MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/Archive 2009

falasteen

For many weeks now an anonymous user has been turning up, and without discussion changing significant information on articles related to Israel and Palestinian issues, including such basic data as capital cities (see [1] for one such example). Project:Be fair#Political disputes is fairly clear on how politically-motivated edits SHOULD be handled, so hopefully adding terms like the one above will at least slow the user down a bit. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 17:24, 1 January 2009 (EST)

inugg dot com

This site has turned up in a few places lately. Hopefully it can be de-listed once the current craze for these wacky boots subsides. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:01, 5 January 2009 (EST)

See also justuggboot, myuggs, and uggs-4-cheap, all on the blacklist, and now the new contender: cheaplvsale. All of the same pattern -- user registers, posts some ridiculous piece of SEO bait as a new page, someone speedy-deletes it within ten minutes, repeat in a week. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 01:30, 8 December 2009 (EST)

removal romantica tours dot com for spam list

Hi Ryan, I am writing this to you regarding the black listing of romantica tours dot com I recently hired a company to optimize our website and improve our ranking with the search engines. By browsing the internet I find out they used unethical techniques, and one of them was to add content on Wiki Travel without my permission in various sections related to Italy. I was horrified that their stupidity had led us to be black listed on this reputable site. I proud myself to have created a company based on good and ethical practice in growing its business and I ask if you could please take romantica tours dot com off the black list. I assure you that our link will not be associated again with any content on the website and please forgive me for my lack of supervision. Thank you and best regard, Aldo

Forgive me my bluntness, but it very much seems like you've just reused arguments from the Removal of URL from Blacklist | Jetabroad.com section above. Doesn't seem very convincing to me. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 23:44, 25 January 2009 (EST)

For the record a search shows that the links in question has been added inside hotel listings, so when you click the link behind a hotel name, expecting to get the hotel website, you are taken directly to Romantica Tours front page.

I'm willing to assume good faith and remove anybody from the blacklist on sincere request... once. But if they get busted again, then it's time to throw away the key. (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:01, 26 January 2009 (EST)

A sincere request might be accompanied by a willingness to go through and remove links to their site on the numerous pages that still contain it :) – (WT-en) cacahuate ^talk 02:27, 26 January 2009 (EST)

saultseller dot com

Keeps redirecting all listings to this site. Readds despite reversions by mulitple people over many weeks. --(WT-en) Inas 07:11, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I'm getting sick of him too. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 07:29, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Schmarhammergold

I've added this one to prevent a certain videogame gold farming guild from continuing to add spam pages to Wikivoyage like this.[2] I've seen this particular spam for what seems like a good year on Shared, and it seems to be rearing its ugly head especially now, both on shared and :en. And I can't think of a possible good reason to use this term in our guides. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 03:47, 4 February 2009 (EST)

geogad dot com

An anonymous user has been adding (and re-adding) links to this audio tour site. Edit history has been used to try to get the user's attention by providing links to Project:External links#What not to link to ("In particular, avoid links to other travel guides, including audio guides and audio tours.") but to no avail. If the user in question disagrees with current policy please discuss on Project:External links/Audio guides. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:31, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Looks like we've succeeded in engaging this user in discussion, so I've removed the site from the blacklist. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:18, 3 February 2009 (EST)

wowphilippinestravelagency dot com

I've provided numerous pointers in edit summaries and on User talk:(WT-en) Wowphilippines as to why a list of external links on the Boracay article is inappropriate, but my edits have been reverted six times now without comment, so hopefully the spam list will be a more effective tool. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:45, 4 February 2009 (EST)

I've also added boracayvacationpackages dot com. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:43, 4 February 2009 (EST)

...and several other URLs starting with "boracay". Hopefully we'll get the anon's attention. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:14, 6 February 2009 (EST)

Adding boracayregency dot com to the existing list, with the intention of getting the user to read their talk page -- keeps recreating advertising articles. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 21:48, 20 November 2009 (EST)

Parisforrent dot com

Keeps recreating page, despite several deletions with edit summary, which is displayed fairly prominent when you try to recreate a deleted page --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 14:35, 4 February 2009 (EST)

Hi Stefan, I don't exactly understand what was wrong with my tentative posting (did it 3 times, thought it was a bug with my proxy). Could you please explain me why parisforrent dot com could not be mentionned in this directory, I tought it was just on spot, totally compliant with the policy and the posting was pretty clear and informative. Thanks, Xavier

Hi Xavier. An external link from Wikivoyage to this site is likely against the policy consensus. See Project:External links. Wikivoyage is not a directory, but a travel guide. It aims to put travelers in direct contant with any acccommodation providers in the destination, and does not generally allow consolidators, and similar. (An exception to this is sometimes made for local agent with a local address, where an apartment is placed with local lessor). If after reading the policy, you still think a listing for your site is appropriate, please discuss. I hope you can find some travel information to share on some destinations, Paris or otherwise. --(WT-en) Inas 23:34, 8 February 2009 (EST)

See also Project:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings. Rental sites that don't meet those conditions are generally reverted as we tend to get inundated with those links - further reasoning behind the current policy can be found on the Project:Accommodation listings#Apartment rentals. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 00:55, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Hi All, thanks a lot for these useful explanations. I was a little lost, and didn't understand why my tentative listing kept disapearing without any explanation.I thought it was a kind of bug... I have read carefully the policy links you refered at and I still think that ParisForrent is perfectly legit and wikivoyage policy compliant. We are an "real" agency, focused only on Paris vacation rentals with more than 10 years of business history. We do have an physical address, both in the US and in Paris and most of the apartement we offer belongs to us directly. I would really appreciate if somebody could review our website and explain to me why we are less relevant than the other listed in the Paris Sleep section. In any case, could you please take us off the "blacklist" because it is bad for our reputation and could impact our google ranking, something that would be totally unfair. I won't of course try again to publish us if you decide that we should not be there, even I don't realy understand why... Thanks for your help! Xavier

I've removed the listing from the blacklist. I don't have time at the moment to review your site, but hopefully someone else can take a look and suggest how you might be able to integrate it into Wikivoyage. At a minimum you can create a user page and identify yourself and your site there. See also Project:Welcome, business owners for helpful info. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:49, 9 February 2009 (EST)

In general, agencies are outside policy. If you run a tour, thats okay. If you are an agent for a tour, it is usually not. If you run a hotel, that okay, if you are an agent for one, it is usually not. Apartments get a little hazy, because often an apartment cannot be let individually, because the owner only rents through an agent. This is the basis for policy. Your site only accepts payment in US$, it only gives a US phone number, it doesn't give a local address in Paris to pick up keys etc. If this site were allowed it would be difficult not to allow any apartment consolidator. I think it lies outside the policy. --(WT-en) Inas 17:58, 9 February 2009 (EST)

User Talk Page Spam

I have noticed common spam text on several user talk pages. I have blocked a number of spam terms that appeared on the following pages: User talk:Harcourt, User talk:Bartholomew, User talk:Beaverbr - (WT-en) Huttite 04:19, 10 February 2009 (EST)

Also User talk:Huggins and User talk:JohnAnselm - (WT-en) Huttite 04:55, 10 February 2009 (EST)

putinbayreservations dot com and putinbay dot com

A very persistent anonymous editor has been changing URLs for Put-in-Bay hotels to point to this bucket site, and despite good faith efforts to discuss why this violates Project:External links continues to revert changes. If this site really is the preferred site for the hotels in questions it is mentioned NO WHERE on those hotel's web sites which seems very suspicious, so I'm adding it to the blacklist to prevent further changes. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 00:05, 23 February 2009 (EST)

I've also added putinbay dot com. See Special:Contributions/64.12.117.65, Talk:Put-in-Bay#Official Link, and WikiPedia:Talk:Put-in-Bay, Ohio#4 years of Edgewater Investment Group (Ohio) spam on Wikipedia. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:14, 5 August 2009 (EDT)

www bbvaticanstpeter dot com

Tampering with his listing, recapitalizing, and moving to top of an alphabetical list, despite a warning. Maybe this will get his attention - hardline stance on Rome since it's spectacularly prone to these things. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 18:14, 1 March 2009 (EST)

