MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/May 2019

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techved.com

Respected Admin, this website techved.com is genuine website and i have personally verified it and have seen that it is reported in spam with btechved\.com\b. Hence my sincere request to you is remove this website from the spam blacklist.It is indeed a genuine website.May be someone might have tried to do some attempts to link this site so that it gets reported into spam.But i have personally visited the office of the website.It is indeed a genuine website.So, request you to remove it from the spam blacklist.

Yours Sincerely, Shamasinkandeer Shamasinkandeer (talk) 06:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Moved here from the bottom of this page, even though I don't see a reason to whitelist this site. —
Fall 06:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
no Declined. No encyclopedic use presented. — JJMC89 (T·C) 19:29, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

thepointsguy.com

At

WP:SILENCE, this should not remain on the blacklist. feminist (talk) 12:17, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

@Feminist: The wording was closer to 'never for credit cards, and avoid if possible for the rest' .. I am tempted to use the Whitelist to gauge how often the latter is actually unavoidable. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:28, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The whitelist can be an interim solution, yes, but based on the comments it's clear that at least some parts of the website should not be blacklisted. feminist (talk) 14:31, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Feminist: yes, I read the comments by the users, but to repeat the wording of the closer: "Hell no for anything related to credit-cards. Use editorial discretion for usage in other areas and avoid if other sources can be located.". Note that the site was blacklisted because it performs native advertising, not because (parts of) the site are unreliable. I am not suggesting whitelisting as an interim solution, I am suggesting to use the whitelist requests to see how much of this material is really needed (i.e. which parts can not be avoided since there are no other sources), and leaving the status quo. That is strengthened by the remark that part of the material is 'hell no', and de-listing would also allow that to be used again. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:20, 16 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This discussion continues at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#"News" and "Reviews" sections of The Points Guy (thepointsguy.com/news, thepointsguy.com/reviews). — Newslinger talk 10:01, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

firsttimemarinekeeper.com

This site provides information on fish keeping, specifically how to care for certain species in an aquarium. It is a site that doesn't make any money from adverts or traffic, it is just a useful resource for those of us who are researching how to best care for a particular fish as each fish requires certain water parameters and care requirements. There is absolutely no reason to blacklist the external links that were added as each link went directly to a relevant page all about that specific fish. Abi Young

conflict-of-interest here. Note the second sentence in the "Proposed Removals" instructions: Requests from site owners or anyone with a conflict of interest will be declined. OhNoitsJamie Talk 17:15, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

net-informations.com

{{BLRequestLink|net-informations.com}}

Spam from rotating IPs going back to 2008 or so, through to today. Touched lots of articles, see IP contribs. -

MrOllie (talk) 16:16, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

@
MrOllie: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

delhihousingschemes.com

Repeated spam for a real estate site by throwaway accounts and IPs. Multiple warnings and a temporary protection of their main target Delhi Development Authority have been ignored (continued after protection ended). GermanJoe (talk) 15:21, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GermanJoe: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:09, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

goodnoon.com

Systematic dead link spam for a marketing site by multiple throwaway accounts. GermanJoe (talk) 19:03, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. There is no valid use case for this domain, and it is indeed being spammed. — Newslinger talk 01:25, 10 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GermanJoe: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:38, 10 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

telecomssupermarket.co.uk

Bot-like spamming over the past few weeks nine months, both in article namespace, and now, talk page archives. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:10, 10 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Suffusion of Yellow: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --— JJMC89 (T·C) 20:15, 10 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

electronicsprojectshub.com

electronicsprojectshub.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • 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 Slow spam. Every few months an IP adds another link. Too infrequent for a block of the two IPs used so far to be effective, too many different pages for semiprotection to be effective. The only question is whether this gets spammed often enough to justify blacklisting. (Something at the top of this page explaining how often a site needs to be spammed to justify filtering would be a huge help. I'm just saying.) --Guy Macon (talk) 13:20, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Macon: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:30, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

