A spam account is an account that was created for advertising purposes, or just to make inflammatory comments. On wikis that are not Wikimedia projects, they are blocked infinitely, on Wikimedia projects indefinitely. Some wikis have a problem with spam accounts as they build up, and in response have created false accounts that is used as a merge target for spam accounts. Once a spam account is discovered and blocked, it is merged into the false account. It is important to deal with spam accounts properly to avoid flooding the wiki with spam or advertising.

An account is considered a Spam account if:

  • Its only contributions are or advertising.
  • Its username matches the pattern of previously blocked spam accounts and it has not made any contributions for 1 week since its creation, which is because the spam it is creating is blocked.

See also: Wikiproject:Antispam to fight cross-wiki advertising uses of Wikipedia.