Well, after repeated warning the owner is still at it, but how does he add his link after it has been blacklisted?`--(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 09:07, 10 March 2009 (EDT)

The blacklist expression had a space in it. Fixed now. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 09:22, 10 March 2009 (EDT)

Yabancı dil

An anonymous user has been repeatedly adding a page called Yabancı dil which includes the phrase Yabancı dil. The content is in turkish and appears to be an English language school advertisement and a copy vio. I added Yabancı?dil to the spam filter in the hope that it would work. - (WT-en) Huttite 06:26, 11 March 2009 (EDT)

The previous pattern made this page and the VFD page un-editable, so I've replaced it with "evrekaegitim dot com", which is the URL that was added on the page in question. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 08:28, 11 March 2009 (EDT)

Runesca*pe

Strange adverts/spam for gold collecting and wood chopping for some crappy game called Runesca*pe keep popping up, over a very long term. I can't think of any appropriate use of the word on our site, so I've blacklisted it. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:58, 15 March 2009 (EDT)

X mas?

Any reason X mas is on this list? I couldn't edit Austin because of it. I suppose I could change the wording there, but forcing usage is not a good reason for something to be on this list. --(WT-en) Jonboy 10:49, 15 March 2009 (EDT)

dailyistanbultours dot com

Added to stop an absolute flood of linkspam from an anonymous user (for example, [3]) going onto every page between Istanbul districts and the top-level Asia article [4]. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 19:26, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

On this topic, shouldn't it already be impossible to add so many external links in this format? Is there something wrong with the blacklist? Or is there something in this pattern that we are not catching? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:50, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

The pattern won't catch bulleted lists like that - it only works if all the URLs are added on one single line, without additional characters between them. Multi-line regular expressions aren't commonly supported, so I'm not sure if there's an easy fix for MediaWiki. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 20:08, 21 March 2009 (EDT)

rajasthan-holiday-tour dot com

This link, along with text copied verbatim from other web sites (see Wikivoyage:Copyleft#Can I copy text to Wikivoyage from other sites? for why that's bad) has been appearing all over the site and many times within the same articles (see Project:Don't tout and Project:External links). If the anonymous user who is adding these links reads this and agrees to stop spamming then the blacklist listing can be removed. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 08:56, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

golfclub2000

After link spamming us for the n'th time, despite good efforts to teach the shop better manners, I think it's time for a blacklisting. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 22:50, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

He's now touting handbagwholesale8. Added -- (WT-en) Colin 04:15, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

Noibaitaxi

Ryan tried serveral times to communicate with this user, who is linkspamming our guides in Vietnam with the above domain - as far as I can gather this resulted in the creation of a different account , not the way forward - so blacklisting. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 11:06, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Blacklist error update

The default text in MediaWiki:Spamprotectiontext was quite uninformative, so I tried to make it a little more user-friendly. Irony of the day: since the message doesn't support MediaWiki markup, I had to write it in HTML, but my first attempt was rejected by the spam filter due to the a href format link... (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:52, 8 April 2009 (EDT)

Help catching new instances of old spamming trick

Can anyone figure out how to update this expression:

http\:\/\/www\.message_([a-z]){5,}\.com

To also catch instances like

http://www.message_cac4ttrvar dot com/
http://www.message_acerricc4 dot com/

Thanks - --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 12:52, 9 April 2009 (EDT)

Changed [a-z] into [0-9a-z], which catches the numbers as well. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:30, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

China.com

For some reason, urls ending at china .com are blacklisted, which eg hits http://www.puppetchina .com (which is the official home page for a theater in Beijing). Is this filter needed?--(WT-en) ClausHansen 04:41, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Huh, the mainlist [5] has

china\.com

blacklisted, but I would not have thought that would block all urls ending in that expression. In any rate, I have added it to the Project:Local spam whitelist, so the url above will not get caught by the filter. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:01, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Dhakaholidays dot com

This fine fellow was asked to stop, after having his spam reverted throughout the day, but instead he thought it would be productive to just step things up and spam page creations at high volume. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 03:47, 27 April 2009 (EDT)

Spammer is back tonight and created a page with the name that I added to the blacklist. Can people create pages that contain blacklisted terms? Or did I do something wrong? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 02:28, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

The blacklist does not extend to article names, but these tend to get speedied within minutes anyway. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:10, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

toplvltrr dot com

section header name changed to escape blacklist

User has been duly warned, but shows no inclination to stop. On top of that, the spammer is leaving goofy "wikivoyage welcomes business owners" messages in articles [6] and spammed across the pages of those who are reverting his edits. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:03, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

Also trying to delete this section as 125.254.180.199. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 21:34, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

What's it?

I edited Guilin and Yangshuo sections according the rules of wikivoyage. And do give the right contact information of certain services which have no booking information. They are ALL CORRECT CONTACT INFORMATION NOT SPAM! I don't know why people detele my work and even block my friend's site link. As for the warn, I didn't get the message until this morning.

Please give me specific reasons not show me some links to some pages because I already wiki business pages many times these days.

Thank you!

I want to claim again that all the information are NOT SPAM. Many travelvers have been getting the services from the certain contact information which I edited. I don't know why Peter and Gorilla think they are spam. If they really think it is spam please give me the reason. I left messages in their discuss pages asking for reasons but no reply. :-( —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 65.49.2.170 (talk • contribs)

Start with Project:Activity listings#Tour listings. In particular, "In general, if a traveler could fulfill the substance of the tour on their own, the tour should not be listed on Wikivoyage." (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:31, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

Thank you very much, Jpatokal. eventually I found the problems in the pages which you left me. What should I do now if I want to put back the agency's link? I can delete all the other irrevlent information which I edited before by myself and I will help you guys to clean wikivoyage in the future. Please help me get of out it. It hurts the search engine rank badly:-( Thank you!

I have removed the domain from the blacklist, as it has served its purpose. Bear in mind, that this list isn't just for spam, but also for domains that are repeatedly added to articles in breach of policy. Since you are now engaged with the discussion, and have agreed not to re-add the domain, I have removed it from the list. It can be re-added should any issues rearise. Thanks. --(WT-en) Inas 23:48, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

Thank you so much, Inas!!! I am going to regiest an account as business owner. And then I will delete the irrevlent information which I have edited and add back the agency link and only use one sentence to discribe according the rules of wikivoyage welcome business owner, don't tout and agency listing policy. In the future I will try my best to clean the pages. Thank you again!

If you add the link again, I will re-add it to the blacklist, as you have clearly been told that your link is not acceptable per policy. I think you already realize this, though... --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 01:27, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

Why can't I add the agency link back? Which policy? I have been studying wikivoyage policies these days. In this page http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Activity_listings it says if the tour operator meet the certain conditions it is okay to list. The conditions are 1.The operator must have a "real world" office with a phone number and address. 2.Do not list tour operators that act as a booking agent or travel-planner for the traveler—tour agencies should offer something as a supplement, rather than a replacement for Wikivoyage guides. Listed tours should count as an activity available at a destination (e.g., a helicopter tour of a city, or a camel expedition into the Sahara). 3.Do not list resellers of tours, only list the actual tour operators. 4.Always list tour agencies if they are requisite to visit a certain area. Examples include tours required by law (e.g., Panmunjeom) and tours required due to exceptional danger (e.g., war zones and extreme environments such as the Amazon, Antarctica, Space, etc).

Is there anything that I miss? I don't want to be again the rules again. Thx!