joebiden.info

Added by blocked Murca-editor17 (

chatter) 06:40, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

@
Mrschimpf: user is blocked, if that is the only user, then we generally only block. If others pop up, please let us know. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:29, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

thepeerage.com

I don't know if this is the right place to but this is unreliable site used excessively for biographies. There is already a template indicating it is NOT a reliable site and should not be used but people ignore it. It is self-published and either taken from reliable sources (meaning they are available for use) or personal email correspondence by the creator. For example: [www.thepeerage.com/p5150.htm#i51491] The site itself says it is unreliable. It is the bane of many good Wikipedia editors and I'm at my wits' end trying to replace it with sources. It needs to be formally blacklisted so it cannot be continually cited as a source.

YO 😜 11:59, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

@
WP:RS/N that agree with this general assessment (if so, I will pull the trigger, if not, we need such a discussion/RfC). --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:32, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Thank you. I know admin @
YO 😜 12:49, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
(just for ease of searching): Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_175#Judgepedia. --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:46, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads up

User:Wikimandia
, over the years I have asked similar questions about this and other sites. I can look the discussions up but it will take a lot of time, and I will only do it if pressed. The short answerer is I do not approve of the proposal. Here is a more detailed explanation.

This is message I posted to user:Vetiverman's talk page diff

Thank you for creating the article

Wikipedia reliable source
(some of it isn't it comes from email correspondence and the like).

Unless you have access to his reliable sources, you can not cite his sources directly, instead you must cite his source and then the reliable source. This is explained in more detail in the section in the citations guideline linked to by

WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT
.

I have copied edited the article and added in the appropriate style of citations see this edit. If you have added information based on any of Lundy's pages to any other article and have not stated that the information came from his website, please add the appropriate additional citations as specified in

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT
.

I ran AWB search a number of years ago (August 2012) and tagged them all at that time (see for example this edit). A search on

Search: "Lundy, Darry"

Returns lots of pages where the use of Lundy is in my opinion useful as a method of using reliable sources, take

WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT
. Wikipedia is a work in progress and it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bath water.

However Lundy also includes information that is not based on a Wikipedia reliable sources, and I for one am happy to see such text base on unreliable sources removed, see for example the article "Robert Catesby", where Lundy is cited, but Lundy cites "Peter McCallum, 're: Baber Family," e-mail message to Darryl Roger LUNDY (101053), 29 October 2017'", text based on such citations using personal correspondence via email to Lundy ought to be removed along with the citation.

There have been similar debates in the past that I have been involved with about two other web sites.

  1. Rayment and {{Rayment}}
  2. RS Medieval Lands by Charles Cawley website: Medieval Lands introduction v2.0. Updated 30 November 2010 {{Medieval Lands by Charles Cawley}} The project "involves extracting and analysing detailed information from primary sources, including contemporary chronicles, cartularies, necrologies and testaments."

The general opinion in the case of Rayment site was it is accurate, but it does not cite its sources, so it should be kept. I placed an unreliable template into {{Rayment}} and its sister templates, but after some years someone objected to that, so some of the Rayment templates contain a unreliable source warning and others do not.

The general opinion on Charles Cawley's website was that it is unreliable when there is not a clear citation, but it is far from clear that this is acceptable because the citation is usually to a primary source (and primary sources that not published, are not acceptable (

syn (sic) for Wikipedia editors to do. So I created {{Medieval Lands by Charles Cawley
}} which includes the templates "[self-published source][better source needed]"

However having mentioned the "not-so-good" and "the bad", here are some of "the ugly":

Not all of these may be used as citations (they may be in external links). Which brings me to my last point. Yes they need to be tested for use as cited reliable sources (and deleted if they do not meet the requirements), but do we really want to add them to a black list which was never intended to ban this type of web site--unreliable but not harmful--and that might legitimately appear in external links?

-- PBS (talk) 11:05, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@PBS: that is exactly why I ask for significant community consensus before blacklisting a domain on the basis of unreliability - it is not something to be taken lightly. I know it is a grey area, but you have to ask the question whether Wikipedians should be .. wasting their time reverting and removing ALL additions, or whether we should just plainly stop the additions to occur in the first place. Also, I believe that the name 'Spam-blacklist' is a misnomer, and that historically the blacklist has been used for non-spam(med) material (there is material on the blacklists that has not been spammed, but where every recorded addition is plainly abuse, unhelpful, and HAS to be reverted - one of those, pornhub.com, had about 15 additions over the last 2 days). And you are right, sites that can, within reason, be used as an external link, but almost never as a reference should not be on this list either.
We are not out here to just blacklist anything that we think that is 'not-so-good', 'the bad', or 'the ugly' unless it is a) actively spammed or b) it can be shown that all additions are abuse, or c) there is a near-unilateral consensus that it is so majorly unreliable and useless that the community decides that it is better to stop all additions.  --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:26, 15 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

asmrstudio.com

I hope this is the right place to request a removal from the blacklist. It appears someone went crazy on the ASMR wikipedia entry page, and began erasing everybodies links and other bits of information. My website is genuine. It is highly relevant to the ASMR wikipedia page as well as a few others. It contains more research intensive information than most other websites. Spam is content that is created without thought, without care, and without attention. Asmrstudio.com is made with care, provides a great deal of attention to the subject matter, and there is significant thought put into the subject matter. The ASMR section that is the web, just so happens to be controversial, so I understand the attention directed towards my website. Please remove it from the spam list. Thank you for your reconsideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.19.253.75 (talk) 18:45, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

no Declined Please refer to the notice at the top of this section; we don't consider requests from site owners. OhNoitsJamie Talk 22:00, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jamie. I thought the wikipedia was mine until I read your thoughts on site ownership. I guess I'll stop paying for it. Sincerely.

BTW. You guys banned the Daily Mail? That is elitism. I guess I will IQ test myself and others before I refer them to your academy of higher vets.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/02/10/what-wikipedias-daily-mail-ban-tells-us-about-the-future-of-online-censorship/#24743df2ac6e

Who owns the Daily Mail? Who has the conflict of interest? The readers?

Please reconsider the blacklist removal and reference your own wikipedia page on what is technically spam.

unsolicited — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.19.253.82 (talk • contribs) 15:05, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and btw. Shame on you guys for this ban -> http://american cocker spaniel.info/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.19.253.79 (talk • contribs) 15:31, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Your website is a
reliable source, and they can choose to either heed the warning or override it by submitting the edit again. — Newslinger talk 20:42, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

Thank you, but cherry picking avoids the other issue, such as the definition of spam itself, and there is no spam issue whatsoever.

I think the Daily mail provides it's sources whenever possible. Especially on it's copyrighted image materials. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.19.253.10 (talk • contribs) 20:39, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Daily Mail is not blacklisted. The domain is not on MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. — Newslinger talk 11:12, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

IMDB

imdb.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • 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 This has probably been discussed before but since folks continue to try to pass it off as a

WP:DOB
, I think it's time to put a stop to it.

The content on IMDb is

user-generated, and the site is therefore considered unreliable by the majority of editors. Some have argued that certain content on the site is reviewed by staff, although there is no broad agreement as to whether this constitutes bona fide fact checking, or what portions of the site, if any, should be considered reliable. A number of editors have pointed out that IMDb content has been copied from other sites, including Wikipedia, and that there have been a number of notable hoaxes in the past. Toddst1 (talk) 15:20, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

