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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Links to the inside nets of university libraries are useless for anyone without the password.

Wondering if we can add anything that starts with "https://www-clinicalkey-com.ezproxy-v" to the blakclist?

So for example this would be blocked https://www-clinicalkey-com.ezproxy-v.musc.edu/#!/content/book/3-s2.0-B9780323401616001996?scrollTo=%23top

And the student would have to remove it before they save the edit. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:26, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

seems like a good idea(they should be using references anyone can access)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:10, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
This problem has been a frustration for years by the way. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:33, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
I agree that this is a good idea. Student editors would actually benefit from automating this. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:55, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Agree; I assume they're added in good faith (would generally satisfy criteria for MEDRS), but the student does not realize that they're internal. Have occasionally forgotten that my Pubmed URLs have a proxy extension. — soupvector (talk) 01:10, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Agree completely that they are added in good faith and many of them are perfectly fine references. We just need better meta data :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:51, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Support. Along the same lines would be great to include https://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.proxy.XXXXX and anything with .proxy. in it, but that is probably too much to ask. Jytdog (talk) 02:10, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Agree with adding the other one aswell. Difficult to ban anything with ".proxy" in it. Are there any good refs that might have .proxy in it? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:25, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
I don't think this is appropriate for the blacklist. Yes, it's annoying. On the other hand, for the average reader, it's just as annoying to get a link to ScienceDirect, UpToDate, and other paywalled sources, the YouTube video that doesn't play in your country, etc.
I spent a while searching just now, and the specific link mentioned above isn't present in any article. About 400 articles have something similar ("ezproxy" but not this specific one). That suggests a rate of about one problem per 12,500 articles. Compared to the massive problem of "the blacklist wouldn't let me save if I added a ref", I think I'd rather have the occasional paywalled/restricted source. Removing a convenience link is a much easier problem to solve. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:24, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Umm. That is because we remove them. This is not about paywalls. I have access to these journals just not through "their" university library.
This will be simple a friendly reminder to what these students have already been told. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:28, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Again, from the POV of an average reader – a group that does not include any editor who posted on this page – these links are no different from paywalls. You are not an "average reader" in any sense. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Happy to limit those urls aswell. Not everything at ScienceDirect is paywalled though. And Uptodate now shows the first part of the page. Uptodate is not very good as one cannot link to a specific version / their is no archived version. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:28, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Having something to discourage students from adding references that only work for them would have two benefits: (1) it means that a more accessible reference has to be used, which allows others to see the source; and (2) it helps the students to learn how to create more useful references. I completely reject any suggestion that any links to an internal network should be allowable as sources, because they are very different from paywalls. On the other hand, there's no difference between the first useless link to Portland State University that the edit filter caught and an external link to a document that I may store on my company's intranet. In neither case can anyone outside the organisation access the document, and we simply can't accept such references on Wikipedia. --RexxS (talk) 14:44, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

@Doc James, Ozzie10aaaa, WhatamIdoing, Jytdog, Tryptofish, and Soupvector: I would edit-filter with 'warn and log' this on any content namespace, not use the blacklist (for now). If there is a real persistence after the edit-filter warning, then we either switch that to 'warn and block' or implement a blacklist rule. Thoughts?

Can we collect a handful of these links, I'll try and write something. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:49, 5 December 2017 (UTC) (missed a ping --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:47, 5 December 2017 (UTC))

Log only (for now): Special:AbuseFilter/892. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:57, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

First correct hit recorded. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:20, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! And wow, that didn't take long. :) Jytdog (talk) 13:56, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Perfect. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:07, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't think anyone here is trying to make things hard for the "average reader", but rather, to make what has been a manual task more efficient. I agree that I am not an "average reader", but I know rather a lot about students. And I suspect that for the typical student editor, finding that they cannot save an edit and then seeing why is less WP:BITEy than being issued a warning. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

While some of these are easy enough to salvage (because there's a real DOI or jstor ID) many others are totally opaque, especially when they're added as bare urls. ProQuest search strings are among the worst. Apart from the ezproxy and ezproxy1 type links, there are also proxy.lib.xxxx.edu. Guettarda/Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

This is another inside link I am seeing being added "ucsf.idm.oclc.org" 7 additions remain after I have cleaned up some. User:Beetstra you able to add to the filter? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:44, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

plus Added. User:Doc James, can you edit the AbuseFilters? --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:59, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Perfect thank. Will look more at it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:42, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

'Warning'

When we see that we do quite well (no false-positives in a couple of days), I will turn it to 'warn and log', but for that I need to create a warning and tags (have to figure out how to do that all again). I will probably store that in MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-proxy-link (or something similar). But we develop the text here, first version:

Just copy the whole and adapt at will, it is far from perfect (someone with a better understanding of such proxy links may be able to phrase the technical part in a more N00by way). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:59, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

I've adapted a bit:

As I think we are ready to start using this filter, I have copied this to its correct place.

I am pinging all who have participated here: @Doc James, Ozzie10aaaa, WhatamIdoing, Jytdog, Tryptofish, Soupvector, and Guettarda:, the warning likely needs way more than what there is now can we please edit above message to clarify the situation more for those who do not understand why they get the warning? Maybe even a collapsed box with detailed instructions for the more common cases? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:02, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

I'll make a start by tidying up a little bit of grammar and style:
Thanks User:RexxS, I've updated that .. I made a start with a collapsed 'instructions' part. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:31, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping and for working on this. I like the version with the collapsed box. I have just one further suggestion: remove the parentheses around "local" in "local proxy". I think the parentheses are not necessary, and can be distracting for users who are not knowledgeable about how proxies work – they can simply assume that, if they got the message, then their proxy is the kind of proxy that is a problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:47, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Wording is looking really good. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:02, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Agreed - nice work! — soupvector (talk) 03:02, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

New version to be uploaded. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:12, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

It did seem to do its work now, twice (one needed an additional repair). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:13, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Follow up - blacklist links to inside nets of Universities

@Doc James, Ozzie10aaaa, WhatamIdoing, Jytdog, Tryptofish, and Soupvector:

I ran into another link that was not in the edit filter, and had a discussion with a user of that link. They, as many others according to many of the results of the AbuseFilter (892), simply ignore the filter and add the link, and in the discussion the editor suggested that they would just leave the link out altogether if we did not want it. The specific link is one of the useless type, linking to a proquest result that cannot be resolved except if one actually has the required proquest access (if you don't have access into proquest, you are left with an encoded link and a login window). An official link for the document in question does exist, but that requires some extra work (google search, finding the correct one - with more generic titles of the work that will probably fail - not a job that could possibly be done by a bot).

In numbers: since the filter was set to warn, 73 hits were obtained, 7 editors seem to have taken the warning (or just stopped), 16 editors saved the edit anyway (and some of these editors tripped the filter multiple times (I have ignored the bots).

Therefore, I am starting to be in favour to follow the original suggestion made by Doc James, and the reason why we are on this very page:

Why's pissedconsumer.com Blacklisted?

While trying to save an edit to a talk page dealing with online sites which report billing disputes, I got a red box containing the following text:

Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist.

To save your changes now, you must go back and remove the blocked link (shown below), and then save. Note that if you used a redirection link or URL shortener (like e.g. goo.gl, t.co, youtu.be, bit.ly), you may still be able to save your changes by using the direct, non-shortened link - you generally obtain the non-shortened link by following the link, and copying the contents of the address bar of your web-browser after the page has loaded. Links containing google.com/url? are resulting from a copy/paste from the result page of a Google search - please follow the link on the result page, and copy/paste the contents of the address bar of your web-browser after the page has loaded, or click here to convert the link. If you feel the link is needed, you can: Request that the entire website be allowed, that is, removed from the local or global spam blacklists (check both lists to see which one is affecting you). Request that just the specific page be allowed, without unblocking the whole website, by asking on the spam whitelist talk page. Blacklisting indicates past problems with the link, so any requests should clearly demonstrate how inclusion would benefit Wikipedia.