Your question has been answered many times, in many places on Wikivoyage. But for completeness, I will answer it again here. Wikivoyage aims to put travellers in direct contact with tour operators, who add substantial value at a destination. Agents for tour operators cannot be listed. At this point, I would suggest that you do not add the listing back, but if you believe that you have a complying listing, that you discuss it first on the talk page of the relevant article(s). See Project:Activity listings#Tour listings and Project:External links --(WT-en) Inas 02:06, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

Hi, there! I already read the two links above again. However, I still think I have the right to put it back:-) Because 1. as business owners, my friend and I own **** (TLT); 2. **** is NOT agency for any tour operators. We have our own tourguides, cars, offices and we offer the final services to travelers directly without any agency. Our head office is just 5mins' walk from train station and thousands of travelers have joined our tours; 3.if needed you can leave an email add for me here then I can email you our license as a qualificated tour operator in China. But no worries, I won't edit it back until I can show you that **** is NOT tout. Thank you! Lily in Guilin, China

Stamboul (talk · contribs), apparently affiliated with **** because he added their details to the North Korea page, has now deleted all tour operators there twice. This looks like bad faith editing to me...

Also, ****'s North Korea http://**** dot com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=16 FAQ (edited to escape blacklist) is plagiarized word for word from the original by Koryo Tours.--> (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:46, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

I am not in charge of North Korea part in **** but I think my colleage already put that in order in the page. I dont know much about it but in Guilin and Yangshuo parts I have admitted that at the time we didn't know the rules of wikivoyage we made a lot of mistakes. However, we have been studying wikivoyage rules these days and after our domain was got out of the blocklist we really know how to behave. We have promise not to delete other's information and won't tout in our information. Our offices are in Yangshuo and Guilin. We are local tour operator of the area. I have proved that the qualifications that why we can list in tour list in Guilin and Yangshuo area. Thank you! Lily

As I have got some suggestions from here and my talk page, I think it would be better talk about our situation in the revalent disscussion pages-Yangshuo(http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Talk:Yangshuo) and Guilin(http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Talk:Guilin) sections instead of here. See you guys there! Lily

• • • • want to say thank you to everyone who has helped us and given us good suggestions! ****-Lily in Guilin, China

Re-added, user back to adding link, and since this may not be clear to everyone, is trolling [7]. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:59, 17 May 2009 (EDT)

Today I found someone add the link back to the blocklist. We have NEVER add the domain back to tout or to do anything bad!!! I just came back from a business trip from Tibet. After I came back to office these days what I contribute in wikivoyage are all useful items. I do all of them according to the rules I have learned. None of them are spam. Moreover, if someone doesn't agree with what I wrote plase show your repect frist:talk to me in the mytalk page and let me know your different opinoion before making this rude decision(adding our domain to blocklist directly). Long time ago, the domain was in blocklist. At the time, I didn't know the fucntion of "my talk" however, people did tried to contact me and let me know their different opinion through "my talk". Now I am really angry and concerned about this case. Lily

These spammers (+ trolls) have not, and in all likelihood will not stop spamming WT, so I've added a pattern to catch any future references. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:46, 9 July 2009 (EDT)

Hello

I am a new user on Wikivoyage. I am planning to make myself an account. I already tried to eddit one page. I wanted to add the link to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Pyongaeng, but it said that it was blocked by spam filter. Please help, thank you. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 173.52.172.90 (talk • contribs)

I tested Pyongyang, and don't see any problems. In which case there must be a problem with the terms you are adding—would you please post here exactly what you are trying to add. If the blacklist stops that, check the top grey box, which should tell you exactly what is being blocked. Then convey here what the problem is. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:54, 29 April 2009 (EDT)

Talk:Crewing

I am trying to add a link to this page: http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Talk:Crewing and am getting blocked. The link I am trying to add is extremely relevant to the post. It is latitude38 dot com/crewlist/Crew.html This is a primary site.

The spam filter was activated by the long unbroken list of external links. I don't see any reason for us to keep that list of links, so I have removed it. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:04, 30 April 2009 (EDT)

msryat dot org

Arabic-language site that's been added in blocks of four URLs by an anonymous user to numerous unrelated articles. Not a language I read, but no apparent value on :en. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 21:51, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

golden hyphen flower dot co dot id

Hotel spammer keeps recreating a page for this hotel, immediately following deletion, despite several requests to stop. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 03:51, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

citybaseapartments dot com

Have added this as a temp measure. Adding to many pages despite attempt to educate. (WT-en) Nrms 07:24, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

Hi, I can see that on the 11th May our URL was added to the blacklist as a "TEMPORARY MEASURE". I have since been discussing the issue with DGuillame (please see his talk page) - I apologise for adding our link to too many pages - I was not aware that it could only be cities where we owned apartments. I would like to be able to add my URL in accordance with your rules, please can you remove the ban (I will only add in the pages indicated on the talk section of DGuillame's page) —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Citybase Apartments‎ (talk • contribs)

You were not aware that you could not advertise in cities where you don't even have apartments? That's just breathtakingly stupid of you. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:33, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Since there seems to be some user engagement going on now, removing in the hopes the problem has been solved. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 22:38, 27 August 2009 (EDT)

@DGuillame - thanks a lot

@jpatokal - we 'have' apartments available to lease in all the areas that I posted our links - just not apartments that we own (we are agents for many cities and own in ones already indicated). Perhaps if you read the indicated messages / background before posting a comment implying someone was stupid that would be for the best?

topicss dot com

Spam links to this site with front linked Arabic have been showing up around the site, added by numerous ips, mostly on pages that no one appears to be following. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 17:40, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

Dive time dot com

Per User talk:(WT-en) ScubaDiver007 & Special:Contributions/(WT-en) ScubaDiver007. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 07:16, 14 May 2009 (EDT)

travelmapia dot com

Seeing regular spam for this domain across our Latin American articles, from multiple ips, over at least the past week. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:49, 22 May 2009 (EDT)

puertoprincesa tour dot com

Pretty egregious spamming, which escalated when asked to stop. This spamming hasn't been going on long, so I think it would be fine to remove it if the owner agrees to knock it off. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 02:42, 25 May 2009 (EDT)

orlandodiscountticketsusa dot com

This link has been reverted multiple times from every article in the Disney World area, with numerous pointers given to Project:External links. Since it keeps reappearing I'm adding it to the blacklist in the hope of halting the spamming. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:42, 25 May 2009 (EDT)

s one dot shard dot jp

Sudden wave of spambots dropping tons of links to this one domain, e.g., [8]. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 04:30, 27 May 2009 (EDT)

33333 dot com dot tw

The link to the Gau Shan Ching hotel is dead on the Alishan website, so I was just trying to be helpful and update it to the right link (which is this domain, and which is actually the right website.)

Thanks for the heads up, fixed -- although that URL does not appear to trigger the blacklist? (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:58, 8 June 2009 (EDT)

crossculturalsolutions dot org

See Special:Contributions/96.57.242.18. Listing added to dozens of articles in violation of Project:External links and Project:Don't tout. Attempts to get user's attention via talk page have failed. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:21, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

I apologize for the violation but I was wondering if it would be appropriate to link our main page (instead of individual country pages) to the pages of the various places we offer volunteer opportunities. I have noticed other organizations have done this such as Ikando volunteers under the work section on the Ghana page and various organizations, such as CARE and PID, under the work section on the Guatemala page as well as other pages. We would love for the Wikivoyage users to be able to explore our volunteer opportunities. Thank you for your time. username: crossculturalsolutions

The primary problem with your edits is that you copied the same site to many articles, which is considered spamming. Copying the same text to more than one article is a red flag. As indicated by others, Volunteer seems like the most appropriate place for this information. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:44, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

I am very sorry for the violation, we are new to Wikivoyage and nothing like this will happen again. I was wondering, however, if we could have permission to post our information on the Guatemala and Guatemala City pages only? Thank you Ryan.

balipropertyconsultancy dot com

Repeated spam on Nusa_Lembongan. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 09:46, 18 June 2009 (EDT)

store dot pchome

Repeated spam in failed sneaky attempts by Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Thung11 & Special:Contributions/220.134.68.218. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 06:12, 24 June 2009 (EDT)

deepcreekvacations dot com

The rental agency aggregator spam from this guy (who's used other ips as well) doesn't stop, and he's already been duly warned. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:31, 28 June 2009 (EDT)