WP:ELPEREN (though I do think that a reliability argument counts way stronger than ‘it contains much info that we do not have’, especially when that info is unreliable). As this request is not based on mitigation of spam, we would need an RfC showing that the issues with the site warrant blacklisting. —Dirk Beetstra T C 03:24, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Add to
    External links section of the article. One solution is to tell XLinkBot to automatically revert citations of these sources that are added by unregistered users and accounts under seven days old, subject to additional limitations explained at User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList. Since Crunchbase and Discogs are already on the RevertReferencesList, I think it would be appropriate to add IMDb as well. — Newslinger talk 05:55, 12 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
    ]
I can probably get behind this. There are a couple of circumstances (see
Ravensfire (talk) 15:24, 13 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]
Agree; I don't think it would be practical to add it to the blacklist given the number of existing links. XLinkBot would be a better approach. However, given how many existing links there are, and the fact the way have a pretty commonly used template ({{template:imdb}}) for imdb, I suggest taking it to a broader forum for discussion. OhNoitsJamie Talk 12:56, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've started an RfC at
WP:RSN § RfC: IMDb to gauge consensus for adding IMDb to the RevertReferencesList. — Newslinger talk 18:14, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

indianfestival.in

+ others...

  • A mixture of spamming the external links sections of articles/refspam. I removed about 20 instances today via an insource: search, so perhaps not massive, but maybe one to watch. -- Begoon 12:11, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just noting that half a dozen of these were reinserted after I removed them, by different IPs. -- Begoon 19:23, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Begoon: plus Added. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:16, 17 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

manvsfap.com

Tgeorgescu (talk) 12:14, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Tgeorgescu: plus Added. --Dirk Beetstra T C 17:49, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

channel45news.com

channel45news.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • 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

This is a user-generated news site to make fake news articles. It was recently used to create this gross BLP violation. Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 07:44, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Lugnuts: It has been used by other users (one use replaced by same user) for, what seems, not such material. RockNWrite82 and Kitkalix, can you please confirm/rebute the remarks? (user generated news sites do not have to be blacklisted just on having that nature, nor on having one case of gross abuse, but if we agree that that is the general nature then we should probably consider to be more careful with it's use). --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:23, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Beetstra. I wasn't sure what the correct venue was to report this, so I came here. Let me know if there's a better way to deal with this. Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 13:25, 19 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Famous Birthdays (famousbirthdays.com)

Repeated violations of the

WP:RSP § Famous Birthdays for past discussions. I don't see a valid use case for this domain (as a reference or as an external link). — Newslinger talk 21:46, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply
]

@Newslinger: plus Added} per the discussion on RSN and the listing in RSP. XLinkBot has been tried and not found to be sufficient. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:16, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

campusvarta.com

Repeated, ongoing spamming by SPA socks and dynamic IPs for a student blog (or "EdTech news website" as it calls itself) - see detailed COIBot report for accounts and IPs. No encyclopedic usage. GermanJoe (talk) 11:50, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GermanJoe: plus Added. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:21, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

camp-x.com

I don't know if camp-x.com has been discussed before. It is the work of Lynn Philip Hodgson, whose books are freely referenced in such articles as Camp X, Casa Loma, George McClellan (police officer)... (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Lynn+Philip+Hodgson&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go&ns0=1 for more). It seems to have relevant info on these subjects, especially first hand rather than in book refs that are unavailable online, except thru camp-x.com. I endeavoured to Externally link: Camp-X on the Camp-X article and was blocked. Why not allow it?

PS I have no conflict of interest. PPS I have been editing WP for about 12 years yet there are places I find difficult to penetrate like the Blacklist and the whys and wherefores of such decisions. Am I out of line to say that makes a mockery of WPs claims to openness and user friendliness. Am I supposed to trawl the logs of such decisions for each year. Is there an easier way and why can't it come up with the the reason for Blacklisting at the time of editing... Somehow it seems like those intrepid editors that use such sites that cannot be named may be regarded as tainted and suspicious themselves. Speaking for myself, I am trying to improve WP, on my own time and could do without some of the bother. DadaNeem (talk) 23:27, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

