User:Renamed user 5417514488/spam

Yuser31415 on linkspam

"Linkspam", commonly but ambiguously referred to as a simple "spam", occurs when an editor of Wikipedia inserts external links to other websites for the purpose of promoting a website or product. Linkspamming is widely regarded as vandalism and editors finding signs of doing such should make an attempt to block the spammer, revert or remove the spamlinks, and take steps to ensure the links will not be added again.

Identifying spamlinks

Most spamlinks resolve to a website of commercial, or overly-POV, content. It is also possible spammers will include links to shock sites, their own personal website, or an organization for which they once. Editors should attempt to determine whether the links truly are spam before taking action.

Guidelines and Policy

Explain policies here, including:

• Wikipedia:External links - great general information about external linking guidelines. A good place to which suspected spammers should be pointed is the links normally to be avoided section.
• Wikipedia:Spam - general guidelines on spam. Remember that this espouses the idea that addition of links for the promotion or advertisement of a website is against policy. It does not matter if the link is to a place where money can be made. Link spamming a 'save-the-puppies-oh-won't-someone-think-of-the-puppies' website is still spam. No link should ever be spammed, even amazing ones.
• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest - frequently you'll find a user name that is similar to the link being added. you might also find a link on the user page of a user that is the same as the one they are adding as well. Owning a website and spamming it across Wikipedia is a conflict of interesting, and inherently and unavoidably not neutral point-of-view.
• Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not - wikipedia is not a mere directory of links, it is not google, it is not a phonebook .... all kinds of relevant policy.
• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view - good policy to remind a spammer that Wikipedia is neutral and not about link addition, their favorite website or saving the whales.

List of site types to which a spammer will typically link

• A commercial website, generally, but not necessarily, selling the product featured in the article it is added to. It is important to know that not all commercial sites are bad. Many commercial links in Wikipedia provide clear, concise, and useful information in regards to the subject, without asking to sell anything - these links should generally be left in.
• A site which is overly biased toward the subject of the article, generally positively. For example, "Jif was the first and best cleaner of its type!" or "Soap is the best invention ever!"
• Websites which aim only to disparage or attack the subject of an article, especially if the article is about a living person.
• Links to shock sites or websites of a similar nature.
• Links that have extremely vague or indirect connection to an article it is placed in. For instance, placing a money marketing scheme external link on the article for money is one flavor of this variation.

Reaction

Once the edits have been determined as spam, they can be removed or otherwise dealt with as appropriate.

Removal how-to

There are a variety of facets in dealing with inappropriate links. This guide breaks the process into a number of steps. Most editors will want to complete the first step. Editors interested in doing a more thorough job should follow through with additional measures.

1. Revert and warn the user: When new spam appears on your watchlist, the easiest way to remove or revert it is to select the diff link, select the edit link above the left-hand column, include an appropriate edit summary, preview changes, and save the page. If you come upon an article with spam, check the recent diffs (the last links) in the page history to see if it was added recently in a way that damaged the article; revert the changes to restore the articles to its previous state. It is important to warn the editor to attempt to prevent future spamming from the same editor or establish a history of problematic edits. To warn the editor, go back to your watchlist or page history and select the Talk link associated with the editor and add {{subst:uw-spam1}} ~~~~ to that page. If the user already has a spam warning, add {{subst:uw-spam2}} ~~~~; if two warnings {{subst:uw-spam3}} ~~~~; if three warnings {{subst:uw-spam4}} ~~~~. At this point the task is done, but to see if the user added the same link to other articles, go on to the next step.
2. Check the user's contributions: An editor user will often add the same link to multiple articles. This is often confirmation that the editor is not editing in good faith. To check for this type of activity, select the contribs (or for anonymous editors the IP address) link from your watch list or an article's history. This shows all the other edits the editor recently made and selecting the diff link shows if the same link has been added to other articles. If inappropriate links are found, revert as in step one, but the editor only needs to be warned once unless he or she has spammed since the last warning.
3. Check for similar links: A crafty spammer hides spam by using multiple accounts. This step involves finding all of the articles that contain a link to a particular site. If a link to www.example.com were discovered and removed in steps one and two, the next step is to use the linksearch command to find all articles that contain such links. You may enter www.example.com in the search box, but consider entering *.example.com because this will find not only www.example.com but also ads.example.com and any other domain that might have been used. The linksearch command is found in the Special pages list, which has a link from the toolbox of every page.
4. Identifying the spammer: The process of finding links in step three reveals which articles they are in but does not indicate which editor added them. To find out, go to the article history and expand it to 500 entries. Check to see if the link is present in the last revision in the list. If so, select the previous 500 changes and check again, repeating the process to find the subset of changes where the link appeared. To find the exact edit where the link was added, check the version in the middle of the 500 entries. If it is not present there, then it is in the edits above otherwise it is in the edits below. Check the middle of the appropriate half in the same manner. By using this divide and conquer method the exact point of insertion can quickly be found. Often the edit summary includes the words External links which can help pinpoint the edit. Once the edit is found, go back to step one and start cleaning up after this editor.
5. Persistent spammers: If an active spammer continues adding links after a {{subst:uw-spam4}} warning, report the editor to the administrators at the intervention against vandalism page. An alternative route a spammer may take is to debate the removal of the link on your talk page; usually the best thing to do is explain and point to Wikipedia policies (see above) as well as suggesting that he or she post the link in the talk page of the article to gain consensus on if it should be added.

