User talk:Beetstra/Archive 01

IRC cloak request

I am Beetstra on freenode and I would like the cloak wikimedia/Beetstra. Thanks. --Beetstra 19:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

double header

• Thanks a lot for removing the double header. Peace :) --La gloria è a dio 19:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Felt like I had to answer that .. I blacklisted the site on shadowbot, not on meta .. sigh .. --Beetstra 19:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

• I hope you enjoy it here. Things are a lot slower here compared to wikipedia:) It is nice:) I personally really like it here:) Peace:) --James, La gloria è a dio 00:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I is indeed nice and slow here, though discussions get pretty heated (is touregypt.net really a good reliable source ... don't believe so. --Beetstra 01:02, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Your bot

It seems that your bot was working while not logged in. Please fix this. Thanks. --Meno25 22:03, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, indeed. It should not do that. I'll try and fix. --Beetstra 11:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I guess it is fixed now. If it detects it logs out it attempts to log in. If that fails, it should not save. Please keep me posted if it happens again. Thanks! --Beetstra 14:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Bot

Why have my username been logged by User:COIBot/COIReports/2008, Feb 22 there shouldn't be any problem i only perform WikiGnome tasks. Terra ^{What do you want?} 11:30, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Heh, indeed, accidental overlap 'Terra <-> Tyler kay, I will whitelist you when I am back, or as soon as I lay my hands on an IRC program (I am on holiday now). Thanks for the notification. --Beetstra 13:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I have whitelisted you. --Beetstra 16:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Terra ^{What do you want?} 18:27, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Bot reps

Many thanks for all your work. I'm out of time now but I guess a discussion on the new tool & what we might need to evaluate before blocking here might be good. I have no problem listing actively spammed links but the blacklist does tend to be rather "permanent" - not certain that would be right in all cases? More tomorrow I hope - regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Sysop rights

Hello, Beetstra
as a result of the unanimous election held on this page, you've been granted sysop status. Please list yourself in the sysop box. Thank you, M/ 13:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

THANKS! Great, let me add \bwiki[mp]edia\.org\b to the blacklist ... :-).

Thanks everybody for the support, I will use the bit with care! --Beetstra 14:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

BL etc

Great to have more help there - I am glad the RfA went well. It does concern me that the bot reports are stacking up somewhat now. My time for a while will be fairly limited and, while there are plenty of admins who have professed to wish to help, few are actually doing much.

The two you blacklisted yesterday & then removed - can you remove them from the log too. I think it does say something somewhere about doing that. I guess it is not vital but trivially the smaller we can keep the log the longer that page will last which will save a repeat of the logging problems I hope. Thanks for the work & regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I am fairly limited as well, but will try to help out where I can. I will remove the two from the log as well, though it may be good to have a record of it. He was pushing it, but has now discussed on my en-talkpage. Good faith, and the old 'but there is other crap as well'. See you around! --Beetstra 18:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, however it will still be in the archive - thanks again --Herby ^{talk thyme} 19:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

BL backlog

If you have the time can you take a look at this - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing you have seen Erwin's comments here --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I did. The IP is not in NL and in a huge range, maybe the IP should be checked out further, it is not a open proxy is it? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:43, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

What I would really like to have, next to the global blocking, global messaging, cross-wiki spammers are very hard to contact, as they switch wikis within seconds, and will never read the messages on their talkpages. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - however a global block should send a worthwhile message :). It does not need to be for long if caught in the act --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:46, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

True, but a bit harsh. A friendly message before blocking would be good. Blocking a user who is adding good links in a bad way .. not sure if that is the best to start with. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Apologies, yes. I was referring to someone such as the specific IP in the links placements referred to above. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Global blocking

Maybe take the time to read it through fully. This not about blocking users - nor necessarily blocking IPs from being used by registered users. However there are some extremely troublesome IPs who intend to disrupt as many wikis as possible. Take for example this one which I dealt with on Commons today - behind this is someone who has no intention of constructive work. One problem is that a lot of these IPs get discussed off wiki on the CU list. These are the sort of IPs that can be tackled effectively globally. I would merely suggest than a global block of an hour or similar while an IP is placing definite spam links will make them realise that something is wrong.

It is not a tool that should be used casually or by people who do not understand however I do believe that it may be very effective in dealing with disruptive editing. Equally some form of global messaging is obviously desirable. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I know, and therefor I don't think that we mere admins should have these tools. Leave it to the top-notch here on meta. But some less harmful global tools would be fun. Global rollback on a global contributions list would make life much easier, as would global messaging to try and stop people. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:52, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

BL listings & the bot

Following on from the "terriers" one. I have no problem with listing this sort at all to prevent current disruption. However I do think we should take a slightly lighter attitude with these than some of the manual ones in that it may not have been possible to inform them in anyway that what they are doing is not appreciated. Finding/understanding the possible "spam" warning templates in other languages is frankly beyond me (took me half an hour once to find and list a speedy on fr & I have some understanding of that!).

One I listed earlier appealed within half an hour which shows how active they were and I don't see them as a valuable site and personally would not remove them. However I do think some of them might genuinely misunderstand? Given the fact that the bot will report if they start again I think a lighter touch might be ok with some? Thanks & regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:33, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

True, this is why I would love to have global messaging, we need to find a way to warn people about what they are doing. I have no problem if they are taken of the blacklist after a couple of hours. Yeah .. communication is the problem here .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:27, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed (though for some communication is not the problem). I think I'll list User:SpamReportBot/cw/solobale.com on that basis (why are there two reports?) Thanks again --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Two reports -> bot issue.

