User talk:A. B./First half 2010

This page is a chronological archive of past discussions from User talk:A. B. for the first half of 2010. In order to preserve the record of past discussions, the contents of this page should be preserved in their current form. Please do NOT make new edits to this page. If you wish to make new comments or re-open an old discussion thread, please do so on the User talk:A. B. page. If necessary, copy the relevant discussion thread to the user talk:A. B. page and then add your comments there.

Sorry, I didn't mean it

Hi A. B. First of all, thanks to you for making wikipedia very informative and clean. I kinda shock (and hurt as well) when you wrote 'stop spamming us again' because I don't believe in spamming and I don't believe linking from wikipedia to bring traffic. I just believe in information sharing. If I am a spammer I will continue inserting links blindly even after the first warning (which is Aug 2008) or use other usernames.

But I understand why you say so and I am very sorry for my actions. Sometimes, I have something to share but I don't really know how to use wikipedia and fear of destroying it thus I made webpages and link them because that will be less intrusive. I think I am very immature to decide what should be shared. I will restrain myself from using the keyboard whenever I am in wikipedia.

But this does not mean I will stop contributing to wikipedia. Next time, it will be monetary contribution, not contents (or spams for you and others). Lastly, keep up to good job and I'm very sorry for my immature actions. Walxyer (talk) 08:05, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Unprotect

First of all, I noticed a green message banner on the top of this talk page with a message that expired in mid-December. You might want to change or remove it.

I came to ask you to consider unprotection of Category:User talk pages with Uw-coi notices, which you protected on 8 March 2009. There is another, much larger category of approximately the same content Category:User talk pages with uw-coi-username notices, and it is unprotected. Especially now that both are being redirected to Category:User talk pages with conflict of interest notices. Debresser (talk) 18:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I'm unable to log into my account using Wikipedia's secure server for several days -- I'll look into this when I get better access. --222.68.240.182 (talk) 04:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Unprotected per my request at WP:RFP. Debresser (talk) 14:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia content

Dear A.B.

I have been scrolling through Wikipedia while researching for my History Dissertation based upon the Nuremburg Trials. Upon visiting the pages of some of the defendants I was upset to see images of the men following execution. I found this very distasteful and I believe it detracts from the content of Wikipedia- while these images should be available at certain points on the Internet they present an image that even I am very uncomfortable with. I would like to suggest that these images are removed, replacing them with an image of the defendant in the witness box or with other defendants (both available and free from copyright restrictions) would suffice.

I know this issue may have nothing to do with you but as the first listed Administrator I trust that you are able to forward a message on or act on it yourself. I appreciate the images and information that Wikipedia presents but this set of images steps well over what is acceptable.

Thank you,

Yours Sincerely,

Luke Duggan Kings College, London —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.75.148.225 (talk) 14:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

A. B. is busy in real life at the moment, so I've left a message on an administrators' noticeboard at Wikipedia:Ani#Distasteful_images. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Two contributors have responded at your talk page, User_talk:79.75.148.225.

Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 14:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

ENG spam

Regarding the blacklisting ... I added a mirror site to the request (identical site, different URL), which appears to have been added to the same articles in the past as the other one. Might want to block the mirror as well while you're at it. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:01, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

FYI re: Pulse Trading, I see you added the traceroute info ... the contact information on their website for their New York office has the same address and phone number as shown on ENG's website - so clear COI. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:06, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Amish School Shooting

Since you were one of the original editors on this, would you have time to fix some of the dead links, using archive.org. I fixed footnote 18. Also, see my talk page for Rich's suggestions for what else is needed. Thanks.--Beth Wellington (talk) 10:34, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Beth, I never edited this article at all. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:52, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Orphaned References

When removing <ref>s using blacklisted links, as you did in this edit, please be sure not to leave orphaned refs behind (e.g. these). An easy way to check is to see if the page ends up in the hidden category Category:Pages with broken reference names after your edit. Thanks! Anomie⚔ 13:27, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that -- I missed it. And thanks also for the tip about hidden categories. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)}

livercancer.eu

I've just reverted the re-addition of this spam link by 137.204.230.5 (talk · contribs) to Liver cancer and issued a {{uw-spam4}}. I can see from m:User:COIBot/XWiki/livercancer.eu that you've been involved previously, so I thought I'd let you know in case you felt further action was required. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:02, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Rexx. This is very disappointing. I've blacklisted their domain -- they've left us no choice. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:27, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

A. B. is a...?

Hi A. B.,

The page with the answer to the quiz at the top of this page seems to be down. You might be able to restore the link using the Wayback machine.