Help from users in inquiring about/removing spam:

• Wikiproject Spam's talk page - a good base of users who regularly report and investigate link spamming.
• #wikipedia-spam-t - an IRC channel with an active community of users dedicated towards link spam removal. A great place to get live consulting/help for an incident.

Link spammer reactions

1. Inherent conflict of interest issues carry with it passionate editors who want their link to stay
2. Common strawmen arguements
3. Vandalism
4. Aggression/personal attacks
5. Good faith replies/apologies

Spambots

Spambots are automated "robots" that are designed to facilitate high speed addition of external links. They pose a more serious threat than normal spammers, mainly due to their irresponsive and fast nature.

Some easy ways to spot spambots:

1. Repeat posting of massive numbers of spam links even after repeated warnings - since the spammers are using a software to edit pages, they will never see the "new messages" banner and hence they won't see the warnings.
2. When looking at an IP address/user's contributions, spambots often stand out when such contributions are to an alphabetical list of articles.
3. Non-wiki formatting of external links - since many spamming programs are designed to attack forums and not wikis, the external links are sometimes plain (<a href=http://www.example.org>Typical example</a>) or have BBCode "formatting" applied [url]http://www.example.org/[/url]). Note that this behavior in addition to heavy link spamming is characteristic of a spambot; single additions of this formatting nature are sometimes simply a new user who doesn't yet grok wikiformatting.

If you see a bot inserting external links, please report it to AIV and consider checking the other language wikis to see if the attack is widespread. If it is, please contact a sysop on the meta-wiki; they can put in a Wikimedia-wide text filter. Any meta sysop can edit the Wikimedia-wide spam blacklist to add or remove the patterns that are recognized by the filter, with the changes taking effect immediately. New links can also be added to the list if a new spammer should start making the rounds.

Other places to get help are Wikiproject Spam's talk page and if you have an IRC client, #wikipedia-spam-t. Both have experienced and active members who can track down the dregs of a spammer's actions, as well as take moves against future ones.

Tools

There are many tools that serve to assist spam fighters in removing linkspam. Among them are:

• RemExternalLinks -- Script for use in removing external links from a specified domain. Works by going to the Special:Linksearch page and entering in a search. From there click the tab, and it will highlight the links green. Click the links and the js will automatically do the work of removing the link and show a diff.
• FilterLinksearchMainspace -- filter (used in conjunction with the above tool, filters the results down to mainspace only articles.)
• m:Spamda - Spamda is a multi-wiki anti-spam program to assist users in identifying and reverting spam. Currently there is no public release, but soon shall be.
• Twinklefluff - a monobook script with a suite of revert, rollback and userpage warning functions useful for spam fighting.