The following link has triggered a protection filter: pissedconsumer.com

I can't find anything online indicating this site being problematic apart from "How To Get Removed From PissedConsumer.com", a short article by a reputation management law firm offering their services in removing negative entries from PissedConsumer.com. Is the site particularly notable for spam or something worse? loupgarous (talk) 23:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@Vfrickey: Hi Vfrickey,

My name is Elina and I'm the representative of Pissedconsumer.com. Today I saw your post on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Spam_blacklist#Why's_pissedconsumer.com_Blacklisted and decided to contact you.

I just wanted to assure you that Pissedconsumer is not a scam, our aim is to provide a platform where customers can share their real experience. Many of our users are pissed customer that is why some companies do not like us. Some companies just want to remove reviews, some of them prepare Black SEO attacks. Our ban in Wikipedia is the result of one of such attack.

We already tried to resolve this issue with Wiki in several ways:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cyphoidbomb/Archive_20#Remove_Pissedconsumer.com_from_.22media-wiki_blacklist.22
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist/Archives/2017/10#PissedConsumer.com

  • sent the same information to Wiki email - info-en-q@wikimedia.org

but everything were to no avail. We would very appreciate your help in getting rid of unfair Wiki ban.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them for you. ElinaSivak (talk) 11:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi, Elina,
Sorry to hear your firm's had difficulty here. It can be very difficult to gather a consensus on wikipedia to overcome an action such as being placed on a blacklist. It is especially difficult if you work for a company which has been blacklisted to get your company off the blacklist. Wikipedia's policy is to ask editors to consider the conflict of interest between being a wikipedia editor (where your job is to help make an encyclopedia) and working for a company (where your job is something else). This is the WP:COI (Conflict of Interest) guideline, where we have to be sure our articles are as objective and accurate as they can be.
You seem to have taken almost all of the steps you must to get your firm off the blacklist, except for actually convincing other wikipedia editors your firm should be off the blacklist. The one thing you did not do in some of your earlier steps was to formally say that you are a wikipedia editor with a potential conflict of interest. It is clear you are not hiding your job with pissedconsumer.com now. To learn what you can and cannot do as an wikipedia editor who may have a conflict of interest, please read WP:COI, so you know why you must make sure all other editors understand that when you discuss pissedconsumer.com, that you work for pissedconsumer.com.
I was advised by another editor that I could refer other editors to your web site for information without linking actively to it from our discussion pages. Until you and your firm succeed in convincing other editors to take pissedconsumer.com off of the blacklist, that is the only thing I can do. Whitelisting your firm's web site or removing it from a blacklist probably won't work at this time (read WP:SNOW for more information about that).
Thanks for contacting me. Outside work has distracted me from putting more time in the editing project I first read pissedconsumer.com for, but I will ask questions of you later. loupgarous (talk) 02:10, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

The blacklisting here is not specifically due to spam/spamming in the more classical sense. I do think that pissedconsumer.com has value as a reference in some cases, but I also think that we should control use quite strictly to avoid advocating specific problems or unnecessary negativity on companies/persons (a statement that ‘company X got 300 complaints’ is utterly meaningless if company size, visibility etc. is not taken into account and is tainting for anything that gets such statements). And yes, I would advocate that similar domains get blacklisted for those reasons on the same grounds (similar to the approach with petition sites). —Dirk Beetstra T C 03:17, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Dirk Beetstra, ElinaSivak [[[User:ElinaSivak|ElinaSivak]] pointed us to numerous published instances in which pissedconsumer.com has been referenced by mainstream news media such as Bloomberg.com, New York Post, Washington Post, CBS News, CNN Money and Forbes. Notability has been shown, as well as credibility. We wikipedia editors are constrained by WP:SYNTH from deciding (in the case of ActBlue, whose page on pissedconsumer.com is what I was asking about) reports of US$120,000 in unresolved billing disputes must be disregarded because an ActBlue employee tells us it's not a big enough slice of their business volume.
Is there a reliable secondary source at all (apart from a law firm whose livelihood depends on impeaching pissedconsumer.com's reports on their customers) which says "we should control use quite strictly to avoid advocating specific problems or unnecessary negativity on companies/persons (a statement that ‘company X got 300 complaints’ is utterly meaningless if company size, visibility etc. is not taken into account and is tainting for anything that gets such statements)"? It sounds to me like WP:SYNTH when one of us makes those calls without some notable, reliable secondary source backup. loupgarous (talk) 14:11, 7 July 2018 (UTC)
A glance at the additions is enough, those are the remarks I saw added. I said that there is place for pissedconsumer in references, but with care of how it is used.
I do not, and have not, questioned notability. I can name you many websites that are notable and where we blacklist the domain because of abuse, misuse or spam. —Dirk Beetstra T C 14:54, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Why is this blacklisted?

