User talk:A. B./January 2007

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This page is a chronological archive of past discussions from User talk:A. B. for the month of January 2007. Exchanges spilling over from late December or into early February may have been retained elsewhere to avoid breaking their continuity. 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.

Wikia.com COI

A.B., you are an investigatory genius. I mean that. Would you find it in your heart to begin investigating whether Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley are (at best) engendering a Conflict of Interest, or (at worst) threatening the non-profit status of Wikimedia Foundation by fostering an environment where their for-profit venture, Wikia.com, is widely discussed, endorsed, recommended, and linked to from Wikipedia? Maybe I'm crazy, but wouldn't this be like Red Cross workers encouraging the disaster victims they aid to stock their medicine cabinet with Bayer brand analgesics -- and then it's discovered that the Director of the Red Cross has a majority ownership share of Bayer? This would be on the front cover of the Financial Times, but here on Wikipedia (for some reason), it's all swept under the rug. And, P.S., I know you're going to want to dismiss this request because it's coming from me, but please consider it with a NPOV. --JossBuckle Swami 14:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm no investigatory genius -- I just ask questions and use Google. I'm hard up for compliments this week, however, so I'll gladly accept yours -- thank you.

My response, off-the-cuff, is as follows:

1. On the whole, I believe that if you really dug deep into Wikia, Jimmy Wales and the Foundation that Wales has put much more resources into Wikipedia than he's gotten out from Wikia.
2. The Foundation gets a clean accounting opinion from its auditors. The IRS gives it 501c3 status. If the IRS ever smelled a conflict of interest, Jimmy Wales would be in deep hot water and all his personal assets would be at risk.
3. Wales and company make no bones about making money off of Wikia. It's not secret.
4. Some of Wikipedia's critics use MediaWiki software. Some I believe are even hosted by Wikia.
5. I'm just not motivated to poke into this. If I saw something that troubled me, maybe I would, but there are already so many people like yourself or Brandt or the Wikitruth people looking for any dirt they can find -- and coming up empty. If they did, I'm sure the IRS would be all over it. I've been on the boards of a non-profit and of a publicly traded company; you can hide things for a little while (Enron) but not for long, especially when you have so many opponents.

So basically I'm a happy camper with the Foundation. I may even make a donation later this new tax year. --A. B. ^(talk) 17:48, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Time to stir the pot, but Angela makes me do it. It was interesting to see (yet again) Angela Beesley "marketing" the services of Wikia.com to the Wikipedia community, this time through the WikiEN-l mailing list which is sponsored on Wikimedia servers that we users pay for with tax-deductible donations:

Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 18:53:30 +0000

From: Angela <beesley@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

To: "Bogdan Giusca" <liste@dapyx.com>, "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l@wikipedia.org>

On 1/3/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste@dapyx.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia has way too many articles on websites, webcomics and

> other types of internet content -- likely thousands.

>

> The problem is that around 95% of those articles are not sourced (or

> they are sourced from forum and blog posts) and at least 70% won't be

> able to be sourced because they were never mentioned in the mainstream

> press -- and probably very few were mentioned in books and journals.

>

> I deleted about 50 of them, which looked totally non-notable

This seems a waste. Just because something hasn't been written about by the mainstream press doesn't make it worthless to people reading Wikipedia.

http://internet.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Angela&oldid=1943 shows 17 examples of pages you deleted today which I've rescued for the Internet Wiki, but it's a shame so many hundreds like those are being deleted every day rather than moved to a more suitable wiki or rewritten to make them suitable for Wikipedia.

Angela

(emphasis mine) So, it's okay to "suggest" to other users a "more suitable wiki", especially if it's Wikia, which will put more Google ad revenues into Angela's pocket. Nobody else sees this as shameful? Just a few minutes later, another robotic Wikipedian responded, "Maybe there should be some way to mark the articles which are not notable for wikipedia, but are worthy to be included in internet.wikia.com. For example, one would include "I7W" (non-notable website) as reason for deletion and a bot would monitor the deletion log and take the deleted articles marked that way and automatically post them on internet Wikia."

Jesus Christ, should we just make a "bot" that will transfer from every dollar donated to Wikimedia Foundation, one nickel into Angela's pocket, and a dime into Jimbo's? This is getting completely out of hand! --JossBuckle Swami 03:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Once again, I'm not sure there's a lot of malevolent greed here, but you and I see things differently. What is interesting to me is the quantity of useful (to someone) but unecyclopedic content discarded by Wikipedia. These deletions are usually done with good reasons relating to our mission as an encyclopedia, but the content may still have value for other sites that don't need strong content controls.