Cheers, Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 15:40, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh no! --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)}

LinkSummaryLive

I meant to drop you a note on this earlier but forgot ... I made a slight change to {{LinkSummaryLive}}. The original functionality remains, the change just adds an optional parameter for lh = local hostname. As the creator of the template, I wanted to make sure you knew about the modification. If you have any concerns feel free to revert and let me know. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:44, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Note: the main use I've had for it has been to load the lh value with either "xxx" or "spam", but it could also be used to point to functional local hostnames as well. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the template. Looks like a good idea. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

A familiar story, no doubt

• lease-a-seo.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
• Kenneth131 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · blacklist hits · AbuseLog · what links to user page · count · COIBot · Spamcheck · user page logs · x-wiki · status · Edit filter search · Google · StopForumSpam)

Yawn. MER-C 08:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:08, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Kenneth131's block

You are free to revert all my routine actions, blocks, protections, deletes. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 18:15, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:26, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

A.B Please review your decision

Dear A.B You have not replied to an unfair argument. The site you marked as spam did not deserve it. Please review your decision and hopefully, remove it from the spam list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:205.233.77.220 This site lost positions in Google (due to this spam report) just because i inserted a few valuable links to the articles which lacked information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Russianzio (talk • contribs) 07:03, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

See my response at User talk:Russianzio#Spam query (permanent link). --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:07, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Quick question

When you said "900+" [1] did you actually mean 9000+? Or did you have some particular 900 in mind as a test run? –xeno^talk 18:07, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

It looks as if the process got well underway without me while I was away for a few days.

I meant 900+. After thoughtfully (in my opinion) laying out the issues based on 20,000+ spam-related edits and some hard lessons, I felt like I was being attacked^[2][3][4][5] for not caring about Wikipedia accuracy by an editor who had little intention of doing anything himself^[6] and who in fact had created a chunk of the problem.^[7][8]

As a matter of fact, I was already well aware of potential issues with fallingrain.com links, having spent hours with just one problematic article about a non-existent city:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gnaa, Nigeria (2nd nomination)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gnaa, Nigeria (3rd nomination)
• Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Gnaa, Nigeria (3rd nomination)
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Nigeria#Article for deletion: Gnaa, Nigeria
• User talk:A. B./late July 2006#Gnaa
• User talk:A. B./late July 2006#Gnaa, Nigeria

I wanted him to get some of his own skin in the game before I took any further action. Also I wanted to see what the community reaction was.

Every time someone removes a reference -- even a bad one -- they have to make an editorial decision. It's not just house-keeping. Do they find a replacement ref? Just leave a {{fact}} tag? Remove the assertion that the ref is supporting? Remove the ref and just do nothing?

What if the reference is the only thing supporting notability? Do they tag the article for notablility? Nominate it for deletion (AfD)? Propose it for deletion (WP:PROD)?

I think the process you've been following -- thoughtfully removing links, leaving notices on various noticeboards, stemming the addition of new links with a bot -- is a good one. Once the links are removed, then I'm happy to blacklist the site. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the lengthy reply. I already went through and removed most that were simply used as an external link. What is left now are the ones in ref tags; and as you correctly point out, that is a slightly different can of worms. –xeno^talk 22:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

FYI --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:02, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Backlog

I've been slowly working a handful of those reports each day; just 2-4 a day, slowly trying to work down the backlog. If you keep up the pace you're on tonight, we'll be all caught up and I'll need to find other things to work on the rest of the week!

Note: This isn't a complaint, more of a happy observation. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 02:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me!

I am so glad you're an admin now; I find I don't have as much time to spend on Wikipedia and I don't see much of Herbythyme or Hu12 these days. I've worried we'll fall behind the spam curve.

Also, consider standing for admin on meta -- meta spam work is very complementary to what we do on en.wikipedia. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:07, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, as long as you're looking at these things, could you give some opinions on how to handle Wikipedia talk:WPSPAM#AtoAll.com / Redirect site linkspam? The main site has been added as a link, but the others have been inserted as text, so blacklisting isn't likely to have an effect. My first thought is to request an edit filter for them; but there are so many permutations for it, I'm not certain what filter could work, or if this is too limited a case to get support for a filter at this time. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:07, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree about using the edit filter if possible. I'll have to reflect on possible ways to do this; I'm not especially knowledgeable on things like filters and regex.