The owner has responded here: User talk:(WT-en) Ravenfan - I don't know to much about the prehistory and apparent earlier communication, so I'd like some input before removing this. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 16:58, 5 July 2009 (EDT)

The history is one of a half-month of edit warring (even following a blacklisting & an in-article note). The page history is here [9], and former communication (outside of the article) is here. I'm ok with removing the site, provided the business owner will not add his own listing back to the article. If he does, it should be re-added to the blacklist. The business simply and clearly does not meet our criteria for apartment rental listings. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 06:04, 6 July 2009 (EDT)

Owner has agreed not to re-list it, and has begun contributing positively, so I've removed it. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 11:02, 7 July 2009 (EDT)

this is google

Somewhat bizarre new spambot pattern, preceded by six random letters and with a long string of garbage in the edit summary. Coming in from multiple IPs with no apparent pattern to the target articles. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 17:42, 28 June 2009 (EDT)

redsevenleisure dot co dot uk

See Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Nivaria. User isn't responding to comments left on his/her talk page or in edit summaries and is repeatedly re-adding links that aren't in accordance with Project:External links. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:29, 1 July 2009 (EDT)

abetterstay dot com

See Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Big-chad. Notes left on the user's talk page don't seem to be getting attention, and this link is clearly not appropriate according to Project:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings and Project:External links. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 19:47, 1 July 2009 (EDT)

E d e n w a l k s

Edit warring and endless additions of a tour agency, no details, and it probably counts as a tour people could do themselves. All despite a warning. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 08:10, 7 July 2009 (EDT)

As well, I am not sure if i'm writing in the right section but I am asking for the removal of ***blacklisted term*** from the blacklist in Rome italy under the Tours section. Our info including a small description has been repeatedly removed and eventually spammed. Another listing with the same info has not had a problem and in fact we have seen 4 companies removed in total in the last few days while one company only has remained untouched. We recently found WikiTravel and would find it a great resource to offer our services. What should we do? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Edenrome (talk • contribs)

What you should do is stop edit warring, and spamming Wikivoyage to promote your business. You should also read messages left for you like this one, as well as check the history of the page [10] to see who is undoing your edits, and why. The fact that you don't even leave a description of your tour makes it pretty clear that you are uninterested in anything other than improving your own web traffic. And I have a strong hunch that your business would not satisfy our criteria for inclusion. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:31, 7 July 2009 (EDT)

I'll add that this was extremely poor taste [11]. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:33, 7 July 2009 (EDT)

Ok I AM NOT INTERNET OR COMPUTER SAVY AND DID NOT KNOW I WAS being contacted. I am trying to help and did not want to hurt our company at all. all i saw was my post gettinng removed as well as others while i stayed.

This was annoying, but I doubt we'll see the company again, so I removed the patterns. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:43, 9 July 2009 (EDT)

xiahe hyphen tibettravel dot info

The usual tale of edit wars and ignored warnings by a tour agency. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 08:31, 10 July 2009 (EDT)

Getting Removed from the List (roundtheworldflights dot com)

Hello Ryan and Evan I am writing in to ask for rtwflights dot com and roundtheworldflights dot com to be removed from your blacklist, I hope this is the correct section to ask. Also to apologise - didnt realise you werent allowed to link to specific page tables. Had being doing it for ages mainly because I had written and updated a lot of the content - most of that was without links. Also didnt realise there was the talk section till someone showed it to me yesterday. Yeah as you say wasnt malicious but breaks the rules. Realise its a big no no now. Kind Regards Stuart Stuart at roundtheworldflights dot com

If you could please confirm that you've read and understand Project:Don't tout (specifically: don't list the same site multiple times and don't use overly promotional language) and Project:External links (don't link to aggregator sites) then removal shouldn't be a problem. Please also note that replacing an official link with your own (such as in this edit: [12]) is a considered a fairly serious breach of etiquette on Wikivoyage. We appreciate the contributions, but current policies and guidelines have been set up to ensure that the site's primary focus is on travelers rather than on promoting specific businesses or organizations. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:18, 11 July 2009 (EDT)

Hi Ryan Yup I now have read and understand the touting rules (specifically: don't list the same site multiple times and don't use overly promotional language) . In fact this whole talk section has been a bit of a revelation about what you can and cant do and the direct links into sections wont happen again. Apologies again. I would like to update the RTW rule data (mainly because the info in it is a good year out of date) but I'll stick to the technical data and not touch any links or use self serving language. Would having one link within specialist Travel Agents be ok? Am asuming it would? But wont put it till you guys okay. Cheers again and have a good Sunday

Kind Regards Stuart

Stuart at roundtheworldflights dot com

I've removed the blacklisting - thanks for reading the guidelines. It's probably fine to add a single link in the Round the world flights article, especially if it's done in the context of a section that provides travel advice to users who want to book these tickets through such an agency (specifically: what are the advantages / disadvantages, things to know, etc). Since such a link is somewhat of a border-line case (it isn't to the airline's own site, but is to a source that is useful specifically for the travel topic) I suspect that if the section eventually turns into merely a list of dozens of links that a future editor might remove or trim down the section, so the most important thing would be making sure that such a section is written for travelers, is not overly-promotional, and provides useful information about the businesses being linked. Hope that helps! -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 17:02, 12 July 2009 (EDT)

Cheers Ryan.

Metacharacters And You

I've cleaned up a number of expressions in the blacklist that were escaping (preceding with a backslash) a number of things they didn't need to. For reference, the only literal characters that need escaping are:

• Punctuation: . $ ^ | * \ /
• Brackets: ( ) [ ] < > { }

Things that don't need escaping include spaces, colons, and hyphens. In some cases, including an inadvertent escape can cause your expression to fail in unexpected ways - "dull" would block the word dull, but "\dull" would only block "0ull", "1ull", ..., "9ull". Similar problems meant a few items on the list were previously ineffective. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 21:23, 22 July 2009 (EDT)

Random spam catcher

Per Wikivoyage_talk:Vandalism_in_progress#Spambots, I've experimentally added the string [B-DF-HJ-NP-TV-XZb-df-hj-np-tv-xz]{5}, which catches sequences of five or more consonants in a row -- not something that should happen too often outside random spam. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:28, 25 July 2009 (EDT)

Made that 6 after after 5 got stuck on "CHTVR-tehk" in the Czech phrasebook. Strč prst skrz krk! (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:28, 25 July 2009 (EDT)

And then it choked on the domain "toplvltrr". Grah, rolling back... (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:28, 25 July 2009 (EDT)

Another concept: ([a-z][A-Z]{3}|[A-Z][a-z]{3}), which catches the case of a letter pair changing three times in a row (eg. aBcDeF). Still would fail on eg. German department store KaDeWe... (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:10, 25 July 2009 (EDT)

taxi lima peru dot com

A persistent spammer, who I can't really contact due to lack of a static ip, has been changing all the taxi links on the Lima page to his/her own, and mucking about with the phone numbers too. It's persistent enough where I've noticed some got by me today—time to blacklist. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 19:00, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

One of the cheapest tariffs....