Assuming a discarded article is not an attack article or a copyright violation, perhaps Wikipedia could move them for a while to another site after deletion Wikipedia -- sort of like the Goodwill bins for discarded clothing. After 2 weeks in the discard bin, they'd be erased, but this would give time to others site to pick up their content for use under the GFDL license.

Excellent "cleanup" of the quoted mailing list content. Thanks. I think you and Angela both don't see any "malevolence" because there probably isn't any. But, it's still a financially-beneficial conflict of interest. And such a conflict is NOT what 99% of the donors are contributing their money to support. That's why it needs to stop, and actually be policed, whether it's malevolent or not. I mention Centiare.com to maybe 12 users on their Talk pages, and I get threatened with a block. Angela broadcasts to the entire Wikipedia admin elite, and some of them trip over themselves to make the profit-making process even EASIER for her. It's wrong, A.B., and deep down, you know it. --JossBuckle Swami 05:55, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

JossBuckle Swami was subsequently identified as a sockpuppet of User:MyWikiBiz. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Appalachia

I will take a look at it. Be more than happy to help. I created the ADHS entries, and a good chunk of the WV highway listing. The biggest problems being people trying to pigeon hole WV related stuff into they way they do things in California etc. That is where I believe Wiki, needs regional or category specific admins. This will prevent bad admining because they don't know the subject matter, and try to say. " Well this the way we do it in Guam" --71Demon 19:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I created a transportation section under Appalachia as I have time I will probably split it off into a section of its own. By no means is finished. I needs fleshed out, I will work on it over time. Please through me support on saving the State Related Ship Names Categories. Thanks --71Demon 20:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

PS it is probably big enough to spin off into its own entry now. LOL --71Demon 00:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Great stuff -- thanks! --A. B. ^(talk) 03:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I added some additional material. I'm a little weaker on the water transport than I would like. I don't like how it seems concentrated on the middle, but that is a historical accuracy. Connecting the Potomac and Ohio River valleys was very important and that reflects in the article, so I guess that is ok. I know there are typo's, but the info is accurate. I hadn't really thought about it till I put this together, transport is still fairly limited in Appalachia and still concentrated a few crossing points. --71Demon 00:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

== David Ricardo and the List of British Jews ==

Fair enough - happy with the new ref.--Brownlee 12:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Appalachia

The Category:Appalachian culture exist. I believe there is the need for a Category:Appalachia, this could encompass items outside of culture that are relevant to Appalachia. Thoughts? --71Demon 15:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

See response later left at User talk:71Demon#Category:Appalachia. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Ghost hunting

Regarding the cleanup:spam tag...I know the link to the Malaysian ghost hunting group should be a footnote, I can fix that. What else is spam? I'd like to get this cleaned up and remove the tag.Thanks -- LuckyLouie 17:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at these policies and guidelines:

• External Links Guideline -- there are lots of restrictions beyond just obvious ads. These restrictions are driven by our need to stay "encyclopedic", even in our linking. Take a look at these, especially the section about self-published material (including blogs, forums, etc.):
  • Verifiability Policy
  • Reliable Sources Guideline
• What Wikipedia is Not (policy)

I put the cleanup-spam tag (Template:Cleanup-spam) on the article not just for obvious spam, but for other inappropriate links. I did not have time to evaluate them all, so I tagged the article. That automatically puts it on the list at Category:Wikipedia spam cleanup.

Just taking a quick scan, here are links that may be inappropriate, I have not really evaluated them:

• http://www.ghostvillage.com/
• http://the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com
• http://www.prairieghosts.com/
• http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/hobby.htm
• http://www.livescience.com ←looks like a magazine but is there really editorial supervision??
• http://www.sgha.net/articles/creds.html:
  • "Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page authors. The contents of this page have been reviewed or approved by the Southwest Ghost Hunter's Association." ←this statement seems self-contradictory; I'm not sure what to make of it.
• http://www.horrorseek.com/ghosts/amazing/
• http://www.paranormalunited.com/links.htm ←We prefer to link to just the big, non-profit dmoz.org directory

Consider adding a link to the appropriate link dmoz.org page. If there's just one main dmoz page, you can use the template:

• Template:Dmoz

To find relevant dmoz pages, just use the dmoz search function:

• http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=ghosthunting

If there are multiple pages, just link to one search term such as "ghosthunting" instead of multiple dmoz pages. Since the template above doesn't handle links to dmoz search results, just write up the link like any other. Writing this:

• [http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=ghosthunting Ghosthunting] at the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org)

...produces:

• Ghosthunting at the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org)

Linking to Dmoz.org is officially encouraged by the external links guideline as a preferred alternative to including a ton of useful but unencyclopedic links that don't meet our requirements.