Why is google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj2sfOXufHTAhUD6mMKHYj_BQQQFggpMAA&url=http://natural-history.uoregon.edu/sites/default/files/mnch/Erlandson_and_Braje_2008.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHHMbx8zVdHvrJMuFpCYf9AYfeNJQ&sig2=dNH7JQ9VmoRayVY3WFyD6g triggering as a blacklisted link? VQuakr (talk) 08:15, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

@VQuakr: Because when you click the link you write here, you tell google that you are interested in this link. So if a spammer would replace 'www.mycompany.com' with 'google.com/url?url=http://www.mycompany.com', anyone following that link from Wikipedia would tell google that they are interested in the contents of mycompany.com, increasing the ranking of mycompany.com at google. That is the exact essence of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Since there is absolutely no use in using thát link instead of (in your case) http://natural-history.uoregon.edu/sites/default/files/mnch/Erlandson_and_Braje_2008.pdf (the document that you actually want to link, the redirecting, google-rank-increasing link has been blacklisted. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:45, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't black list 

MithileshRazz245 (talk) 03:35, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Where is the blacklist?

No link to it that I could see. deisenbe (talk) 15:50, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

@Deisenbe: It is linked in the second sentence: MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. WP:SBL also leads you there. --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:14, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

What to do when archiving a page which contains a blacklisted link?

I just archived Talk:U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and ran into an issue when saving the new archive. The talk page had a blacklisted link and I was therefore unable to save the new page. I got around that by placing 'nowiki' on the link, but I'm wondering if there are any guidelines as to whether the offending link should just be removed or some other solution. (posting on Help talk:Archiving a talk page as well) Hydromania (talk) 05:17, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Nowiki is fine, but posting multiple copies of the same message to different talk pages is not. Graham87 15:18, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Hydromania (talk) 17:15, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Help!

Why is change.org blacklisted? 216.145.88.103 (talk) 04:47, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Because it is abused, and generally we are not specifically interested in any collection of names signing a petition. The subject matter can be discussed without a link to a collection fof names. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:51, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

GBooks

Any reason why a Google Books link should suddenly be blacklisted? Is it somehow connected with EU Article 13 proposals? Surely not? The url format is identical to the thousands of GBooks urls I have inserted in the last decade or more. - Sitush (talk) 06:28, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Specifically, https://books.google.com/books?id=ngCqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79 - Sitush (talk) 06:30, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I am wondering whether the source has been blocked. It looks like a fairly dodgy source to me. - Sitush (talk) 07:09, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Repinging due to typo above - @Billinghurst: - Sitush (talk) 07:09, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
@Beetstra: it is one of yours special:diff/prev/769078025 and seems to be discussed by the community here, and if I read it correctly it was due to people suborning copyrighted books at GBooks. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:48, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
@Sitush: spam from a publisher (and maybe we should revisit that, I doubt that they stopped publishing when they found their first domains blacklisted on en.wikipedia (if they even noticed)). @Ugog Nizdast, Someguy1221, Utcursch, and SpacemanSpiff: who participated in the discussions regarding the first set. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:39, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Spiffy isn't active, so we're not going to get a response from them. I do strongly suspect that the specific source isn't reliable - I was just trying to add a courtesy link so that I could then open a discussion about it. Whether that means other sources from the same publisher are problematic is not something I can comment on. - Sitush (talk) 13:56, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
Update: I'm just going to pull the source out of the article. I've read the thread that billingshurst and note that it has been lumped with the Gyan stuff, for which see User:Sitush/Common#Gyan. As far as I am concerned, I've got no issue with retaining the filter on that basis because this sort of thing does keep reappearing. - Sitush (talk) 14:07, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
@Sitush: if there is regular misuse we should probably prohibit additions of such material. Actually an editfilter set to warn-and-prohibit is likely a better solution for these. --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:54, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Running into an issue where an archived page I want to link to points to a domain that is now a spam site, but was not when the article was created. At the time of creation it was the page of The RPG Exaiminer, housed at exaiminer.com, which now just redirects to some kind of shopping/advertising spam site. The link I'm trying to use, though, is http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.examiner.com%2Fx-6911-RPG-Examiner%7Ey2009m7d24-Roleplaying-games-101-What-is-an-ENnie&date=2009-07-26. Which is not associated with that in any way. Is there anything I can do? Or is it effectively a verboten link because of the domain's current use? ―Vancian | 💬📜  22:50, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Just realized i posted this in the wrong place. I'll post it over at the whitelist request page. ―Vancian | 💬📜  23:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Filmreference.com