I guess I will poke Werdna, see if he can write 'global messaging'. Or maybe we should think about a global XLinkBot (but that would need a global bot account ..)? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Multi report spammer

"Mikhailov Kusserow" is on that one & User:SpamReportBot/cw/cournonjom.free.fr, User:SpamReportBot/cw/photodrama.info, User:SpamReportBot/cw/a2z.org, User:SpamReportBot/cw/biblestudents.org, User:SpamReportBot/cw/epifania.pl. Didn't know the best way to draw attention to it, cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

See User:SpamReportBot/cw/pastor-russell.com. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Err

Why is User:SpamReportBot/cw/msapubli.com appropriate? Redirects to home page - "freelance photography opportunities". --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Did you look at the website involed here? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I have reopened and linked to User:SpamReportBot/cw/claasfamily.org. I closed them because of the many users using the link, there are 5 editors and 2 bots involved. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Deo Volente

Hi Beetstra, I'm still don't understand. Did I make a mistake in wikipedia? Please explain in my user page in en.wiki. Mikhailov Kusserow 15:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[Photo-Drama of Creation]

I put that link to add in each wiki their External links. Just that all. Mikhailov Kusserow 10:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Mikhailov, yes, we know that, what we would like to know is something more about the sites linked to. What information do they give, etc. etc. As Herbythyme was pointing out, there is at least one which seems strange, and Herbythyme was worried about that. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Bits etc!

		The Anti-Spam Barnstar
		COI bot - The work you do in connection with this is significant across the whole project & should be appreciated - thanks --Herby talk thyme 11:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

While I'm here some intructions about how to deal with the bot requested ones would be good (editing etc). Equally can you change the code to give the brackets around the link report page for logging - it doesn't worry me but the easier it is the easier it will be to ensure we get it done correctly.

The bot reports as a whole are very useful - I have strayed into a number of other language wikis as a result of them in the past little while!

User:COIBot/LinkReports/comicsbulletin.com suggests something is going wrong however. In "linkwatcher records" it suggests en:Jimmyolsen added links yesterday but they have not edited since February? (looks like one for possibly listing too?)

I'm away for a few days from the middle of the week coming (heading to your general area of the UK!). Hope your break has been good. Many thanks & regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! You are all welcome!

I will work on the instructions, is practically the same as with the other bot reported ones, and with the normal talk page. I added brackets, or at least tried, waiting for a testcase

DARN! That is really wrong. Repaired from now, but well, the old records have a problem .. I will see if I can work on that later using an update query. It is probably better to use the time from the diffs anyway.

Have a nice break! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 20:20, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

COIBot now indeed puts in two brackets. I guess this works nicely.

One of the transferbots had a mistake, from now on the timestamp as the bot puts it in the new table is correct .. but .. there are 600.000 records with a wrong timestamp which need repairing .. difficult to find as well .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 20:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that - now another odd one! this site is blacklisted by the look of it (& I think with some rather strong views expressed). Apologies no time to look further for now. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

COIBot picks up things on the meta and some local blacklists, and then monitors further use. Sometimes some wikis whitelist the stuff, and then new reports are created by COIBot. This may be useful if some wiki whitelists, and then gets spammed for real. It is an old copy of the spam blacklist that I 'injected' into the monitorlist. But I am not sure this is what you mean. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Warning

Please stop fabricating stuff as you did on Talk:Spam blacklist‎#usbig.net. Instead, assume good faith and reply to the request. Guido den Broeder 12:20, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Spam blacklist

Stop ranting, please. --Lintgroand 16:11, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, no. You will have to discuss this at Talk:Spam blacklist. Please take your concerns there. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 16:14, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Apologies

Catching up still - I think this should go on en wp BL? Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Apologies, for what? Holidays are good, you need them!

I put it on XLinkBot now, with a warning that this, or whichever other domain they adds, will be blacklisted as soon as they add it again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I prefer to deal with my own loose ends not drop them on others :) Thanks - I've removed the links on that one before --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

curiouscountrycreations is more something I left behind, I blocked the user for a week once (note: I do not believe the IP that is used is volatile), and it looks like it has been silent for some time (I wish my transferbots were quicker, I need their data). Also, he has a handful of domains on that server, a number start with 'curious'. He has a warning, on next addition of a domain, blacklist it all. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

COIBot/XWiki

Could the stats please be in separate columns so you can actually sort them in a useful way?  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh, good plan, I will do that! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I see there is also something wrong with the time-detection, will work on that too. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:30, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Took care of your request, and of the time problem. Waiting for the next XWiki spammer to see if everything works, the Refreshing works properly. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

eh? -> User:COIBot/XWiki/cureconnections.com:  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:05, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

And is it possible to have it add something to the bottom of the page when re-opening a closed one? It is sometimes hard to tell without looking at the history if it is brought back quickly. Just at the very bottom of the page something like "Reopened this report at ~~~~~. ~~~" so it is clear in the discussion part what has happened.  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:40, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

No clue what happened with cureconnections.com, I think the editor somewhere made a typo in the url he added (the colon), I will have a look to see if I can filter that.