I hope this helps -- thanks for taking this on. --A. B. ^(talk) 19:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

• http://www.ghostvillage.com/
• http://the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com
• http://www.prairieghosts.com/
• http://theshadowlands.net/ghost/hobby.htm
• http://www.livescience.com ←looks like a magazine but is there really editorial supervision??
• http://www.sgha.net/articles/creds.html:

The Atlantic Paranormal Society is pretty notable, Google returns hundreds of references regarding the org. The other, smaller "ghost hunting club" pages are problematic. Not sure what to do about them, since the article's subject is the proliferation and activities of such "ghost hunting clubs" which are typically blog/forum/self-publishing. The article on Livescience.com is by Ben Radford, and I believe the original is published on CSICOP or Skeptic Magazine, but I can hunt that down. Regarding the search engine links, if you have spare time, maybe you can help finesse the formatting. Thanks. --- LuckyLouie 03:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Category US State Related Ships

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_4#State_ship-related_categories as soon as the cfd was removed, some one started abusing there power and put it back up. Please put your vote to keep thread up again. Once a cfd is removed, they should have to wait 6 months to put it back. This is nothing more than abuse because somebody didn't get their way. --71Demon 20:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree this is too soon, but you've got to be really careful about not canvassing for votes -- see WP:SPAM. Canvassing is illegal and can really backfire.

You are probably safe putting a very neutral note on the pages of the last CFDs contributors (both pro-delete and pro-keep participants) inviting them to contribute either positively or negatively. Here's a suggestion:

"Hi. You particpated in the CfD for Category:US State Related Ships which just closed yesterday. Please note that another editor has renominated it for deletion. You are invited to join the new discussion and comment positively or negatively as you see fit."

I hope this helps. --A. B. ^(talk) 22:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Opinion on article up for deletion

Hey A. B., Could you please give your opinion on this article up for deletion: [1] , i think it should be kept, but i'd like to hear your opinion! Regards, Joost --Jdevalk 10:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Joost, I don't have much time today, but I did pull up some refs for Cutts (an easy call, notability-wise). See this note I left for another editor about canvassing.[2] I don't want to come across as some sort of clueless WikiNazi -- it's just that I've seen canvassing blow up in folks' faces and tip folks that were on the fence the other direction.

I wonder if the San Jose Mercury News has anything about Schwartz or Pfeiffer in its archives? --A. B. ^(talk) 13:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I see an SEO student is making me his poster boy in the SEO blogosphere for all that is evil about Wikipedia. See [3] (comment #5), [4] (reader comments)

No good deed goes unpunished!--A. B. ^(talk) 17:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, I know I don't have enough rep here to let those articles stay up without some help of guys and girls like you! --Jdevalk 06:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Medal of Honor

I have already worked on some of those. I created Jonah Edward Kelley's entry. I'm also the one that pushed the WV state legislature into naming new bridge after him. I also created this entry William E. Shuck, Jr.. On the ships, checking some of the comments, most those favoring Keep/Rename actually work on those articles. Those opposed don't. I still say these are very good categories, and list don't offer the same level. --71Demon 18:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Beefjerky dot com spammer

Hi A.B., it looks like your case was too complex for WP:AIV, which is for cases of simple vandalism. I moved your report to here, where I'm sure someone will look into the case and take the proper corrective action. Cheers, Deathphoenix ʕ 15:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks! --A. B. ^(talk) 15:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Barnstar

Thanks --BozMo talk 16:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Cascading style sheets external links

Hey A. B., could you perhaps add the external links section of Cascading Style Sheets to your watch list, i've removed some spam this afternoon, but new spam keeps coming in there every few days... --Jdevalk 20:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Will do. --A. B. ^(talk) 20:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks

Hey A. B., many thanks for the spamstar, its greatly appreciated. And thanks for all your hard work towards the project. All the best, Gwernol 02:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Dravidian Civilizations

Hello,

I noticed your recent edits in regards to the Battle on Spam on the Bharatanatyam page. Would be interested in joining this project I am proposing to start.

User:Wiki Raja/WikiProject Dravidian Civilizations

If you would like to join please post your username on that page and to also let others know if they were be interested in participating. Regards.

Wiki Raja 03:47, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind invitation however I will decline. I know very little about the subject (but I know all too much about spam!) I imagine all the turmoil at Bharatanatyam must have been very frustrating -- you seemed to be the one editor actually adding substantive content recently.

Please know that if the same spammers show up elsewhere among your articles and overwhelm the regular editors, you can always get help at WT:WPSPAM. That's how I got involved with Bharatanatyam war. --A. B. ^(talk) 04:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, it's been unusually quiet at Bharatanatyam for over 24 hours. I wonder if this perhaps caught people's attention:

• Talk:Bharatanatyam#Spam blacklist

If the rumors of search engines using our blacklist are true, this could be problematic for kalakendra.com. Their spamming was so persistent and widespread there was little choice but to block them. --A. B. ^(talk) 06:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

No problem, even if you do not know about the Dravidian Civilizations, you could check for spam on the sites which are linked to User:Wiki Raja/WikiProject Dravidian Civilizations if you want. This project is open to anyone and everyone who are interested. Having knowledge about these groups is not really a major issue since we are looking for a well rounded group of individuals in different fields whether it be admin, spam checkers, editors, etc. Anyways, you are still most welcome to the group. Regards. Wiki Raja 15:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Reply

Thanks for you note. I must say I've discovered that the best thing to do after a day or two of persistent reinsertion of spam is simply to list the page at Wikiproject Spam and let others help. It can get rather frustrating when multiple users with little edit history ignore both the edit summaries and the talk page and simply insist that they are right, if they respond at all! A Ramachandran 06:49, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, another page that needs watching is Soma. I think there may be a bot involved there... A Ramachandran 06:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The Barnstar of Diligence

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Presented to A. B. For extraordinary diligence combating spam!

--Hu12 07:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much! --A. B. ^(talk) 08:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

PS Hu12, you need to think about becoming an admin. --A. B. ^(talk) 08:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

PSS -- See Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Pascal.Tesson -- the RfA closes on the 14th. --A. B. ^(talk) 08:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Image:USS Barbour County (LST-1195).JPG

Can you take a look at this Image:USS Barbour County (LST-1195).JPG. It is properly labled and verifiable. Please look at its discussion page. --71Demon 01:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I looked at the talk page for the image, your talk page, and your RFI complaint for User:Carnildo. I'm generally not very clued in on images and all the paperwork that goes with it. I know the few times I ever fooled with it, I got it wrong.

My first reaction is that there is well-meaning confusion about to get blown up into a full-blown fight. I can't imagine that Carnildo was trying to pick a fight.

I suggest you guys kiss and make up. Maybe cancel the RFI, too. --A. B. ^(talk) 02:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Re. Bharatanatyam

You're welcome. Keep up the good work. Regards,--Húsönd 04:21, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't expect Mackensen to do anything more if you watch how much water has gone under his bridge, I had to push him to investigate once. Suggest we use the established sock puppet farm to report new socks at AN/I. It should get more attention that way? --BozMo talk 23:16, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

RfA thanks

Hi. I'm following the advice of not posting multiple messages of RfA thanks but I was particularly happy to get your support. As you may have noticed, I have stopped my activity on WikiProject Spam for a few months now but it was nice to hear from you again. I see you're on wikibreak and so I wish you a speedy wikirecovery and all the best for the new wikiyear. Cheers, Pascal.Tesson 02:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

More lambs to the slaughter

Lets try: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/BozMo --BozMo talk 12:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Note for archives: "Lamb" survived and is now a very helpful admin. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:22, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Old time radio related articles

Hello. My only involvement so far was the talk page that you saw where I tried to reduce the vitriolic nature of the comments. I see that they are still debating the issue but at least the blatant personal attacks have stopped. Until now I haven't made any declaration either way concerning the spam-or-not-spam nature of the links. Since you asked, however...  :-) I can honestly see valid points on both sides of the issue. Removing the personalities from the picture and focusing on the facts, it seems that 1) there are an excessive number of links to libsyn.com; 2) otrsite.com is a site that exists primarily to sell products or services; and 3) the ads on freeotrshows.com are more prominent than the content link. That indicates there could be a spam problem. On the other hand, where a link leads to a completely free (no registration or payment required) service, it would be nice to be able to keep that link if such links do not otherwise violate WP policy. Relevant links that provide something more than can be contained in the article are desirable. Then again (here I am playing devil's advocate with myself) I had to inform a user who wanted to link thousands of articles or article talk pages to a free service, that even without prominent ads it would still be considered spam. So yes, in short, I believe there are valid points on both sides and an investigation may be warranted. Note that I'm not pre-emptively declaring the links as spam, but I do believe that a determination by an experienced, third-party spam investigator would be useful. Now I'm left scratching my head, wondering how you can handle all of this while on a wikibreak.  :-) SWAdair | Talk 05:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your long and thoughful response. I will stay out of this for now. I think the involved parties need some sort of arbitration or mediation process first, perhaps starting with an RFC. This is a content and personality conflict as much as it is a spam concern; I believe community consensus is more effective in those situations than an indvidual such as myself just sticking his hand into the buzzsaw. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

site penalised

I have found out that my site www.pagetour.narod.ru is penalised by Google for SPAM. It is very pity that you had marked my site as a SPAM source. I do not feel it is justly! Dmitriy A. Pitirimov 11:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Dmitriy, I sympathize with your frustration, however I was not the person who had the entire narod.ru domain blacklisted.[5]

Instead, I identified that blacklisting the entire domain was a mistake[6] and suggested others stop deleting links except to those subdomains we knew were spammy.

I spent many, many hours identifying and documenting which subdomains were the sources of our spam. Your subdomain was not on that list.[7]

The discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam about all of this is somewhat jumbled and out of chronological sequence but if you read it carefully, you'll see what I mean:

• "Vinni-Puh's linkspam via narod.ru -- surfaced again"
• "Vinni-Puh's edit histories on other Wikipedia versions"
• "Vinnie-Puh's domains"

I hope this helps explain things. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

email

Sent --Hu12 19:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Blacklist load

 Done All 329 sites in the page have been blacklisted. Thanks! Shadow1 (talk) 20:38, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! --A. B. ^(talk) 02:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

RFA

In case you hadn't gathered I am saving up thanks to you for the end of the week... and afterwards in cleaning WP of course. --BozMo talk 22:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Good luck! I'd say I was rooting for you but i gather that means something else in Oz. --A. B. ^(talk) 02:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Re: Anchored Cross

Thank you very much for your help, I value your assistance greatly. I apologize for consistently adding the link, I just felt very upset by the first person that deleted it. They left a really offensive comment in the history to boot. Thank you for requesting that my article be copied to my user subpage, but I've taken the liberty of doing it myself. ShiftCurrent 15:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad to help. A couple of comments:

• Your myspace link is being reviewed for blacklisting as spam. That means you can't save a page that has that link in it. If this happens and you have it in a user page, you won't be able to save it after making any edits (you'll get a big warning box. The fix is simple -- just break the link with spaces:
  • http: //www. forbiddenlink. com
• Don't link to your user, user talk or user subpages from any Wikipedia article or category. (That's strictly forbidden, but I can't seem to find the rule).

--A. B. ^(talk) 16:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Landmark's site

I saw your additions to the External Links section. I wanted you to know there is a huge amount of contention on that site and I have been championing those external links. I compared them to a LOT of other comparable organizational sites and they seem reasonable. The article has been under a tremendous attack by negative POV editors and it is still severely negative in its POV but it is becoming more balanced. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments about that! I thought when I first saw your edits that you were a sock puppet but I see now that you are a serious contriutor to Wikipedia. I look forward to hearing from you! Thanks! 20:38, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Alex Jackl 16:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you can comment on the Landmark Education talk page about this, and how users are violating Wikipedia:Spam#External_link_spamming. This is a for-profit company's website, users can easily go to the website itself for all of these links, they do not need to be provided in duplicate on Wikipedia. Thank you for your time. Smee 21:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

Thank you for sharing your views and suggestions. Smee 22:21, 19 January 2007 (UTC).

My apologies to both of you. I made those edits, then spent a long time writing and rewriting my thoughts for the article talk page. I was just proofing my comments when my laptop died. I was on the road after that and just now found a few minutes to check my mail and messages. You will see I posted the message I wanted to post earlier.--A. B. ^(talk) 22:25, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

No need to apologize, but thank you for your help! Smee 22:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC).

Thanks for the heads up on the nofollow!

I've blogged it and mailed some of the more important people (like Barry Schwartz ;) ) in our community to get the news out. Thanks again, and please let me know if more stuff like this appears! --Jdevalk 22:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Recognition section

since you the creator of The Spamstar of Glory, did you want to add a recognition section to the main page of Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam like what was done @ Wikipedia:Counter_Vandalism_Unit#Recognition?--Hu12 17:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Newyorkbrad's RfA

Thank you for your support on my RfA, which closed favorably this morning, as well as for your kind comments accompanying your !vote. I appreciate the confidence the community has placed in me and am looking forward to my new responsibilities. Please let me know if ever you have any comments or suggestions, especially as I am learning how to use the tools. Best regards, Newyorkbrad 21:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Wow