Could somebody point me to the discussion re: filmreference.com? This is a longstanding, non-wiki, edited website that lists all sources for its information. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:51, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

@Tenebrae: MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/March_2019#Advameg_sites_(city-data.com,_filmreference.com,_etc.) and MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist#Advameg_sites_(city-data.com,_filmreference.com,_etc.). --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:49, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the link! I see where the publisher has a lot of sites and appears to be a content farm. I find FilmReference.com, which does list its sources at the end of each page, is perhaps the only such site that admits when those sources give conflicting birth dates. That alone I find makes it valuable. I'll look more into its exact editorial policies, if any, in case we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. --Tenebrae (talk) 13:55, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Aborted rollbacks

I appreciate the need for a blacklist to discourage people from using those links as references. However, it is quite common for someone to some material from a blacklisted site. Our copy patrol tool identifies the site associated with the problematic material. It is our practice to do a rollback and add an edit summary identifying the source of the material. However, such a rollback fails. It's really quite annoying to have to redo the rollback. Is there a way to modify the filter so that it doesn't reject the blacklist link when used in an edit summary? If that's not an option can we talk about other options to address this recurring problem?--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:51, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: the current, crude black-and-white blacklist setup does not allow for that. Requests to overhaul the spam blacklist have existed (and ignored) since 10 years (and are now perennial for Community Wishlist). Currently, your only option is to leave off the http://, then it will save but the link is not clickable. --Dirk Beetstra T C 06:16, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Beetstra, Thanks for your response, I feared that might be the case. Unfortunately your solution isn't really workable. I process a couple hundred reports each week may be 100 of which require reversion and I think it's polite to include a clickable link in the edit summary. 98 of those 100 will be fine and it wouldn't make much sense to manually change all 100 producing a less valuable edit summary for the possibly two that were blacklisted. I guess I'll just have to hope that it bubbles to the top of the wish list someday. S Philbrick(Talk) 11:39, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: When your rollback (which, I presume is manual, not the MediaWiki function) hits the blacklist, you can just go back to the edit window, and strip http:// from that link for those that happen. IF you do use a script, then it is likely better to see if you can do something about the script, either make it 'hang' on the saving so you can manually adapt it on the cases it does run into the blacklist.
Do remember, some of the material on the blacklist is there because of other problems than being spammed, there may be material that you do not want to link to at all).
(and that is where I have my problem with WMF. They already told me, that even if the Wish was granted, they would likely not have it implemented). --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:46, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
Beetstra, I'm using the Rollback option which appears at the top of the page after clicking on view history then "compare selected revisions". There are three options:
[rollback (AGF)] || [rollback] || [rollback (VANDAL)]
I choose the first of the three.
That prompts me for an edit summary, and I always enter "copyright issue re URL".
Where "URL" where is pasted from the URL copied from the address bar.
When I hit enter it begins to execute but then I get an orange message that it was aborted because of the blacklist, so I have to start over. I typically enter a space into the URL and try again. I'd be happy if it could "hang" so I could modify it. S Philbrick(Talk) 11:58, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
@Sphilbrick: Ah, I see. Yes, then that is then the only solution, for now. Sorry for the inconvenience. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:19, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Globalresearch.ca