I will also try the second part, should be possible, I currently split the document in two (at the remark), regenerate the first half, and then add the second half again, I can detect if it is closed, and if I open, add a remark to the second half. Sounds like a plan. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:11, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

The reopening works. It adds a separator line (----), and 'Closed report, reopened', with signature. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Could the bot please use {{IPSummary}} instead of {{UserSummary}} when appropriate?  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:34, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look. Good point! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Should be working now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 16:03, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

User:COIBot/LinkReports/pornographicfireparrot.com has no records?!  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 22:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

ie somehow some records disappeared between the two edits?  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

:-) .. I should delete that report again. pornographicfireparrot.com is our 'test url', AFAIK it does not exist, but the bots react on it, per en:WP:BEANS I delete records for that from the database, etc.

The domain comes from an old spam case, I don't recall the details, someone complained about us investigating his domain or something. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Log

I'm sure it doesn't really matter but should the last two be under May not April? :) Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:22, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh .. I removed one under April, did not pay attention to which section I added it to. It does not make much difference (most important part is that it gets logged), but well. This is better. We have a bit of a backlog at the xwiki part .. care to help? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:27, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to take a break from Meta given that we do now have significant more spam orientated admins than at times in the past 12 months to focus on some Commons work. However if you look at some reversions on foreign language wikis you will see I am making some use of SUL :) I'm certainly not ignoring the issue but quite a bit of time today was taken up with the Celeb poker one --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I've closed quite some today, but the last couple of days not many people have been very active here. I'll poke some other ones, thanks anyway! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki/drupalmodules.com

Just saw the discussion here. While I don't disagree, I'd much prefer if this had been moved to Talk:Spam blacklist where all other removals are dealt with. When it is on a bot report page, it is very unlikely to be seen. For next time, please.  – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I could make a link to the discussion there, and close it immediately. But you are right. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot/links isse

If you look at this one and try out the links you'll find that they are not working correctly for non 'pedias maybe - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:23, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, another problem in that area. I also still have problems with the encoding of the names, which I can't get perl to save properly. I'll have a look at this (the diffs work, and I think that is the most important), I am currently working on the sorting of the records. Thanks for the note. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:30, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

No problem & I can always get around it. I know you do have enough to do & the work is appreciated - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

No probs, I like to do this, I feel sometimes guilty I don't get around to actually do something about the spamming .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

We are volunteers - we all do what we can when we can. This may be worth filing away for possible future interest/action. I'd come across it on en wp a time or two & out of curiosity decided to try luxo. I've cleared the links & they were not all the same either - may just be one of those things. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Four random links:

• [15:16:01] <Beetstra> coibot resolve discoverpeakdistrict.com
• [15:16:01] <COIBot> The URL discoverpeakdistrict.com resolves to 212.84.161.194 ( http://212.84.161.194 ). See also: [ http://www.ping.eu/ns_whois/?host=discoverpeakdistrict.com ].
• [15:16:18] <Beetstra> coibot resolve discovertenerife.net
• [15:16:18] <COIBot> The URL discovertenerife.net resolves to 212.84.161.34 ( http://212.84.161.34 ). See also: [ http://www.ping.eu/ns_whois/?host=discovertenerife.net ].
• [15:16:38] <Beetstra> coibot resolve discoverpaignton.com
• [15:16:38] <COIBot> The URL discoverpaignton.com resolves to 212.84.161.194 ( http://212.84.161.194 ). See also: [ http://www.ping.eu/ns_whois/?host=discoverpaignton.com ].
• [15:16:45] <Beetstra> coibot resolve brixham.com
• [15:16:46] <COIBot> The URL brixham.com resolves to 212.84.161.194 ( http://212.84.161.194 ). See also: [ http://www.ping.eu/ns_whois/?host=brixham.com ].

I see a pattern here!

---

212.84.161.194

(LinkSearch: meta | en | es | de | fr | ru | zh | simple | c | d | Wikipedias: top 25 · 50 · major wikis · sc · gs)(Search: Google | en (G) | fr (G) | de (G) | meta (G) | backlinks | → links ←)212.84.161.194

(Reports: Report ← track | XWiki | Local | en | find entry)(DomainTools: whois | AboutUs | Malware?)

---

For fun, try the COIBot link here .. (yes, you've got a premiere seat!)

Hmm .. too bad, seem to be sites hosted on a server somewhere in the UK with a lot of sites. That makes it difficult.

---

User:83.104.178.202(IP tools: Google | WHOIS | domaintools | RBL | tools)
(spamhaus | projecthoneypot | malwareurl)

(commons: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)

(enwiki: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)(Tools: GUC | gblock | log | → links ←User talk) | (Reports: COIBot)

---

---

User:88.105.190.63(IP tools: Google | WHOIS | domaintools | RBL | tools)
(spamhaus | projecthoneypot | malwareurl)

(commons: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)

(enwiki: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)(Tools: GUC | gblock | log | → links ←User talk) | (Reports: COIBot)

---

---

User:87.14.116.17(IP tools: Google | WHOIS | domaintools | RBL | tools)
(spamhaus | projecthoneypot | malwareurl)

(commons: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)

(enwiki: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)(Tools: GUC | gblock | log | → links ←User talk) | (Reports: COIBot)

---

---

User:86.130.11.251(IP tools: Google | WHOIS | domaintools | RBL | tools)
(spamhaus | projecthoneypot | malwareurl)

(commons: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)

(enwiki: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)(Tools: GUC | gblock | log | → links ←User talk) | (Reports: COIBot)

---

Hmm ..

---

User:88.105.210.215(IP tools: Google | WHOIS | domaintools | RBL | tools)
(spamhaus | projecthoneypot | malwareurl)

(commons: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)

(enwiki: talk (←links) || Edits: +/- || search)(Tools: GUC | gblock | log | → links ←User talk) | (Reports: COIBot)

---

That is more informative. Has indeed a preference to discover cities. And regular records until last month. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

How interesting & I keep learning. Certainly not a massive placer of spam maybe they've worked that out or something. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Added more IPs. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

And this is interesting...:) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

& this! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Plot thickens .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:37, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

If I have time I will do some work on the IP-of-link report, I can extract more info from that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:38, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I now have rather more foreign language edits than I did! I've cleared all I've found. I guess using a variety of IPs and placing fairly small numbers of links across quite a few wikis you might expect not to be noticed too much.... --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Regenerating 'IP of server of link' report. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:56, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I confess much of what you & the bot get up to lies close to the realms of "black magic" to me :) That said I've been finding my way around those reports. Quite a collection of disruptive IPs (& the odd user) in practice. May be worth alerting others? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I think that Hu12 has seen this as well .. en:User_talk:Sgts .. not sure if we know how big this is, this might be huge, because I am sure we don't have all yet. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Bot query

Hi - the last couple of days the bot's daily reports don't seem to be including details of link placements (here)?

Yes, I have trouble with the table, I needed another index, and while indexing the 7 million records (which takes an awful long time anyway) something went wrong on the box .. Hope things will be fine soon .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:12, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks - it provides some recreation at times :) I'm going to take a stab at collecting together the page Erwin has created, the one Mike pointed to & the "brain dump" stuff today. For now I think "External links" is straightforward/will not cause offence etc etc? I guess in an en wp sense a "project" page for us? May be worth trying to pull in Hu12's instructions from en wp into the general collection (I'd almost say it is worth a namespace at Meta level but that would take far too long!) Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think it should be clear that we oppose 'external link pushing', which includes 'spamming', and that there is where our concerns are when someone gets questioned. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Damn - just found that "External links" exists! I'll try and find some alternatives --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Some work is back, but all bots are now completely NOT using the linkwatcher databases until they are back online. No stats, no diffs .. but at least something. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 18:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

COIBot/Poke

Does COIBot remove ones that are done? If not, could it please?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:53, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

No, it does not. I will have a look at it at some time if I can create that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 17:49, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

BLWatcher_

Hi, BLWatcher_ reports multiple wiki's on #wikipedia-spam-t. Check User:Erwin/BLWatcher for its commands. It uses a similar syntax like other SWMT bots now. I'll keep running the old version as a backup for some time, because I'll be going on wikibreak soon. I've set the new version to not report Meta at the moment. Of course, that can be changed by privileged users, like you. --Erwin(85) 18:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Great! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:24, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

User:COIBot/LinkReports/derindusunce.org

This one is too big, but I think we need to have a look.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:43, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Dumped an XML dump (permanent link) on the site, not really easy to read, but it should give a feel (and you could load it into a viewer, and some browsers do show xml properly when it is the only data on a page). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:36, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

organization on xwiki reports

For lines like

2008-07-24 02:37:58 (UTC): User it:Gioto (talk - contribs; 120) to it:Veronica Barone (diff - undo) - Link: vizzinesi.org/resources/vizzini_people.html.

could the bot use consistent spacing to create something akin to a table (or an actual table)? Perhaps using a template with parameters would make this easier? When things are in consistent columns it is much easier to read and work with.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:22, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look at that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Erm, can you also have it not put anything when a domain resolves to IP == 0? Not sure what the error is there, perhaps it can be fixed. Until then/if not...  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:48, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki/wakeonlan.me

Hi, wakeonlan.me was reported to User:COIBot/XWiki/wakeonlan.me). I moved the page to User:COIBot/XWiki/wakeonlan.me to be able to use my tool. Just thought I'd let you know. Do I need to move the page back or can you fix the bug? --Erwin(85) 09:06, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, this is not strictly a bug. Every now and then someone comes to wikipedia and adds external links in an 'inappropriate' way (i.e., not according to proper formatting). Not sure if I should include ) as an endsymbol in the parsing, I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

No, I can't, it is a valid character in an url (see en:Water (molecule)). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Auto closing bot reports

Seems like a very good idea. I was wondering about doing the same as you the other day. Maybe close after 7 days with only 4/5 links? If they are still open it will mean that we are short of staff (as usual) and it is rather daunting to find 100+ open. Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I've got a bot that can do this. So let me know if you want me to run it on a regular basis or if you make your bots do it. --Erwin(85) 20:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it makes sense that COIBot does it .. close everything that has less than 5 links, stale for a week, and has no comments from anyone not being COIBot, COIBot is running constantly anyway .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:13, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

mnwiki

Hi, since you don't seem to be exactly a newbie... How comes you created your "user page" on mnwiki in article space? --Latebird 17:43, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Eh .. that is not in article space, I presume you are talking about:

this

and

this

Those are both appropriate, it is not this (which does not exist). Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh, now I see (it has been moved to appropriate place). That is strange, let me check on other thing. Hmm, that works as well (I used the links on my userpage here to open a handful of tabs, and then copy-paste everything into place. No clue why it ended up in mainspace, maybe I clicked something wrong somewhere. I hope all is resolved now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:34, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Yup, everything is fine now. (But you almost had me confused there as well for a moment, thinking I might have been barking up the wrong tree!) --Latebird 09:39, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It was the right tree alright. At least people now know I am there (and may do some edits ..). Not much spammed there yet, I hope my iw-list on my userpage does not help people to find it now. Hope to see you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

noindex

Could COIBot use {{NOINDEX}} instead of the magic word directly? This may be useful to track what is being excluded from indexing.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 16:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Yep, will do that soon. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 17:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Reports

Hi, it seems COIBot isn't reporting anything. I requested two reports (xwiki and xwiki-spam) on dtools.net, but they haven't been made yet. After checking the bot's contributions it seemed to me it doesn't report anything at the moment. --Erwin(85) 11:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm having a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Something funny happened with the usernames here: User:COIBot/XWiki/amphoreus.org.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:24, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Users should not have spaces in their username, it screws the bot (or I should just replace them with underscore, as that is needed anyway). Resolved soon, thanks for reporting this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:36, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I did change this earlier, should work fine now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 16:41, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Welcome to Meta!

أهلا Beetstra/Archive 01, ومرحبا بك في ويكيميديا ميتا ويكي! يعمل هذا الموقع على تنسيق ومناقشة كل مشاريع ويكيميديا. ربما سيكون مفيدا لك مطالعة صفحة السياسات هنا. إذا كنت مهتما بأمور الترجمة، راجع ميتا:بابلون. يمكنك أيضا ترك ملاحظة في ميتا:بابل (من فضلك راجع أولا التعليمات هناك قبل ترك الملاحظة). إذا أردت الاستفسار عن شئ ،لا تتردد في سؤالي في صفحة نقاشي. تمتع بالتحرير هنا!

Hello Beetstra/Archive 01, and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). If you would like, feel free to ask me questions on my talk page. Happy editing!

Hallo, Beetstra/Archive 01, und Willkommen bei Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! Diese Website ist zur Koordination und Diskussion aller Wikimedia-Projekte gedacht. Vielleicht findest du es nützlich, unsere Regelseite zu lesen. Wenn du daran interessiert bist, etwas zu übersetzen, besuche Meta:Babylon. Du kannst auch eine Notiz auf Meta:Babel hinterlassen (bitte lies dihe Anleitung am Anfang der Seite, bevor du etwas schreibst). Wenn du möchtest, kannst du mir auf meiner Diskussionseite Fragen stellen. Fröhliches Bearbeiten.

Hei Beetstra/Archive 01, ja tervetuloa Wikimedian Meta-Wikiin! Tämä nettisivusto on kaikkien Wikimedia-säätiön projektien koordinointia ja keskustelua varten. Saattaa olla hyödyllistä lukea käytäntömme. Jos olet kiinnostunut käännöksistä, käy Meta:Babylon-sivulla. Voit myöskin jättää huomautuksen Meta:Babel-sivulle (ole hyvä ja lue ohjeet sivun yläosassa ennenkuin kirjoitat sinne). Jos haluat, saat vapaasti kysyä minulta kysymyksiä keskustelusivullani. Iloisia muokkaushetkiä!

Bonjour Beetstra/Archive 01, et bienvenue sur le Meta-Wiki de Wikimédia ! Ce site a pour but de coordonner et discuter de l’ensemble des projets Wikimédia. Il vous sera utile de consulter notre page sur les règles de Wikimédia. Si vous êtes intéressé par des projets de traduction, visitez Meta:Babylon. Vous pouvez aussi laisser un message sur Meta:Babel (mais veuillez d’abord lire les instructions en haut de cette page avant d’y poster votre message). Si vous le voulez, vous pouvez me poser vos questions sur ma page de discussion. À bientôt !

Hallo Beetstra/Archive 01, en welkom op de Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! Deze website is voor het coördineren en bespreken van alle Wikimedia-projecten. Waarschijnlijk vind je het handig om onze beleidpagina te lezen. Als je geïnteresseerd bent in het vertalen van teksten, ga da naar Meta:Babylon. Je kunt ook een bericht achterlaten op Meta:Babel (lees wel de instructies aan het begin van de pagina voordat je een bericht achterlaat). Als je nog vragen hebt stel ze me dan op mijn overlegpagina. Veel plezier met bewerken!

Olá Beetstra/Archive 01! Seja bem-vindo ao Meta! Este site/sítio é dedicado à discussão e à coordenação de todos os demais projetos da Fundação Wikimedia. Talvez lhe seja útil ler a página contendo a nossa política (em inglês) antes de começar a editar. Se tiver dúvidas, sinta-se à vontade para me fazer perguntas em minha página de discussão, ou deixe uma mensagem para toda a comunidade na Babel, a versão do Meta da Esplanada. Boa sorte!

Hola Beetstra/Archive 01! Bienvenido a la Meta-Wiki de la Fundación Wikimedia! Este sitio es para coordinar y discutir todos los proyectos de la Fundación Wikimedia. Tal vez le sea útil leer nuestra página de políticas (en inglés). Si le interesan las traducciones, visite Meta:Babylon. También puede dejar un mensaje en Meta:Babel (pero antes de hacerlo, por favor lea las instrucciones situadas en lo alto de la página). No dude en preguntar si tiene cualquiera duda, o pregunte en mi página de discusión. Buena suerte!

Ciao Beetstra/Archive 01! Benvenuto sulla Meta-Wiki della Wikimedia Foundation! Questo sito serve a coordinare e discutere di tutti i progetti della Wikimedia Foundation. Potrebbe esserti utile leggere le nostre policy (in inglese). Se sei interessato a fare traduzioni, visita Meta:Babylon. Puoi anche lasciare un messaggio su Meta:Babel (ma per favore, leggi le istruzioni che si trovano all'inizio della pagina prima di scrivere). Se vuoi, puoi lasciarmi un messagio nella mia pagina di discussione. Buona fortuna!

Ciao Beetstra/Archive 01, şi bine aţi venit la Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! Acest website este pentru coordonarea şi discuţiile tuturor proiectelor Wikimedia. Este folositor să citiţi pagina despre politica noastră.. Dacă sunteţi interesaţi de traducere, vizita-ţi Meta:Babylon. De asemenea puteţi lasa o notă pe Meta:Babel (vă rugăm citiţi instrucţiunile de la începutul paginii înainte de a posta acolo). Dacă ai întrebări, nu ezita să mă întrebi pe pagina mea de discuţii talk page. Editare cu succes!

Hej Beetstra/Archive 01, och välkommen till Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! Den här sidan är till för att diskutera och samordna alla Wikimedias projekt. Vill du veta mer om sidan, kan vår policy-sida komma väl till pass. Är du intresserad av att hjälpa till med översättningar, besök Meta:Babylon. Du kan också lämna ett meddelande på Meta:Babel (vänligen läs instruktionerna överst på sidan innan du skriver något där). Om du vill, är du välkommen att ställa frågor på min diskussionssida. Lycka till med redigerandet!

Helló Beetstra/Archive 01, és üdv a Wikimedia Meta-Wikijén! Ez a weboldal az összes Wikimedia projektet érintő ügyek megtárgyalására és koordinálására szolgál. Hasznosnak találhatod elolvasni az irányelveinket (angolul). Ha szeretnél fordításokat végezni, látogasd meg a Meta:Babylon-t, vagy a Meta:Babel oldalon hagyhatsz üzenetet (mielőtt ide írsz kérlek olvasd el a lap tetején található utasításokat). Ha szeretnél, nyugodtan kérdezz tőlem a vitalapomon. Jó szerkesztést és tartalmas szórakozást! Jó szerkesztést és tartalmas szórakozást!

Здравствуйте, Beetstra/Archive 01, и добро пожаловать на Meta-Wiki Фонда Викимедиа! Этот сайт предназначен для координации и обсуждения вопросов, связанных со всеми проектами фонда. Для начала Вы можете ознакомиться с нашими правилами. Если Вы заинтересованы в работе над переводами, посетите Meta:Babylon. Вы также можете обсудить различные вопросы на странице Meta:Babel (пожалуйста, ознакомьтесь с инструкцией сверху, прежде чем писать). Если возникнут вопросы, не бойтесь задавать их мне на моей странице обсуждения. Удачи!

Hola Beetstra/Archive 01! Benvingut a la Meta-Wiki de la Fundació Wikimedia! Aquest lloc està fet per a coordinar i discutir tots els projectes de la Fundació Wikimedia. Potser us serà útil llegir la nostra pàgina de polítiques (en anglès). Si us interessen les traduccions, visiteu Meta:Babylon. També podeu deixar un missatge a Meta:Babel (però abans de fer-ho, llegiu les instruccions situades al principi de la pàgina). No dubteu en preguntar si teniu qualsevol dubte. Si cal ho podeu fer en la meva pàgina de discussió. Bona sort!

Здраво Beetstra/Archive 01, и добро дошли на Викимедијин мета-вики! Овај сајт служи за координацију и дискусију око Викимедијиних пројеката. Вероватно ће Вам бити корисно да прочитате наше странице везане за политику рада. Ако сте заинтересовани за превођење, посетите Meta:Babylon. Можете такође и оставити поруку на страници Meta:Babel (молимо погледајте упутства на врху те странице пре него што пошаљете свој коментар тамо). Ако имате неко питање, можете да ми поставите на мојој страници за разговор. Срећно уређивање!

Beetstra/Archive 01, 你好！歡迎光臨維基媒體元維基！這個網站是為協調和討論所有維基媒體項目而設。我們的政策頁可能對您有用。如果您有興趣協助翻譯工作, 請參觀Meta:Babylon。你可在 Meta:Babel 留下口訊 (張貼之前請先讀該頁上指示)。若有問題, 請在我的討論頁問我 。祝
編安!

வணக்கம் Beetstra/Archive 01, விக்கிமீடியா மேல்விக்கி! இற்கு நல்வரவு. இவ்விணையத்தளமானது கூட்டாகச் சேர்ந்து விடயங்களை விவாதிப்பதற்கென உருவாக்கப் பட்டது. விக்கித்திட்டங்கள். நீங்கள் எங்களின் பாலிசிகளையும் பாலிசி பக்கம் படித்தறியலாம். நீங்கள் மொழிபெயர்பில் ஆர்வமுடையவராகின், Meta:Babylon ஐப் பார்வையிடவும். நீங்கள் Meta:Babel இல் குறிப்பொன்றையும் விட்டுச் செல்லலாம். (பக்கத்தின் மேலேயிருக்கும் அறிவுறுத்தல்களை வாசித்தபின்னரே அங்கே செய்திகளை இடவும்). நீங்கள் விரும்பினால் எனது பக்கத்தில் செய்தியொன்றை விடவும் talk page. உங்கள் ஆக்கங்களை வரவேற்கின்றோம்!

ވިކިމީޑިޔާގެ މީޓާ-ވިކީ އަށް މަރުހަބާ! މިވެބްސައިޓަކީ ވިކިމީޑިޔާގެ ހުރިހާ މަޝްރޫޢުތަކާއި ބެހޭގޮތުން ވާހަކަތައް ދެކެވި އެ މަޝްރޫޢެއް ހިންގައި ހަދާ ވެބް ސައިޓެވެ. އަޅުގަނޑުމެންގެ ޤަވާއިދުތައް ފުރަތަމަ ވިދާޅުވުމަކީ މުހިންމު ކަމެއް ކަމުގައި ދެކެމެވެ. ތަރުޖަމާކުރާ ހިތްޕުޅުވެވަޑައިގަންނަވާ ނަމަ މީޓާ:ބެބިލޯން އަށް ވަޑައިގަންނަވާށެވެ. އަދި ހަމަ އެހެންމެ މިކަމާއި ބެހޭ ލިޔުމެއް މީޓާ:ބޭބެލް ގައި ލިޔުއްވަވާށެވެ. (އެހެންނަމަވެސް އެޞަފްޙާގައި އެއްވެސް އެއްޗެއް އިތުރު ކުރެއްވުމުގެ ކުރިން އެ ޞަފްހާގެ މަތީގައިވާ ޢިބާރާތް ވިދާޅުވެލައްވާށެވެ.) މިއާއި މުދު ހިތްހަމަޖެހިވަޑައިގަންނަވާ ނަމަ އިތުރު އެހީ އަށް އެދުމަށް މި ޞަފްހާ ގައި އެދުމަށް ފަސްޖެހި ވަޑައި ނުގަންނަވާށެވެ. އުނިއިތުރު ގެނައުމުގައި އުފާވެރި ވަގުތުކޮޅެއް ހޭދަ ކޮށްލައްވާށެވެ!!

Beetstra/Archive 01さん、ウィキメディア メタ・ウィキへようこそ！このサイトは、ウィキメディアのプロジェクト間の調整や話し合いを目的としています。もしよろしければ、ポリシーページを是非ご一読下さい。もし翻訳に興味をお持ちなら、Meta:Babylonをご覧下さい。Meta:Babelにメッセージを投稿していただくことも可能です（投稿前にページ上部の説明をお読み下さい）。もしよろしければ私のノートページに質問をお寄せ下さい。

interwiki links in bot reports

Here there seems to be an error with the interwiki links for meta (ie shouldn't be an interwiki link) and for beta wikiversity (is missing the y on wikiversity).  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:51, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I imagine this is a simple setting to change.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:29, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Oi, forgot about this. The wikiversity one is a bit awkward, as I need to do something on the db for it (I thought 10 characters would be enough .. clearly, it is not). Updating the db is going to take it down for a couple of days (probably ..). The other one is indeed easy to fix, I'll have a god at that later. I'll hack Wikiversity as well. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

• That is one. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:45, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
• And that is two. This one gave a funny side effect, if the IP of the server is unstable, COIBot automatically picks up the IP rule .. not sure if I should do something about that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:56, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

v is an acceptable interwiki prefix for wikiversity if the whole thing doesn't fit.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 11:16, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It fits, but it does not seem to work in either way .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Stats in User:COIBot/XWiki

Hi, some of the reports in User:COIBot/XWiki don't show the number of wikis and/or other statistics. --Erwin(85) 08:15, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, change of code, solved a part, needs a bit more for old reports I saw. Will come to that next week. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

sbl: non-capturing patterns

hi!
because of [1]: i suggest that COIBot should not have problems with any regexps, which are allowed by the spamblock-extension (i.e. almost all PCRE-regexps). in my log-reading-tool [2] written in perl there's a part, which simulates the main part of the spamblock-extension, and so should not have problems in parsing the sbl. perhaps we could exchange a bit so that you can repair COIBot? -- seth 01:51, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I think that I now know what the problem was, the problem was not the ?: (looked already strange that that was the problem) .. but the length of the regex. The 'monitorlist' of COIBot takes a rule of 255 characters, but some of the new rules were way longer than that now (resulting in the closing ')' to be chopped off, and hence '(?' does not make sense for the bot). I have increased the fieldlength in the db to 1000 characters. That should solve most .. I will build in a test to check for longer regexes, and make the bot ignore those. COIBot does check before storing, by the way (but I did not expect the length exceeding), and it then even warns on-IRC that somewhere a wrong regex was inserted):

if (length($url) > 4) {
    my $testregex = "http://www.pornographicfireparrot.com";
    eval {
        $testregex =~ m/$url/; 
    };
    if ($@) {
        print( "Someone tried to insert a bad regex! see $diff.\n");
        $kernel->post( $settings{'freenodeserver'} => privmsg => $settings{ReportChannel2} => "\x034ALERT: [[:$lang:$page]] edited.  Faulty regex ($url) inserted!!\x03" );
        $kernel->post( $settings{'freenodeserver'} => privmsg => $settings{ReportChannel1} => "\x034ALERT: [[:$lang:$page]] edited.  Faulty regex ($url) inserted!!\x03" );
        $kernel->post( $settings{'freenodeserver'} => privmsg => $settings{ReportChannel4} => "\x034ALERT: [[:$lang:$page]] edited.  Faulty regex ($url) inserted!!\x03" );
    } else {
        if ($testregex =~ m/$url/) {
            print( "Someone tried to insert a bad regex! see $diff.\n");
            $kernel->post( $settings{'freenodeserver'} => privmsg => $settings{ReportChannel2} => "\x034ALERT: [[:$lang:$page]] edited.  Regex ($url) matches pornographicfireparrot.com - rule to broad?!!\x03" );
            $kernel->post( $settings{'freenodeserver'} => privmsg => $settings{ReportChannel1} => "\x034ALERT: [[:$lang:$page]] edited.  Regex ($url) matches pornographicfireparrot.com - rule to broad?!!\x03" );
            $kernel->post( $settings{'freenodeserver'} => privmsg => $settings{ReportChannel4} => "\x034ALERT: [[:$lang:$page]] edited.  Regex ($url) matches pornographicfireparrot.com - rule to broad?!!\x03" );
        } else {
            $result = add_mysql("monitor",lc($url),"[[:en:User:COIBot#Monitor list|Automonitor]]: reported to [$diff page] because of cross wiki additions.");
            if ($result == -1) {
                print( "MySQL error while adding item.");
            } else {
                print( "OK! The text $url is added to the list of text to monitor (Automonitor after report to [$diff page]).");
                push(@urls1,$url);
                push(@{$settings{fullmonitorlist}},{1=>lc($url),2=>"[[:en:User:COIBot#Monitor list|Automonitor]]: reported to [$diff page] because of cross wiki additions."});
            }
        }
    }
}