To be quite honest...I have no way to explain my own behavior. I don't remember even voting in the rfa, and my comments certainly do not apply to that user. Perhaps it's time to take off that auto-login. Thanks, Ganfon 01:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to explain your behavior -- if you look at other comments made about the same time, they've very consistent with yours. For instance, look at Matthew Fenton's "oppose". He said BozMo's last edit before 15 January was on 8 January -- yet several hours later, BozMo's edit history showed 200 edits during that time. Clearly, there was some sort of a technical glitch. That's why I left my comment. You did nothing wrong but I thought you'd want to know. I knew both you and Teh tennisman, another early opposer, were interested in becoming admins and I was concerned you might later get this thrown back in your face if you didn't have >>4800 edits and several years. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

BozMo

No. Everything is fine, I looked at his mainspace contributions ([8] - though not exactly the same now) on the 15th (when I opposed) that was (discounting the reverts, etc) that was the last "contribution" I could see he made. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 01:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

OK. I misunderstood your comment. I thought you were referring to all edits, not just article content (I think of them as contributions as well).

While I may disagree with the weight you put on this, yours is a very legitimate concern -- most of the many other "oppose" comments are based on same concern. BozMo is weak in that area and even some of the support comments are tempered with this concern.

Per WP:CANVASS, I would not have left you a message except there was a problem with one of the edit-count tools under-reporting for the first few hours of the RfA. --A. B. ^(talk) 01:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

NOFOLLOW - Blog Post

I left you already a comment at my talk page. That is great news. Thanks for the info. All the months of arguing had finally some impact. I blogged about it at an important SEO/SEM News Site. It was picked up by Digg.com, but did not make front page news yet. --roy<sac> ^Talk! .oOo. 02:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Need your view on this please

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#Proposal:_restructure_these_pages.3F --BozMo talk 10:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

For persuading me to stand and for supporting me against opposers all the way through. Am delighted of course to join the ranks of sysops. Who next? --BozMo talk 14:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

This made my day when I saw it. --A. B. ^(talk) 16:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Who next? I think A.B. would make an excellent admin. If I weren't mostly inactive at this point, I'd nominate him myself. ScottW 14:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

First of all, I'm flattered. Especially coming from you guys.

I've been in so many disputes and made so many people mad, I'm not sure I could make it through the RfA process with >65%. Also, I've become increasingly disenchanted with how tortuous the RfA process is for anyone who doesn't have a sparkling clean record -- and even for those who did, such as BozMo. I'm not talking about gnarly stuff such as 3RR or stuff that merits user talk page warnings but smaller stuff -- in my cases, mostly allegations I failed to assume good faith or was biting a newcomer. Stroll through my talk page archives and see what you think. If you disagree, let me know.

I think it's harder to become an admin than it was 9 months ago when I first started watching RfAs. Fortunately my use of edit summaries is over 95% but people may quibble over whether I have too much article-writing experience and not enough process (XfD, RfA, etc) experience -- or vice versa. My user signature and use of user boxes are fortunately kosher if unimaginitive -- I've never had the time or interest to pretty up my signature or acquire enough userboxes enough to offend people.

Having said all this, I will think about this -- if anyone has any advice or feedback, please share it.

I think WikiProject Spam desperately needs more admins. I find much of what we do cuts across so many boundaries. I find myself going to WP:AIV, WP:RFPP, WP:ANI, WP:OP, WP:RFCU, m:Spam blacklist to get other people to do things. Each time, I have to make a sales pitch and start all over again from the top. Hence, I probably overdocument spammers' misbehavior on their user pages -- just so I can hopefully "close the sale" on why this guy that's spamming all over really should be blocked for more than an hour. There's a lot to be said for having as many spam-fighters as possible who can do most (if not all) of these tasks. So I'm really trying to encourage anti-spam folks to become admins.

I also encourage existing WP:WPSPAM admins to get enough exposure at Meta to stand for adminship at Meta (adminship on another Wikimedia project is a prerequisite). That way they can help with the blacklist. --A. B. ^(talk) 16:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

BozMo asked "Who next?":

• Hu12

--A. B. ^(talk) 16:17, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

My RfA

Thank you for supporting me in my RfA! It succeeded, and I now have The Tools – which I'm planning to use as wisely as I possibly can. I hope I will be worth your confidence. Thanks again! :-) –mysid☎ 21:05, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Re:Edit count^itis

Hi. I noticed you're presently opposing BozMo's AfD: "Oppose for Now per Ganfon" Ganfon opposed based on inexperience, yet BozMo's got 4800+ edits at this point. I'm worried about the edit count threshold for RfAs continuing to creep higher and the precedent this RfA might set.

I also noticed several of the early comments were made when the edit history reporting function was briefly disrupted and BozMo's edit count was under-reported.

What are your thoughts on the minimum experience an RfA candidate should have? --A. B. ^(talk) 01:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I am well aware that Ganfon changed to Support because of the messed up edit count. For me, generally, if they are well-spread, around 2-to-3000 are good for me. However, if they are concentrated too much in, say, the Mainspace, then I may be inclined to oppose, since admins need to work mostly in the Wiki-space. The main reason I opposed on the RfA was, as you noted, that the edit count reporting function was not working correctly. Had I noticed this before the RfA closed, I would have most likele changed to a support !vote. The inexperience factor has been creeping up a lot in recent RfAs, and I think that it is a precedent that is not necessarily a good one. What I generally look for is my aforementioned 2-to-3000 well-spread edits, as well as where the edits are made. I believe that others do not view RfA criteria as being much beyond edit counts and the "requisite" 1FA; however, IMHO, bureaucrats should not look at counts through "Oppose per inexperience" that were agreed with; that they should look for where and how large those edits were made. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, --tennisman ^{sign here!} 21:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

Thanks for the answer. I still don't understand what was going on with the edit count tools in the opening hours -- I've not seen that before. --A. B. ^(talk) 00:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

User talk:213.113.226.46

Pertaining to your npa1 message on User talk:213.113.226.46, he is on the #wikipedia channel of Freenode now, if you care...although I'd say the edit you're disputing wasn't really mature of him. Regards, Tuxide 06:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I only just now got your message. I don't use IRC anyway. Do you see a problem with the warning I left him? --A. B. ^(talk) 13:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

No, not a whole lot; I only mentioned it because he was on IRC before and well after you posted it. After all, his user page did say "cocks" on one time, and we ridiculed him for that. He was on IRC this morning disputing the bot edit and the one by Kukini, saying that they could both be removed because they were not relevant, and we reached community consensus supporting the blanking of his talk page. He did say he had a registered account on here, but I don't know what his user name is. The npa1 message is relevant; he probably just needs to grow up before he comes back. Regards, Tuxide 17:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what sort of ridicule 213.113.226.46 may have suffered on IRC -- it's certainly a shame if he did. I was reacting[9] solely to the comment he left for Shadow1: "i removed spam and your bot adds the spam back please just shut if off, it sucks, you also suck, go and get aids, i am not funny"[10][11] Shadow1 is a real person who's poured heart and soul into developing and tweaking Shadowbot and I winced when I saw this comment. --A. B. ^(talk) 18:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your support

--Yannismarou 20:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

As you set out for Ithaka, hope the voyage is long Knowledge is your destiny, but don't ever hurry the journey May there be many summer mornings when With what pleasure and joy, you come into harbors seen for the first time Don't expect Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey And, if I, one of your fellow-travellers, can offer something To make this journey of yours even more fascinating and enjoyable This is my assistance with anything I can help.

Spam

Thanks... I just did a quick-and-dirty; it should catch anything that has "global", then "warming", and then "awareness2007", even if there are characters between, so that gets most of them... I'd been wary about using their leaderboard because I know there are sites on it that aren't actually participating but just commenting on the contest's existence. If there are others verified, a post to m:Talk:Spam blacklist usually gets attention. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 04:43, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I think you were probably correct to take the more conservative approach. --A. B. ^(talk) 04:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

what's up doc?

Hi, I'm new to wikipedia and thought I was posting useful, relevant info - that you have removed and threatened with permanent removal...why? Other local info sites have not been removed, ours has good local info relevant to anyone looking on the page about our town...so what's the problem? why doesthat classify it as spam? Look forward to understanding... kbourne

Here are the relevant rules:

• External Links Guideline
• Reliable Sources Guideline
• Spam Policy
• Conflict of interest Guideline
• Replies to common objections: Advertisers
• What Wikipedia is Not Policy -- especially the parts about links and about advertising

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#thebestof.co.uk spam. Multiple editors have assessed your contributions as spam. You're invited to join in the discussion there to present your case. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, comments seen, and discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#thebestof.co.uk spam. Thanks. kbourne

possible spamlinks in hot air balloon

I noticed that you added a tag about spam links to the hot air balloon article. May I ask what causes your concern? Is it the links to manufactures? Or something else? Regards. Blimpguy 20:28, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to be slow in getting back to you. I came to the Hot air ballon article in the process of cleaning up altitudeballoons.co.uk spam links left across Wikipedia by Altitude balloon company ltd. (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log). When I'm cleaning up a series of spam links from one person, I don't linger to examine all the other links, but if it looks like there are inappropriate links, I'll tag it with the {{cleanup-spam}} template while I'm there, then move on to the next article with my targetted spam link.

Taking a look at this article now, here are some links that look like they don't meet the relevant rules:

• External Links Guideline
  • The main guidance for links
• Reliable Sources Guideline
  • Is a site basically self-published or is it subject to some sort of editorial supervision or quality control
• What Wikipedia is Not (policy)
  • see the sections about link farms and advertising
• Conflict of Interest Guideline
  • No matter how good the site, you don't link to your own web site

Looking at some of the links, here are my immediate, shoot-from-the-hip reactions to several:

• http://www.balloonsoverbritain.co.uk -- promotional

• http://www.blastvalve.com/ directory of links

• http://www.ballooning-rides.co.uk/hot-air-balloon-history.html
  • site is designed to get Google ad revenue and the text is not all that great.
    • The link was added by 82.70.117.238 (talk • contribs)
      • See talk page: previously warned for spamming
      • see contribution history: only contributions to Wikipedia have been adding links to
        • http://www.ukpokerbuddies.com
        • http://www.travelinsuranceweb.com
        • http://www.ballooning-rides.co.uk/
        • http://www.horse-racing-results.co.uk

• http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Hot-Air-Balloon.html <-- this one raises interesting questions
  • A Google search on the phrase "A hot air balloon is a nonporous envelope of thin" turns up identical language in these articles:
    • http://science.enotes.com/how-products-encyclopedia/hot-air-balloon
    • http://www.answers.com/topic/hot-air-balloon-vehicle
      • The answers.com article in turn is a copy of an earlier version of this article!

See how many links you can replace just by adding a link to dmoz.org (encouraged by the External Links Directory):

• http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=hot+air+balloon
  • About 300 links already vetted by a human editor

I hope this helps. --A. B. ^(talk) 04:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Some tips in spam prevention

Hey A. B.,

I thought I'd give you some tips on how to find spam in Wikipedia and remove it, hoping you would know the proper way to pass this on to other spam guards.

If you use wikiseek.com to look for viagra, like this, you'll find loads of pages which are apparently somehow linked from WikiPedia. For instance, take the 4th result. A weblink search will show you that this page is linked from WOSM-Eurasian_Region. Now, go there, go to the external link section, and click on the link to it. It will say "site is under reconstruction!!!". Now if this alone isn't enough reason to remove the link, use the Firefox webdeveloper extension, and disable CSS for that page. You will then see that it is absolutely LOADED with links for phentermine, viagra, etc. etc.

The lessons learned here:

• use WikiSeek, it sucks as a search engine because of all the spam in it, but for spam admins, it's a hell of a way to seek and destroy spam;
• always disable CSS and JavaScript when checking out a page, people will do their best to hide those links from you.

If you need more help or explanation, let me know! --Jdevalk 22:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Joost! See:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam#Using Wikiseek to look for and identify spam

--A. B. ^(talk) 20:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Some general idea...

Check out an idea of mine for Wikipedia

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jdevalk (talk • contribs) 23:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

See response left later at User talk:Jdevalk#DMOZ and Wikipedia. --A. B. ^(talk) 13:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikiseek question

It's a little beany, so I'm posting it here for you to remove at your discretion. Using Wikiseek is great, but what to do about a website like this: [12]. It is linked to the Linda Cropp article. When you look at the source, it is stuffed with spammy links. Should the link be removed on these grounds, or should it remain, since it might not benefit the spammed links. Thanks. Nposs 19:38, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd take it to the broader WT:WPSPAM audience for someone smarter than me. It sure seems perplexing (and interesting):

• There's not a Linda Cropp article and the deletion log shows there never was one
• Using iWebTool's Backlink Checker, a check of backlinks to this site turns up a lot of reliable sites such as the Washington Post, so this is probably not a phony, clone site
• Possibilities:
  • Ms. Cropp's campaign used a web designer who had a deal going on the side
  • Someone hacked her site (I don't know how you do that)
• Perhaps the nature of the source code will give you some clues (if you track the spam site ownership back to Ms. Cropp's webmaster for instance)

--A. B. ^(talk) 19:50, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll do that. (BTW the correct link was Linda W. Cropp. Sorry.) Nposs 20:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the link was added in good faith by a reliable, high volume Wikipedia editor[13] who edits a lot of D.C.-related topics. --A. B. ^(talk) 20:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)