By fiddling around with tracked I found this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/July_2011#camp-x.com_removal which states that:

Defer to Whitelist. This was blocked in December 2009 for spamming by a persistent spammer. The size of the site or who owns it isn't really relevant to the reason for listing. The only article on Wikipedia that would require a link to this site would be Camp X, and for that, you may request that a specific page to be whitelisted. If you want to whitelist just the home page, use www.camp-x.com/index.htm in your request. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

That's all I can find. My ?s:

  • the original block details are unknown to me
  • are they even still relevant 10 years on?
  • is a block permanent? The site is no longer active yet I found the latest archive of it on archive.org
  • no request that I know of was made for a partial lifting for use on Camp X-could at least that be allowed?

DadaNeem (talk) 00:33, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@DadaNeem: minus Removed from MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 04:52, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Beetstra: Many thanks Dirk Beetstra. Please excuse me for going into rant mode. To give a more general positive outcome to this, can you suggest a way to make this process easier? I have a few ideas... BTW while camp-x.com is unblocked, the bitly equivalent, https://bit.ly/2YYBfr2, remains blocked eg I can't save this comment without rendering the bit.ly harmless. Regards DadaNeem (talk) 06:49, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DadaNeem: there is no reason to ever use bit.ly. Use https://web.archive.org/web/20161026113930/http:/www.camp-x.com/camp-x.html. bit.ly is a redirect service, and those services are globally blocked as they are abused on a daily basis, utterly unneeded (there is by definition a replacement), and are hiding where you are going to end up. We will not even grant whitelisting for them.
I am unsure what you want to make less painful here, is there anything missing in the instructions? --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:36, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

onefivenine.com

I've been weeding out uses of this site for months now, and we're down to around 190 instances from what was well over 2000 in January 2018. The site was one of many discussed here, all of which will eventually come in for the same treatment. However, it is still being added and so I find myself going round in circles. - Sitush (talk) 08:06, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Sitush: do you think that we could just list the whole set here and blacklist based on that discussion? (we do blacklist if there is a clear consensus that they should not be used at all, and only make exception at very rare cases which then can easily be handled at the whitelist - I am not sure if this RSN discussion is strong enough for that). --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:43, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I would be happy to see all but mapsofindia blacklisted. As the discussion noted, mapsofindia does have some genuine use but the rest are scrapers. Bear in mind that the participants in that discussion, other than Reyk, are all very frequent contributors to India-related articles - they know their stuff. Sorry, struck that - there was a discussion somewhere that involved more members of the India wikiproject, but it isn't the one I link above. Same outcome, though. - Sitush (talk) 10:46, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Sitush: so that makes the above list? --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:01, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to, yes, thanks. - Sitush (talk) 11:14, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, I remove links to 159 every now and then and it does seem to me that I'm seeing instances I removed being put back in. Blacklist sounds like a god plan. Reyk YO! 11:19, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Blacklisting makes sense for onefivenine.com. I don't have an opinion about the other websites, except for census2011.co.in: it's not the best source, but it's very far from being the kind of thing we should blacklist (it's also currently being discussed at the RSN). – Uanfala (talk) 11:39, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because you raised it there. It will have the same outcome - there are official sources for the information, so no need to use a spammy one. - Sitush (talk) 12:24, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • If people want it blacklisted, fine. But in my book, the fact that a website has ads doesn't automatically make it "spammy". – Uanfala (talk) 13:59, 16 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The most recent RSN discussion, referred to by Uanfala, was archived here. FWIW, I have been revamping the 187 villages named at List of villages in Mawal taluka using the official census reports rather than the adsense-geared census2011.co.in mentioned in the list. It is time-consuming to fix but not difficult to source, and there were some where the website differed from the official report because the site seems to have missed that there were 6 uninhabited villages + three that bear similar names. - Sitush (talk) 10:03, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Sitush: plus Added to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:29, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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