Added to slow down an anonymous user adding Vodafone advertisements to every city in India; a note on their talk page and a 5-minute block to get their attention only resulted in them shifting immediately to a different address and going right back to it. Not blocking the URL itself (vodafone.in) since it shows up with some legitimacy in many other articles. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 03:31, 30 July 2009 (EDT)

LimaPeruTaxi dot com & Limo dot pe

See Special:Contributions/190.232.6.141 - spamming a vast number of Peru articles with taxi listings. To the anonymous user who is doing this, please read Project:Don't tout and Project:External links. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:04, 30 July 2009 (EDT)

i was inturkey dot com

We've gotten spam from this domain over the years, and it often gets by unnoticed. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:24, 30 July 2009 (EDT)

span onmouseover

This is one of the identifying characteristics of a long-running, utterly incomprehensible bot (or very bored human) that adds chunks of auto-translated text to pages -- usually Dutch, but the most recent example is Swedish instead: [13]. The phrase is part of some assorted HTML that always accompanies the edits, which references some JavaScript that doesn't exist. I can't imagine we'd ever want any onmouseover() events in text anyhow, so it should be safe to block. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 15:56, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

Would anyone be opposed to simplifying this pattern to just "onmouse"? I can't think of a case where adding any JS mouse events would be appropriate, and the more general pattern protects us from all sorts of potential spambot annoyances. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 16:04, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

As long as we can confirm that none of the Disney World parks offer mouse rides. Though I suppose those could just use "by mouse" instead. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 19:02, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

Seems like a good idea to me. Probably none of them are named (left angle bracket)span onmouse, which should cover all the unwanted material without interfering with Mickey's future plans. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 20:37, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

Mickey aside (good one!) we can probably even drop the "<span" portion of the pattern to catch bots using divs, bolds, and any other tag that supports mouse events. We did something similar with "display colon none" to catch bots that tried to hide content on pages and there haven't seemed to be any adverse effects. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 20:42, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

I've made this change - if we end up getting any false positives please revert. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 09:57, 4 August 2009 (EDT)

thecustomdresses

This one has been deleted twice now from User talk:(WT-en) TylerLee, and possibly other pages. It's a completely non-travel related advertisement for wedding dresses. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:51, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

suitesatoldtown dot com

I've left pointers to Project:Don't tout in edit summaries, on User talk:(WT-en) Dwang and on User talk:72.54.159.26 with no luck - this listing still gets added repeatedly to numerous articles in the Orlando area despite being located in Kissimmee (according to the web site). See Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Dwang and Special:Contributions/72.54.159.26 for examples. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:42, 4 August 2009 (EDT)

J u l i e and Yangshuo

J u l i e just won't leave the Yangshuo page alone, and this has been going on for a long time. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 13:42, 6 August 2009 (EDT)

completely-crete dot com

Spammed across a number of Greece articles. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 20:25, 7 August 2009 (EDT)

Toledo, Ohio

I'm trying to add a route navigation box to the Toledo (Ohio) page, and the spambot is blocking me. I'm not even trying to add an external link. (WT-en) Eco84 13:20, 9 August 2009 (EDT)

Alright, I fixed it by deleting an external link that had been inserted in the Get Out section by someone else. (WT-en) Eco84 13:32, 9 August 2009 (EDT)

rabbitinternational dot com

Real estate spam on a few occasions across project articles and Dominican Republic. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 19:44, 9 August 2009 (EDT)

trekkingtourinnepal dot com

Cleared our front page with spam for a good 15 minutes. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 06:07, 11 August 2009 (EDT)

guilinchina dot cn

Repeated bad faith edits: switching out legitimate hotel websites with their own and adding new ones under the same aggregator url. Presumably, the easiest way to get through to this user will be a url blacklist. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:51, 18 August 2009 (EDT)

finlandiahotelmoga dot com

Repeated additions to just about every page this guy gets near, even on project pages, haven't been around for while, but come back recently - and behaves just as badly as last time - despite a warning on a IP he/she did repeated edits on today --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 03:20, 19 August 2009 (EDT)

deconcilio1 at gmail

This guy has been spamming 'round the clock on several Italy articles across multiple language versions. A blacklisting should hopefully get his attention? --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 16:36, 20 August 2009 (EDT)

visitbeautifulgreece dot wordpress dot com

Repeatedly replaced valid links throughout Greece, continued after warning. (WT-en) Gorilla Jones 11:30, 22 August 2009 (EDT)

only-apartments dot com

See Special:Contributions/80.25.189.115 - spamming across all Paris articles. To the user who is adding these listings - read Project:Don't tout and Project:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:30, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

Window clean/wash - ing/ers

Various cleaning companies from California keep creating spammy user and user talk pages. This should keep them out. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 22:55, 25 August 2009 (EDT)

B. Bartmann

Bill, or someone promoting him, keeps spamming Talk:Travel topics from multiple IPs.

Spam Filter Blocking Edit

The Spam Filter keeps blocking the Talk Page of the Collaboration of the month candidates page when I try to add something. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 20:44, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

What page are you talking about? Editing Project:Collaboration of the month worked for me. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 20:53, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

Sorry, I meant this page: Project:Destination of the Month candidates not the Collaboration. (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 21:08, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

Fixed. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:14, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

Thanks! (WT-en) ChubbyWimbus 22:20, 29 August 2009 (EDT)

The Spam Filter keeps blocking edits of Wailea, Maui page. Even when I remove all the text I added, it says the page edit is blocked by a spam filter. --Amy mci 20:54, 13 October 2010 (EDT)

I can't reproduce that, Wailea seems to pass the filter as-is. A blocked edit will tell you what caused the problem at the top of the page, inside a gray box; can you describe what it's catching on? (Without triggering the filter on this page, hopefully!) — (WT-en) D. Guillaime 21:35, 13 October 2010 (EDT)

The link I put in, and then removed, was www dot wailea condo rentals dot com, a vacation rental company, which is a whole other issue, but first things first I guess.--Amy mci 16:14, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

www.waileacondorentals.com isn't being blocked, as evidenced by the fact that I can add it to this comment. The spam filter will specify the pattern that caused it to trigger when an edit fails - if you can let us know that pattern it should be simple to resolve this issue. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 16:22, 14 October 2010 (EDT)

Various Car Hire Agencies

elephant car hire dot com has been showing up in a vast array of articles, from South Africa to Ireland to Chiang Mai. It's a booking site, and thus not suitable for Wikivoyage according to Project:External links. I'm not entirely sure that I tracked down all articles that contain this link, so if anyone knows of a more reliable way to find and remove these links please take a stab at it. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:22, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

There seem to be a number of UK car hire sites showing up in articles, and based on a quick web search they seem very suspicious. fastcarhire, tigercarrental, arguscarhire, auto-europe, argusrentals and anycarhire are clearly aggregator sites and thus should not be listed here according to the policies cited above. rhinocarhire claims to be an actual rental company with offices around the world, but I've never heard of it and a search for locations in LA turns up nothing other than their own listings. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 01:39, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

Having just spent thirty minutes chasing down car rental listings I'd suggest that Wikivoyage probably needs to be very suspicious of car rental listings that show up here. While some may be valid, it looks like a vast number of aggregators (or potentially just a handful that own multiple domains) are using Wikivoyage and other sites for search engine optimization, and they are significantly more advanced than the spambots that hit us (search for rhino car rental - there are tons of blog postings and such, but they all look to be manufactured). Anyone willing to investigate further will probably find a number of listings currently on the site that need to be removed. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:08, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

I've also added budget dot co dot uk... Budget is a legitimate rental company in the US, but seeing links to a UK site turn up in articles ranging from Asia to South America is suspicious, and these are typically appearing in the same articles as the spammy links above. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:22, 3 September 2009 (EDT)

Three more - cypruscar dot co dot uk, paphoscarhire dot co dot uk, northcypruscarhire dot co dot uk. These are all UK-based car rental aggregators that are being repeatedly re-added to Cyprus articles. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:18, 4 September 2009 (EDT)

Yet another - enterprisecarhire dot us. This looks like the budget dot co dot uk site, in that they're trying to piggyback off of a known site (enterprise.com) using a similar domain name. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:34, 5 September 2009 (EDT)

Question - does anyone know if easycar is a legitimate rental agency, or do they merely broker with actual rental agencies? There have been a bunch of links added (and removed) to Orlando today, and looking at the company's web site I don't see any physical addresses so I'm suspicious of this one. Does anyone know anything about them? -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:27, 17 December 2009 (EST)

Their FAQ refers to "Allocated Supplier" several times, so I would venture no. /edit and their downtown Copenhagen address is a Hertz outlet. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 12:31, 17 December 2009 (EST)

Thanks... I'll let this sit for a bit longer in case someone comes to their defense, otherwise it looks like an easycar-ectomy is called for. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:44, 17 December 2009 (EST)

Removed and blacklisted. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:53, 25 December 2009 (EST)

+holidaycars dot com. Another online booking site that is being added to a ton of Ireland articles by anonymous users. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:51, 25 December 2009 (EST)

Additionally novacarhire dot com. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:55, 25 December 2009 (EST)

elephant car hire dot com do have their own fleet for cars in Cyprus but they are a broker elsewhere. Budget dot co dot uk are legitimate in the UK and easycar partially. easycar is part of the easy group (like the budget airliner easyjet) and have some of their own fleet. rhinocarhire, anycarhire and the others mentioned are all brokers.

Hi, would you please consider removing rhinocarhire dot com from the spam blacklist. We are disappointed to see ourselves listed in this directory and the practice that seems to have led us there is certainly not condoned by our business. We have traced the issues back to a former editor / SEO specialist who has not been involved with the company for some time now. I would welcome any comments or advice of any further actions that we would need to undertake to be removed from the blacklist. Many thanks in advance. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 86.27.41.222 (talk • contribs)

Given the problems with this company in the past, and the fact that your web site claims to have rental fleets in places where you do not (I live in LA, and despite what your web site says you do not own a rental fleet here) then I think it is highly unlikely that this site will be removed from the blacklist. If you have a strong argument for its removal please state it, but know that once on the blacklist the bar for removal is pretty high. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:07, 16 January 2011 (EST)

Hi Ryan, thanks for your feedback. We understand the wiki policy on external links and where not to link (brokers / aggregators) and accept that this has happened previously, however as stated this was traced back to a former editor who is no longer involved with the company. I am at a loss to see what else we can do to be removed from the list. We accept that the actions carried out on our behalf breached the wiki guidelines and for that we apologise, however this practise is not condoned and no action of this nature has taken place for some time. I would be most grateful if you could further advise the next course of action, or reconsider our removal from the list. I hope on this occasion you are willing to accept good faith and our acknowledgement of previous mistakes. We do not attempt to be listed on wiki as understand the rules on brokers, however are powerless to prevent spam from third parties that could be detrimental to us. Would it be possible to create a separate list where we can self impose a listing so we cannot be listed in the main pages, however not be labelled as spam?

A note was left on my talk page asking that I respond, so I would re-iterate that I don't believe that there is any value in removing this company from the blacklist. It takes repeated spamming for a company to be added to this list, and once on the list it's up to the company to show why removal benefits Wikivoyage. Since this particular company rents cars from other companies it's not a primary source, and thus wouldn't qualify for listing on Wikivoyage. More importantly, there have been major problems with spam in the past, the company appears to have engaged in deceptive business practices by claiming to operate in locations where they were merely renting another company's vehicles, and it has set up fake blogs to boost the SEO value of the company, all of which have eroded the assumption of "good faith" and led to a situation where I honestly don't feel confident that the company is one that Wikivoyage should be recommending that any traveler should trust. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:40, 20 May 2011 (EDT)

Ryan, Thank you for the reply, however I do not see the justification for our site being labelled as spam by wiki travel any longer. We accept that previous practices led to our listing, however we have been punished by this now and understand the rules and assure that any such practices are not condoned or permitted by the company. As for claiming to have cars at locations where we do not, this is not true, we are a broker like many car hire sites and market products that are available to our customers from us. We have an official car hire blog within our site, I am not aware of any fake blogs that you mention, please provide further information. We are not requesting wiki travel to recommend our company, however to continue to label us a spam is unreasonable in our opinion. I would like to point out that we were awarded Best Car Hire Website 2010 at the Travolution Awards and so find your comment regarding your recommendation not to trust our site unjust. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter further, can you please advise the best way to contact you.

Serious spammers are serious

Blacklisted hostelio who have decided it would be ingenious to use a spambot network to spam us with continously bouncing IP Addresses. How about no? -- (WT-en) Colin 16:40, 30 August 2009 (EDT)

triptobudapest DOT hu

Edit warring at Budapest, not responding despite a couple of messages on talk page. --(WT-en) inas 20:15, 9 September 2009 (EDT)

theworlds retreat dot co dot uk

This fellow has been edit warring & spamming all the Yorkshire pages with his hotel touting. Hopefully this will get his/her attention—once it has, I'm fine with removing it from the blacklist. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:39, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

Dear Peter,

I included a bed and breakfast that is relevant to York, Yorkshire and East Yorkshire, with numerous other bed and breakfast listings under the default accommodation category. I am not at war or a spammer. The information is relevant to the page and improves the content for visitors interested in travelling to these areas. I don't want to upset anyone or cause any harm. I'm sorry if I have offended you in any way. Perhaps if adding the listing to these three categories is too much we could at least add the listing to the East Yorkshire page which doesn't have much content?

Kind Regards, Kevin

Nope, listings goes in the city where it's located, if it's on the country side outside any city zones we can list them in the relevant region as an exception. If you have found any other listings braking our rules, please feel free to move them to the most exact destination article, we don't always manage to catch everything all the time. But we never allow any business to add multiple listings, period. If you are ready to accept that, I'll be happy to remove the blacklisting, otherwise you are free to discuss this policy here, though I doubt you will find much support. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 09:27, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

Dear Stefan, i accept no multiple listings. My post above is requesting that the listing be added to a single page - East Yorkshire. This charity run bed and breakfast is not in the city but in the country. Sorry for being a pain but i think this page could really do with some more content. I have lived in East Yorkshire for many years, love the area, and would like to contribute.

Kind Regards,

Kevin

Seeing we for some obscure reason actually have a stub page for Pocklington, I've moved your listing there, detoutet it a bit, and removed the blacklisting. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 10:05, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

proposal on policy for adding

From time to time I encounter "edit conflict" triggered by the fact that already there was a blacklisted URL or something in the article I tried to edit. Hence the proposal:

1. Before (or right after) implementing addition of a new URL to a blacklist, someone should remove all occurences of it everywhere in the language version.
2. What can be done to fix that really confusing "edit conflict" message which gives no idea of what's really the problem, and where to seek for resolution?

--(WT-en) DenisYurkin 05:16, 20 September 2009 (EDT)

perfect suntra vel dot com & barce lonapoint dot com

This spammer has spammed links to these sites over the past couple days on at least six language versions (Hebrew was spared). This is the kind of thing that makes me wish we could edit the hard blacklist, which covers the whole site. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 12:01, 25 September 2009 (EDT)

hotels residences dot com

Aggregator site that keeps adding themselves to cities and countries all over Europe. All anonymous edits, and never more than a couple from any single IP address, so there's been no way to communicate with them via a talk page; putting them on the blacklist is a blunt approach, but at least it should get their attention. Most likely won't need to be a permanent addition. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 15:52, 25 September 2009 (EDT)

...though, since they promptly switched to using a slightly different URL, perhaps stronger measures are in order. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 16:11, 25 September 2009 (EDT)

These assholes are spamming other language versions as well. Kill kill kill! (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:42, 26 September 2009 (EDT)

feelparis dot com, feelbarcelona dot com and feel-madrid dot com

Spamming Paris and Barcelona articles. See Special:Contributions/85.50.238.218 and Special:Contributions/95.17.61.2. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:48, 30 September 2009 (EDT)

User has added additional URLs that are now blacklisted including: feel-nyc dot com. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:08, 30 September 2009 (EDT)

direct-croatia dot com

Apartment spam. See Special:Contributions/93.138.30.230. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:53, 30 September 2009 (EDT)

User:(WT-en) Gopinathangns

dear sir,

This is Gopinathan Iam doing travel business in chennai,kanchipuram,coimbatore,ooty,mamallapuram. so that iam contributing in this site but my phone numbers and my travels name sare not getting stored in this site please help me

your telling iam deleting the competeters name but iam not doing like that.please consider my request.please allow to add my company contributes in wikivoyage sites. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) User:Gopinathangns (talk • contribs)

Yes, you are deleting competitors - see this edit for one of many examples. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:24, 1 October 2009 (EDT)

ok sir acctually i ask my friend to add my company profile but iam not aware of that deleting competetors names and all,but you see my profile is in wikivoyage site for past 1 year but its not happening when i add my profile on first time so consider me and allow to add my mobile numbers because iam having through out tamilnadu so i have manage my company so once again iam asking you to allow me,and please consider my humble request i take care for not using anybody my login id so that i will avoid the misuses. Thanks and Regards Gopinathan S

This user is continuing to spam across articles in violation of Project:Don't tout, so I've also added the company name (KEERTHY) to the blacklist. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:29, 4 October 2009 (EDT)

Aditya, A One and ABC

See Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Adityatravel. User is removing competitor listings, and after blacklisting immediately did the same thing with additional company names. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:14, 8 October 2009 (EDT)

I've removed the patterns since this user continues to log in from multiple accounts and with various IP addresses and use different patterns not blocked by the spam filter. Any contributions should be reverted on sight until this user makes some effort to show good faith. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:56, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

al-sufarahotel dot com

Has now created the article of the same name for the n'th time, time to stop this. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 17:11, 12 October 2009 (EDT)

Leonardo-hotels dot com

Bad faith editing and (WT-en) sock puppetry, time to stop this, at least until we got some dialogue with user. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 07:23, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Period space comma newline

The current wave of vandalbots all seem to end their one line with some punctuation (usually a period, occasionally a question or exclamation mark), space, and comma. The pattern added matches only that combination, and only if it's either the end of the article or followed by anything that's not a letter or number -- I think that'll keep false positives at bay, but please revert if that's a mistake. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 22:03, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Looks like it was causing trouble (see Kobe below), so I've removed it. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 01:33, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

migente dot com

Spambot on several sites[[14]] and has a similar pattern to exchange the first section. Always anymonous users and it's always fake goods. (WT-en) jan 08:59, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

boards.webmd dot com

Continious spam on several sites (e.g. Cagliari three times today) always in the first section of an article. It's junk and bad faith it obvious (WT-en) jan 09:02, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

webjam dot com

Especially targets Israeli articles [[15]] and it's obvious junks with changing IP's. (WT-en) jan 09:10, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

identi dot ca

Reenters always in the Soma Bay article and it's obvious spam. (WT-en) jan 11:05, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

identica is a microblogging site started by Evan, our founder. It is a sort of competitor to twitter, and unfortunately, it looks like people have managed to create spam user ids on the site. While I don't see identica finding a place in travel articles, someone might legitimately place their identica links in their user pages. So, I guess we shouldn't be blocking the root url. What do folks think? — (WT-en) Ravikiran 01:30, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

Ravikiran, I think we might keep an eye on the development but in the last week I reverted quite a bit of spam that originated from identica. Maybe someone can get in contact with Evan and ask if they had recently experienced problems with spammers on their service. (WT-en) jan 08:42, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

Kobe

I tried to change the following part of the http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Kobe page Original: Hankyu Mikage station 御影駅 or Sumiyoshi station 住吉駅 Corrected: Hanshin Sumiyoshi station 住吉駅 or Mikage station 御影駅 But the spam filter page is coming up with the whole page —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 61.126.132.41 (talk • contribs)

Looks like it was accidentally triggering on a pattern that I added to stop some spambots last week. I've undone that pattern, and fixed the part of Kobe's text that was causing trouble just in case. Thank you for pointing that out. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 01:33, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

81.192.181.50 is removing competitors

How should we deal with this user? Could anyone help to explain him what's he is doing wrong? See [16]: the only competitor removal he made. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 10:52, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

goodnano-av dot com

Shows up frequently in spambot droppings, particularly the ones that create new pages; doesn't appear anywhere on the site otherwise, and doesn't appear to have any possible travel relevance. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 17:31, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Can't edit Project:Votes_for_deletion/June_2009

Im trying to add an entry to Project:Votes_for_deletion/June_2009 but the page has spam entries, so now the spam filter thinks im adding spam, too. I parked my entry under Wikivoyage_talk:Votes_for_deletion/June_2009, please fix, and post my entry on the archive page. -- (WT-en) Eiland 07:03, 29 October 2009 (EDT)

Fixed. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:02, 29 October 2009 (EDT)

ouarzazate-unlimited dot com

See Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Abdel. Spamming Morocco articles, and removed competitor listings in this edit. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 19:38, 29 October 2009 (EDT)

Forum spam

OK, I'm officially hopeless ay regular expressions, can anyone come up with regular expressions that blocks

1. all strings with something like "(forums?)*(dot)*(dot)(ru|cn|com|net)" - the two dots are important so we don't block sites like forumromanum.com (one dot).
2. all strings that includes "forums?,forward slash,member,php,equation mark" in any given order. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 23:03, 29 October 2009 (EDT)

Here's my best shot for the first: [17]. The second is significantly harder if you mean to have those five components in any arbitrary order. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 01:30, 30 October 2009 (EDT)

jetluxuryresorts dot com

Appears to be an aggregator site, and thus does not meet the criteria in Project:External links and Apt. User is not responding to comments left on User talk:(WT-en) Jetluxury. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:43, 4 November 2009 (EST)

Can't edit Huaraz page

Trying to correct a bunch of minor errors on the Huaraz page and the spam filter won't let me make any edits. I'm not trying to add any links, simply make minor informational edits. So I don't understand the point of the filter if it won't let the wiki act as a wiki and allow users to edit pages. Stymies the point of this whole endeavor. Thanks. {unsigned|190.40.71.94}}

The blacklist is used to prevent spammers - in this case someone had previously added a link to the article, and the link was later blacklisted, so current edits triggered the filter. I've removed the problem listing, so you should be able to edit now. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:26, 8 November 2009 (EST)

easy to holiday

An aggregator site, and thus not something that should be listed here per Apt and Project:External links. Has been re-added repeatedly to articles despite comments left in edit summaries pointing the anonymous user(s) to the appropriate policies. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:01, 9 November 2009 (EST)

booking dot com

Userin User talk:(WT-en) Anna lev is very eager to add links to this aggregator site. I will put it on the black list because she is continuing after several warnings. (WT-en) jan 04:53, 11 November 2009 (EST)

This pattern seems a bit generic - it's conceivable that a hotel chain could have valid listings that end in "booking dot com", so I updated it to "www dot booking dot com". -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 05:55, 11 November 2009 (EST)

maisondusud dot fr dot gd

See User talk:196.206.72.171. Anonymous user keeps creating ad pages that cannot be reused; hoping this will nudge them to look at their talk page. - (WT-en) Dguillaime 22:43, 17 November 2009 (EST)

dentaldoctor dot us

Several anonymous users keep deleting Understand section and add this link. I will add it immediately to the list to avoid further entries. (WT-en) jan 09:21, 20 November 2009 (EST)

africabusiness dot com

I can't tell if this is a real user or a bot, but every 5-9 minutes another Africa article gets updated with two links that are clearly inappropriate per Project:External links, not to mention Project:Don't tout. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 18:32, 20 November 2009 (EST)

farebusters dot com

Has been going around anonymously the last couple of days and swapping official airport url's for his own. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 05:30, 21 November 2009 (EST)

southernresorts dot com

We've been getting spammed by this company for several years, with no response to notices left on talk pages. See Special:Contributions/72.215.137.185 for the latest episode. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:35, 24 November 2009 (EST)

aiguarentacar dot it

After spamming various Italian cities for a while, and being reverted, he/she has now resorted to adding the links to random destinations outside Italy too. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 13:53, 1 December 2009 (EST)

westwindairservice dot com

See Special:Contributions/68.98.83.26. I've left a note on the user's talk page and in edit summaries, but they seem intent on adding their listing to as many articles as possible. To the anonymous user adding these links: read the Project:Don't tout policy. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 19:08, 2 December 2009 (EST)

rentalocalfriend dot com

See Special:Contributions/85.247.174.18 (and other anon IPs). Listing is not in compliance with the tour listing policy and user is not responding to comments on talk page or in edit summaries. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 15:24, 3 December 2009 (EST)

zoominearth dot it

See Special:Contributions/82.55.133.184. Listing is not valid for Wikivoyage per Apt. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:45, 4 December 2009 (EST)

expo2010 dot travel

This non-official link has been repeatedly re-added to Expo 2010 despite comments left in edit summaries and on User talk:(WT-en) Jimchiu. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 01:29, 8 December 2009 (EST)

mbtmvp

See Special:Contributions/(WT-en) Kitty20091208. Adding advertising URL with absolutely no relevance to an assortment of pages, often overwriting valid listings in the process. No response to their talk page, either. - (WT-en) D. Guillaime 02:05, 10 December 2009 (EST)

celebrationsuitesfl

Special:Contributions/72.54.159.26 is spamming several Florida articles and ignoring pointers to Project:Don't tout that I've left in revert edit summaries and on the user's talk page. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:57, 10 June 2009 (EDT)

After being added to the blacklist the user is back using a different URL... -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 21:04, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

Now I know Celebration Suites at Old Town was blocked because we violated the Wikivoyage:Don't tout and we didn't notice the warning you left in the revert edit summaries. Can you remove our hotel and website from the blacklist? And when I post again I will obey the rules. Thanks. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Dwang (talk • contribs)

Could you confirm that you've read Project:Don't tout? Specifically, only list your business once, and only within the article for the location in which you actually operate, and do not use promotional language in the listing. Generally if a site is removed from the blacklist, if the business in question violates the policy a second time then they are permanently blacklisted, so I'd just like to make sure that you understand where and how a business should be listed here before taking you off of the list. Thanks! -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 12:27, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Now I know our post has violated the Wikivoyage:Don't Tout and didn't notice the warning. We are a new starter here and didn't know the details. So can you remove our hotel and website from the blacklist? We will obey the rules when we post again in the future. Thanks. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Dwang (talk • contribs)

I've removed the blacklisting, but please note the warning above - a site generally has to violate Wikivoyage policy many times to be blacklisted, but after removal a second violation is generally sufficient for a permanent blacklisting. Please make sure that you have read Project:Don't tout, and note that even if it is not on the blacklist, editors may still remove your listing given that Disney-area articles generally have too many hotel listings to be useful. To help avoid that possibility it would be great if you could read Project:Welcome, business owners and add content to some of the articles about cities in your area, including info such as overviews of where the lodging is clustered, what to expect in terms of lodging quality, etc. rather than just adding a single business listing for your own advertising and promotion. We often make the assumption that businesses willing to take time to work with Wikivoyage are more likely to treat travelers well. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:05, 10 December 2009 (EST)

1cheaphotels dot com

This site is an aggregator site and thus is invalid for listing on Wikivoyage per Project:External links. It's been showing up in a number of edits across the site from lots of different anonymous IP addresses over the past weeks, which looks to me like a sneaky attempt to get their URL in our guides. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 10:27, 11 December 2009 (EST)

queviagem dot com

This spammer hasn't been at it long, but he's hitting articles that I don't think anyone is watching. This should at least get his attention. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 11:35, 19 December 2009 (EST)

backpackerscarmarket dot co dot nz

We've been having a great deal of trouble with anonymous edits on Buying or renting a car in New Zealand with edit warring, inserting multiple links, improving their entries while simultaneously degrading their competitors' entries, and so forth. Most recently they've simply replaced links to other companies with their own, e.g. [18]. Attempts to communicate via talk pages have been unsuccessful. - (WT-en) D. Guillaime 22:49, 21 December 2009 (EST)

we would like the black list to be removed for our link, we were unaware of the rules about the numbers of links in each section and appologise for this. as for removing competitors i think this subject needs to be looked into further as you will find that our entry was the first to be removed and then degraded with libelous comments edited into information about our company. the information we left was informative and unbiased and at no stage did we degrade our competitors. we did remove the competitors that had written untruths about us, and in retrospect perhaps this was over zealous, however we were not familiar with this section of the website and didn't know how to make our grievances known. there is still a lot of information that is incorrect in this section.

bh-hotels dot com

Prolific hotel spammer in Italy. Tried to educate but user shifts IP's. Maybe this will catch some attention. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 07:22, 22 December 2009 (EST)

→ User talk:93.40.124.25

puretravel dot com

Keeps spamming Talk:Vietnam from different IPs. - (WT-en) D. Guillaime 01:33, 23 December 2009 (EST)

Italian Hotel spammers

I've been wondering about this for while; Either all the touty hotels added to our Italian guides are done by the same person/agency, or there is some sort of tool to format the listings into Wikiformat, possibly automatically, since they all take a form like this recent addition:

• Albergo Vicino Gardaland – Via Montebaldo, - Cap: 37013, Caprino Veronese (VR), Telephone +39 045 6230934 • Fax +39 045 623 9504. Albergo Al Vignol situated at...

They all have those distinct dots, and always include the address written exactly this way. I was wondering if we could blacklist "Cap:", and see what happens. I did a quick search, crawled through a dozen of the search results, and cannot did not find anything innocent this would block, as long as the colon is included in the expression.

And maybe add a comment to the line like Cap: <!-- Please use the Hotels: template in the button of the page, and skip postcodes -->

Just for while to see if it works anyway. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 20:29, 23 December 2009 (EST)

in2vietnam dot com

See Special:Contributions/123.19.131.66. Spamming a number of Vietnam articles with links to a random travel site. Pointers to the relevant policies have been left in edit summaries, but the user restores the links despite reversions. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 01:04, 26 December 2009 (EST)

Hi, I tried to save my website page for my hotel (Ha Van Hotel Nha Trang) but the message below appeared when I put my website on the URL space (www dot in2vietnam dot com). Can someone help?

http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Nha_Trang&action=edit&section=20

The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter.

This is probably caused by a link to an external site.

Wikivoyage has strict policies about external links,

so please review them to make sure you're in line. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 123.19.129.144 (talk • contribs)

The explanation for your blacklisting is given above --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 21:36, 16 January 2010 (EST)

HolidayCars dot com

I am writing to request removal from the blacklist for holidaycars dot com. I had been publishing links in destinations where the business has operating partnerships AND where other car rental companies are listed with links. I have read the policies for Wikivoyage:Don't tout and Wikivoyage:External links and do not understand any violation we may have triggered. Can you please explain this to me? Thanks. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Pchildress (talk • contribs)

In pretty much your on words... because you do not rent out cars. We only allow for companies that actually do the renting. How many competitors do you have, 300-400? now imagine if each and every one of you added yourself to the 17.000+ locations, and it's easy to see why this would render our pages useless. Much more manageable with companies who has an actual office at the destination, and even then we don't allow any if there are more than 10. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 07:29, 26 December 2009 (EST)

Stefan's comment should make it clear why your site cannot be listed. If you are willing to commit to not adding it further, I'm pretty sure we all would be willing to remove it from the blacklist. (A spam blacklisting at a respectable site is bad for business.) --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:39, 26 December 2009 (EST)

Thanks for the explanation; it's clear enough. I agree not to post anymore links, so I would appreciate your removing the site from the blacklist (as you said, its negative effects are potentially far-reaching). Thank you in advance. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) Pchildress (talk • contribs)

Thank you for understanding. I have removed it. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 10:00, 28 December 2009 (EST)

explorepantanal dot com

All efforts to get this company to abide by Project:Don't tout have failed, so using the blacklist as a last resort. See Special:Contributions/187.52.97.160 and Special:Contributions/189.11.215.42 (amongst several addresses used) for contribution history. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:47, 26 December 2009 (EST)

capeintern dot com

Special:Contributions/41.6.42.217 is not responding to pointers to Project:Don't tout and Project:External links left in edit summaries and on User talk:41.6.42.217. Adding to the blacklist to avoid further additions. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:01, 30 December 2009 (EST)