GlobalResearch.ca, (www.globalresearch.ca) a conspiracy and fake news website, is often used as a reference, perhaps by editors that are unaware of its reputation. I try to remove or replace the links, using the find external links tool, but it would be better if they could be prevented. There is some cases where a link is OK, for example when writing about an author and what they published on the site, or when writing about a theory presented there. I don't know if you can add a warning in the editing process, something saying that the website that's being added is often considered unreliable? Sjö (talk) 07:52, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

​GlobalResearch.ca has now been added to the spam blacklist. Please see WP:SBL § globalresearch.ca. — Newslinger talk 04:46, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Where to go to blacklist a malicious link?

It's not precisely spam, but we don't want to link to it. See: Wikipedia:Help_desk#Help deleting a malicious link in a reference list. It's apparently one of those ugly pages that tries to trap your browser. Where do we report this sort to stuff? -Arch dude (talk) 00:13, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

​Malicious domains would also qualify for blacklisting if they are being added inappropriately. Blacklisting can be requested at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist (WP:SBL). — Newslinger talk 04:48, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposed edit

Note: In this entry, please imagine deleting "XXX", which was added only to allow this entry to be posted.

I encountered the blacklist when I tried to post in the Talk space a link beginning https://youtu.be/ (this is the URL returned when right-clicking in YouTube and selecting "Copy video URL").

The solution, for those encountering this problem, is to change this prefix to "https://www.youtube.com".

I speculate that the reason for blacklisting just the prefix https://youtu.be/ seems to relate to its use as a general URL shortener.

David Spector (talk) 16:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

David spector, the solution is explained in the message you encounter when hitting the blacklist, I guess it needs to be duplicated here - there are some other shorteners which should be expanded (one typical one is the google internal shortener for search results).
The youtube shorteners are on there for two reasons: ease of handling blacklisting of specific youtube links (which are spread across the different wikis, no need to leave open the backdoors - spammers and POV pushers are quite insisting, they tend to find ways if you block one), and for quite some time, spambots had a tendency to hammer us with, a.o. youtube shortener links. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:54, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

youtu.be

Can we get youtu.be removed from the blacklist? This is the site name that YouTube uses to refer to themselves when you ask it to generate a sharing link. It's not some generic URL shortener. It's not a spam link. It's not some deceptive way that YouTube is hiding their identify. The blacklist alert you get gives you unhelpful and incorrect advice about using the youtube.com version. The problem with that is (as far as I can tell) there's no way to construct a youtube.com URL which contains a start-time offset. So, basically, the blacklist prevents me from linking to a legitimate URL which has no acceptable substitute. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:19, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

This entry is on the global blacklist, and was added per m:Talk:Spam_blacklist/Archives/2010-12#Youtu.be, meaning the correct venue for this request is m:Talk:Spam blacklist * Pppery * it has begun... 14:48, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
@RoySmith: no, this was heavily spammed by a multitude of IPs, and totally unnecessary, you can just use the expanded links. It is a redirect service which we should not use in the first place. --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:04, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
RoySmith explicitly specified why just us[ing] the expanded links does not work: The problem with that is (as far as I can tell) there's no way to construct a youtube.com URL which contains a start-time offset * Pppery * it has begun... 15:35, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
Pppery, Oddly enough, it now looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOP3xKLNJZo&feature=youtu.be&t=1884 works. I'm not sure why I didn't find that yesterday, but OK, there's a workaround. Still, this seems like a silly thing to be on the blacklist. Yeah, yeah, I know, take it to meta. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:45, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
@RoySmith: it is a misunderstood part of youtube, but youtube is spammed. There are several links on youtube that are blacklisted, people spam youtube (see Special:Contributions/Anjyog for example). For youtu.be, wikipedia, at large, has for a very long time been hammered with youtu.be spambots, see User:Beetstra/Long-term_spamming#Using_Youtube_for_spamming. Not having that blacklisted globally would have resulted in a lot of extra work. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:17, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Hubpages branch

Hubpages.com hosts monetized user generated contents and it is currently listed under Media wiki spam black list and a handful of requests made to remove it has been denied. There are many other category specific domains for Hubpages which, just like Hubpages, are self published. Doesn't it make sense to add all the other Hubpages clones operated under different domains enrolled into the spam blacklist too? They are all monetized, user generated contents hosting.

Graywalls (talk) 18:04, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Graywalls, please report these at WT:SBL. Dirk Beetstra T C 00:44, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Improving this page

I had never run into the URL blacklist before, so I was surprised that the linked page at Wikipedia:Spam blacklist did not provide any links either (a) to the blacklist itself, so users can see which sites are included (or excluded, I guess); and (b) the reasons for the site being blacklisted.

Wikipedia has always been an exemplar of open policies and digestible, understandable practices, and I hope this page can be improved in that spirit. Woodshed (talk) 03:07, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Woodshed, I am not sure what you mean, there is a link in the first sentence. Dirk Beetstra T C 03:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
My apologies Beetstra — if it were a snake, it would've bit me. Though I am, of course, more interested in why the site(s) in question were blacklisted, unless that information is also hiding in plain sight ... ?
I suppose a link to something like this (which took me quite a while to find, FWIW) is what I was looking for. Even that isn't great, though, as the "request" links go to a specific revision and not the correct dated archive ... and there's no equivalent reference for entries on m:Spam blacklist.
Perhaps a search box like the one from m:Talk:Spam_blacklist could be included so interested users can find the discussions. Woodshed (talk) 03:36, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Woodshed, Ah, now I understand, my apologies. The logs are indeed hard to digest. Another part of the problem is that there are about 4 pathways to blacklisting which are all in different locations (direct, you see some users spamming and the link get blacklisted; request at WT:SBL; Autocaught by m:User:LiWa3/user:COIBot and executed from the reports; from WT:WPSPAM).
I could agree that including some search capabilities here would be good. We'll have to fix that. Dirk Beetstra T C 04:47, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I think blacklist should be renamed blocklist in Wikipedia. It is actually a more logical term for this concept. Barecode (talk) 11:20, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomenclature given Black Lives Matter

I work in IT & just saw a company email stating that many in the IT world are changing nomenclature to “safe list / block list”. It occurred to me that we should start a discussion about it here, in light of institutional racism. It may be that the underlying etymology was not racist, but I think contemporary usage requires rethinking. Peaceray (talk) 16:18, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Peaceray, the devs are working on it. There are more issues with the naming and I hope the are all solved in one go. Dirk Beetstra T C 19:55, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
For a very long time (>10 years), the term "blocklist" has been in widespread use. I have always been surprised to see Wikipedia behind the curve on this, of all things. The issue has now gone beyond merely embarrassing and is starting to look deliberate. This would be a trivial change to make and require minimal (if any) developer resource. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:46, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
John Maynard Friedman, please, don’t get me started on developer priorities. This whole thing should have been rewritten 10 years ago into a much more appropriate system that would be more an ‘external links filter’. Dirk Beetstra T C 11:22, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
Perfect is the enemy of good: indeed there should also be a wp:Perfect is the enemy of good (physician heal thyself). Yes, a 'proper' system would be ideal but it is now too late for that: this is a case where 'good enough' is now needed. No doubt it is more complicated than a simple RTM but even to change the name of the article but not the 'back office' system, would be tolerable. But I can see you are not complacent about it but let's not ease back on the pressure. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:38, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
  • In case I missed this, is there anything stopping us from implementing a new name in our documentation and using redirects until the technical requirements are addressed, if it's expected to be a while? czar 21:30, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
    Czar, In principle everything except for the MediaWiki page could be moved and redirected. It will need some other technical measures (bot monitoring needs to be adapted, scripts need to be adapted) but I do not see any real issues with that. Dirk Beetstra T C 07:47, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Respect magazine

I got a notice that links to Respect (magazine), respect-mag.com, are blacklisted. Why is that?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:29, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh the irony

Ironic. I think we should oblige. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:16, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

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