MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist

Notes[edit]

Spam blacklist[edit]

Moved from Wikiquote:Village_pump#Spam_blacklist.

The community may want to discuss some recent additions to the spam blacklist because one could be considered preemtory and several could represent a policy change:

The Wickedictionary – This is a professor's personal page on an academic website. A possible sock ring, or a bunch of students impressed with the fellow's wit, has been adding quotes and links to numerous theme pages. I would support having one external link to his personal humor page in an article on the professor, for which there is precedent. Blacklisting at this time might seem to prejudge the outcome of a current vote for deletion.
Fifteen quote sites – There is a longstanding practice of casual contributors quoting from these sites, and there is ample precedent for regular contributors removing them as unreliable attributions. Citations and links to sites like ~~BrainlessQuote~~BrainyQuote and ~~ThoughtItWas~~ThinkExist may be considered ~~mostly~~ worthless because they are no help for researching unsourced quotes. Do we want to blacklist these, or carry on as usual?

I am ok blacklisting these, with one potential exception noted above, but what does the rest of the community think? ~ Ningauble 15:47, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not entirely pleased with the idea of people, or their students or other associates posting links to theme pages from the presently little noted Wickedictionary, but I do believe that it and the author's home pages should be accepted as a reliable source for quotes for the author's article, and not blacklisted. I am not certain about what should be done with the largely unreliable quote sites that are often used. Perhaps it is time to blacklist these, simply to reduce the amount of cleanup work that has to be done. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 15:58, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that BrainyQuote is of no value (and in my experience is often unreliable) so there should be restrictions on linking to it; I presume ThinkExist is similar. Professors' personal pages on academic websites might arguably be reliable sources for whatever they say, and certainly for what the authors themselves say.--Ole.Holm 16:00, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I see that several editors have been blocked over use of Wickedictionary. [1] Is this appropriate before we have reached a decision?--Ole.Holm 16:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - The editors blocked for spamming have also been confirmed by checkuser as socks. I agree that the links should remain blacklisted. Cirt (talk) 22:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Note: The site of this Derek Abbott person is a wiki. Apparently one just adds random quotes to it, with no sourcing. There is no verifiability. Therefore allowing this site is akin to saying anyone can create their own personal website, write some quotes, and then post them here. That is self-publishing and there is no way that is either reliable, or notable. Cirt (talk) 22:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - It doesn't seem to be an open wiki; there's no way for someone to create an account except presumably to ask the Sysop and you can't edit when not logged in. There are only 24 users. So it's completely under Prof. Abbott's control and its credibility is as high (or low) as any other product of a senior professor at a leading university.--Ole.Holm 22:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - So anythng someone puts down at a random wiki just because it is written by a "senior professor at a leading university", even if that quote is completely unsourced with no way to verify it or date the quote was said is allowable? NO, it is not. Cirt (talk) 04:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        Is it denied that anything provably said by a senior professor at a leading university has the authority of that professor?--Ole.Holm 19:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        Yes. It is self-published, and the quotes are not sourced to the original sources with dates of when they were said. Cirt (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────────────────┘
Wikiquote does not forbid original research. I can find no policy against use of self-published sources.--Ole.Holm 23:05, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not when they are unreliable, unsourced, undated, and spammed throughout the project by socks. That establishes a pattern of unreliability. Cirt (talk) 23:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Ole.Holm (talk · contributions) has been determined to make this entire thread simply be about The Wickedictionary. This has already been brought up and determined as spam, at Wikiquote:Administrators'_noticeboard#The_Wickedictionary. Let us move on and cease discussion about this spam source. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 23:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
These additions are useful because en.quote doesn't seem to have enough users to check all additions, and using these websites as sources is not encouraged. From Wikiquote:Sourcing: «a published document (whether a book, magazine article, Web site, blog posting, or Usenet article) which can be reliably associated with the subject [...] Note that many other collections of quotations do not have particularly strong standards for sourcing their contents, and will often include only an abbreviated citation. They may be useful to Wikiquotians more as pointers to other, more reliable sources than as sources in their own right» (although it's not very explicit). But blacklisting them means that perhaps users will just add quotations without sources (do you currently rollback unsourced new quotations?), so I think that an abusefilter with a warning to explain why such sources are not allowed would be more useful. --Nemo 07:13, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Agree with this comment by User:Nemo bis. :) -- Cirt (talk) 14:19, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I can accept the addition of all the links to unsourced quotation sites, but "about\.com" is a general information site that is not primarily devoted to quotes, and in the past has provided significant information with which to develop citations, and is even a location of some interviews that might be quoted. I thus strongly feel this site does not belong on a blacklist, and placing it there is far more inconvenient than convenient. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 15:03, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - It is not a reliable source, for quotes or otherwise, and should not be used. -- Cirt (talk) 15:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Office of Special Affairs[edit]

Office of Special Affairs

Added some to the Spam Blacklist originating from smear websites by the intelligence agency called Office of Special Affairs.

Here is some evidence to back these up as not helpful links:

Cheers,

-- Cirt (talk) 00:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

muzlyrics.net[edit]

Someone, as IP addresses, is blindly adding this as a link to articles, and not well. Seems preferable to blacklist this locally rather than globally. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:36, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Billinghurst: