipedia, furthermore it is also widely used in other Wikipedias as a simple search for the domain found endless of uses, for instance in Spanish Wikipedia where it has hundreds of links. Keepting this legitimate worldwide informative website on the black list has no good or logical standing, its moderate use can be useful for Wikipedia in various finance-related articles links as is already happening elsewhere without a problem. Thanks, EliQM (talk) 10:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Here is the spam report. I dropped all of the IPs in a sorted spreadsheet and looked for ranges, finding:
[4] - blocked proxy (Micfo VPN/ Contina)
[5] blocked proxy (Micfo VPN / Contina)
[6] blocked proxy (Micfo VPN / Contina)
[7] blocked proxy (Micfo VPN / Contina)
[8] blocked proxy (Micfo VPN / Contina)
[9] blocked proxy (SUBNET-H-9 (Digital Energy Technologies Ltd., AS61317)
Hallmarks of a spam campaign (one that would be more challenging to wage again, given that we've put the kabosh on most of the VPNs used since then).
In any case,  Defer to Whitelist - trusted, established editors are welcome to request whitelisting. OhNoitsJamie Talk 14:31, 10 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ohnoitsjamie. I understand. As noted, it has been over 3 years from the most recent occurrence. And reviewing some of the diffs, I see quite a few fine edit that wouldn't need a revert - it's the way it was done which was not okay of course; considering how much this platform has changed as it has a became global market source, there is a very good argument that this ban is not longer justified and that the website, if ever used again, would be used positively/moderately.
I read the guidelines on MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist, and it says "Requests quoting only a domain (i.e. ending in .com or similar with nothing after the / character) are likely to be denied. If you wish to have a site fully unblocked please visit the relevant section of MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist." - which is what I did here... What is the correct thing do do now? Thanks, EliQM (talk) 11:31, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
אליעד מלין, time is not a factor, we have cases that drag on for 10 years or more. It pays your bills to have your links on Wikipedia. SEO is an important job, and seen the spamming here, and the numbers you present, probably the popularity is part of successful SEO.
The correct way of action is to ask for whitelisting of specific links for a specific target page. I do not foresee yet that we will blanket allow anything here, yet. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:42, 11 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Beetstra thanks for your reply, it's great you oppose spam as well. Respectfully, I believe your assumption is wrong - a company that appears first on Google when you search for the word "investing" and has a daily flow of millions, does not need a few clicks from Wikipedia for SEO and definitely does not rely on spamming. Time has apparently been a factor here (and rightly so) because I have seen requests by other websites turned down when they were brought up a month after entering the blacklist, and others accepted after a while with reasonable reasoning, and like all websites this one should be treated in an objective way. I am asking for a neutral re-consideration/ another opinion. EliQM (talk) 10:01, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
אליעד מלין, '[A] company that appears first on Google when you search for the word 'investing' and has a daily flow of millions. How do you think that they end up there? How did they become so popular in the first place? Google magically decided that they should be at the top? Or is that a matter of advertising?
And why is time a factor for this website? This was, in my opinion, a rather aggressive spam campaign. Series of single-edit IPs. Either someone on a very, very volatile network (and who may have chosen to be there to avoid scrutiny) or someone who intentionally tries to stay under the radar by doing one edit per IP. Having your links somewhere results in you having high google rankings, large influx of traffic, and hence that you .. make money. SEO does not stop because, e.g. Wikipedia does not like spam. They don't stop, it pays their bills.
So now you want a third opinion, after two admins (regulars here) state the same: go to the whitelist for specific links and see whether that significantly sticks and we decide that indeed many are not replaceable, valuable, etc.? Well, any other editor is allowed to comment here, and when an independent editor shows there is consensus to delist I will do that. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:21, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
[www.investing.com/about-us/start-contributing 1. Log in. Then click on 'My Account,’ located at the top right corner of the Homepage and go to the 'Add Analysis’ button; 2. Select 'Add Analysis’; 3. Start writing!] --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:26, 12 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think the above is not an accurate analysis of their SEO, with all due respect. Their domain (which cost millions according to reports) obviously brings a lot of "organic" traffic, as has their useful/trusted content done. I'm not sure not sure what your second comment implied but will just note that many websites allow people to submit blog posts to their sites, and post it as such following some sort of screening. Anyway, I will take your advice guys and might ask to whitelist specific links at this point, and more later if neeeded. Thanks EliQM (talk) 20:46, 16 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

northtechwindows.ca & windowtechcanada.ca[edit]

One link addition per sockpuppet, ignoring warnings. - MrOllie (talk) 13:17, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MrOllie: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. — JJMC89 (T·C) 19:19, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

kissflow.com[edit]

spammed; multiple COI accounts, multiple articles

Will talk to kuru super moderator and get proper instructions and wiki guidelines. Will strickly follow all wikipedia guidelines. Please remove our domain from this blocklist.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bartomeu bernat (talk • contribs)

Decent log of all the spam accounts at User:COIBot/LinkReports/kissflow.com, many of these are by direct SEO and "marketing" employees of the company. I can see that since blacklisting, both Kamarajkkl (talk · contribs) and Chenthil Vel A (talk · contribs) have attempted to spam the link again, and are both are clearly editing against WP:PAID. The use of "our" and "my" here by "Bartomeu bernat" presumably means he is as well. There is zero reason to remove this link from the blacklist. Kuru (talk) 13:08, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
no Declined per above. — JJMC89 (T·C) 19:06, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kuru (talk), I will spoke to both of them and remove them profiles and hereafter not a single edit against wikipedia and WP:PAID term. Please guide me and help to remove domain from backlist. Please help me. Kuru (talk · contribs)

You misunderstand. As you've continued to lobby for your employer without disclosure, I've blocked this account. Kuru (talk) 13:54, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Bartomeu bernat, Kuru, and JJMC89:  Defer to Global blacklist to request global blacklisting, editor is ignoring ToU globally. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:48, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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