I suggest also raising the question on multiple noticeboards like the Village pump, WP:AN and Wikipedia talk:Tools. Maybe some clever tool/bot-maker outside the spam cleanup community will think something up. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)}

Cut/paste offender

I need your assistance (I found you via the list of admins). Back on May 3, Jerzey jon moved Elizabeth High School (New Jersey) to Elizabeth High School (1979-2009) (which the automatic redirect was subsequently undone by another user), and then Jerzey jon simply cut/pasted much of the content from the original EHS article into his newly created Elizabeth High School (2009-). Please take note that Jerzey jon did not bother gaining consensus on the page split, nor did he bother with any of the necessary page moving steps that an administrator has to take in order to preserve the article's edit history. Can you please fix these mistakes and then explain to him all of the minutia that he did wrong? I'd really appreciate it. Jrcla2 (talk) 01:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't help you right away, so I've pasted your request at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User talk:A. B.#Cut/paste offender asking others to look into it for you. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:34, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI

COIBot is currently dead, no resolution until Monday. Also the bot's edit summaries now detail how much stuff is in the reporting queue, so it is easier to tell if a domain needs repoking.

Internet Brands is on hold until I can find the time/motivation to deal with a problem that big (possibly one month). In the meantime, those domains are on XLinkBot. What blacklist do you think the blacklistable domains belong on? MER-C 13:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's not dead - just embarked for some reason on traversing all local reports in alphabetical order[9] (which is the same as being dead for all practical purposes) - it's reached P now so it might be done some time during tomorrow... Finn Rindahl (talk) 13:41, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

MER-C, you've really done quite a job on the Internet Brands problem! I recommend waiting to see if COIBot comes back on line tomorrow. I'm waiting to make some blacklist additions for the same reason.

Finnrind, thanks for the update.--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:45, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

spam list

backslashes are incorrect. Instead of this:

 \bsites\.google\.com/\site/\nswcnn/\b

You should have this:

 \bsites\.google\.com\/site\/nswcnn\/b

Basically, a backslash escapes other characters, like \b and \. and \/ tedder (talk) 15:17, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks -- this is very helpful. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Glad I had the log on my watchlist, glad you used a nice edit summary, and glad I could help! tedder (talk) 15:27, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Can you help with this one, too: MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#works.bepress.com./daniel_bevenuto/1/? Thanks, --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

(ec) For your '?' quoting, just replace it with the "match any character". So instead of:

\bjus2.\uol.\com.\br\/doutrina\/texto.asp\?id=13075\b

use this instead:

\bjus2.\uol.\com.\br\/doutrina\/texto.asp.id=13075\b

To nitpick, "texto.asp" should actually be "texto\.asp". Doesn't matter much though. tedder (talk) 15:39, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again for your help! I will complete blacklisting those 2 domains later today or tomorrow when I have time. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:54, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Fashion blog

Dear A.B.,

The links you have declared as self-promotion and deleted lead to a blog devoted to the history of fashion, fashion icons, and design. The information is not in any way related to the person writing them. On this blog you will find articles about the fashion in ancient Rome or ancient Greece, Medieval Europe; the fashion throughout history in China or Japan; fashion icons as Charles Worth or Paul Poiret, to mention a few. The author of these articles is an expert on the matter, a published writer who has worked for some of the leading magazines on style and fashion in Europe. Her expertise is recognized by both magazines and fashion professionals. Her intention by providing these links on Wikipedia is but supplementing the information already provided there. She respects the work of authors who publish in Wikipedia and would consider it highly inappropriate to edit or delete their work; hence she has opted for links. The principle behind Wikipedia is the free access of information which has motivated the publication of these links. Unless the policy of Wikipedia has changed, in which case, can you explain how? Also, how is providing this information for users of different versions of Wikipedia wrong? Aren’t all people entitled to the same information irrespectively of whether in the world they live?

We all want to contribute to Wikipedia in a positive manner, so maybe instead of deleting all links, and limiting the access to information of people who are interested in the information thus provided, you can suggest which links should stay and which should not.

Thank you for addressing this concern in line with the principle of good nature that characterizes Wikipedia.

Adriss24 Adriss24 —Preceding undated comment added 23:27, 24 May 2010 (UTC).

Please see the messages I left on your talk page and follow the links to the various guidelines and policies we have here on Wikipedia. I think they will address your concerns. In a nutshell, you're not to add a bunch of links to your own commercial site.^[10]

I note that you ignored a previous request to stop which also laid out our rules on the subject.

Please do not add any more of these links. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I have requested a second opinion for you at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Second opinion requested: adrianaallen.com (permanent link)

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:06, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Linkwatchers

Sorry, the linkwatchers are down overnight .. I created a very bad bug this afternoon, and do not have time now to resolve it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:34, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

TPS here. What is this linkwatcher you speak of? tedder (talk) 18:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Tedder, FYI: m:User:LiWa3 ... the bots that COIBot, spam-fighters and XLinkBot rely on. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

They are back. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:57, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

User talkpage deletion

I have again started a discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#IPUser_talkpage_deletion_.._again. It seems that spam-tracks are again being deleted, while we do our best to keep them .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:13, 27 May 2010 (UTC)