(the reportchannel primary being #wikipedia-spam-t) Maybe the removal by Mike can be undone, if the rules are not longer than 1000 characters, that is (otherwise please either split them, or wait until I have time to resolve that issue as well).

However, I am not happy with having all blogspots in one rule, they were added for different reasons, and I don't believe they should be in one line (more difficult to log).

I am still on holiday, will do more on the bot when I return somewhere next week. Thanks for the offer to help, there may be things which would be nice to have as well. Regards, --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Another thing, should we use ( and ) (in stead of [ and ] or { and }, i believe it has the same function. The ( and ) put the part between in vars, which although for the sbl does not make a difference, it may make a difference for other software which is dependent on the sbl (e.g. XLinkBot uses the regex to find the 'offending' url in the diff, trying to tell the 'offender' which url it is). Someone might want to use the same thing in a tool as well. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:03, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

"all blogspots in one rule:" why would that be a problem? ok, the line length should not be very large (the extension builds regexps in ~4k-blocks), but apart from that, afaics the SBL entries may look arbitrary horrible, because of what i said there.

"check before storing": perl and php don't have many differences in regexp-handling. but there is at least one difference, which is interesting for our SBL. the code

eval{
  $testregex =~ m/$url/; 
};

will fail on /(?<=\.|:\/\/)example.org/, because php allows alternatives of different (not-variable) lengths when using zero-width positive look-behind assertions, and perl does not. (as of perl 5.10 one may use "\K" for that problem, which is allowed in php, too.)

to cope with that problem one could manifold the regexp and delete the different alternatives. well, its easier to explain that giving an example:

SBL entry: (?<=\.|:\/\/)example.org
your script reads that entry e.g. in $entry. then it
 dublicates $entry and deletes the different alternatives, e.g.
 (?<=\.)example.org
 (?<=:\/\/)example.org

these two regexps won't be a problem for perl.

i must admit, that this is not very nice, but as far as it is the only relevant difference in regexp-handling of php and perl, one can accept that, i suppose.

brackets/braces/parentheses: code like /[abc]/ ist much more efficient that /(a|b|c)/. one reason for that is the capturing (in $1, $2, ...). imho it's not a good idea, to chose the rather slower syntax. apart from that, braces {} have nothing to do with grouping or capturing, they are just for quantifying, so i don't know what you mean. and i did not understand, what the problem with XLinkBot is. -- seth 15:17, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, the choice of having all blogspots in one/a few is not a big problem, it can still be logged similarly etc. COIBot now accepts them up to 1000 characters, and I will write a check that the rules don't get too long.

The brackets:

@addedlinks=$addedTotal=~m{(http://[^\s\]\[\{\}\\\|^~`<>]*?$rule[^\s\]\[\{\}\\\|^~`<>]+)}sgi;

would catch a full link which is on a 'watchlist'/'blacklist'. In this case $1 is the whole link. If someone would like to split the whole for some reason or the other, it could be

@addedlinks=$addedTotal=~m{(http://[^\s\]\[\{\}\\\|^~`<>]*?)($rule)([^\s\]\[\{\}\\\|^~`<>]+)}sgi; 

which would put the beginning of the link in $1, the part covered by the rule in $2 and the remainder in $3 .. except if $rule would contain bracketed parts itself (in '(' and ')'), in which case the system becomes erratic and unpredictable. I don't know why we would do this or would want to do this, though a linksearch tool which would show in which way a blacklisted (or to-be-blacklisted) site is used might use the latter format for some strange reason. We might want to think about that (though, it is the programmer's problem when it would make things too difficult here). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 20:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Expand, XLinkBot reports things like this on IRC:

<XLinkBot> ERROR: en:user:41.196.216.200 added rule: '\bblogspot\.com' (link(s): http://washingtonnewsforum.blogspot.com/2004_12_04_archive.html) inside of a reference, please manually check http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jonathan_Schanzer&diff=235060068&oldid=231861353.

and also tries to catch links to present them in the warnings on the talkpages (see en:Special:Contributions/XLinkBot, and see what it leaves on talkpages of 'spammers'. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 20:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

as of perl 5.10 there exist named buffers: search perldoc perlre for "\k<". this would solve the $1-$2-$3-problem. -- seth 12:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I thought later, there are also other programmatic ways to get around it (a 'split(/$rule/,$link,2)' would do it nicely. I'm fine with it. :-) --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Reopened reports

When COIBot reopens reports, can it place a marker in the table? Perhaps adding (R) in the "by" column when re-opening would work.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Sounds really useful. I'll have a look if I can do that. Should be easy, just make it add a tag that it can recognise (or toss it into a category of 'reopened XWiki reports'). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

COIBot parsing error?

<COIBot> Stalked page [[]] edited by en:User:Mike.lifeguard ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:COIBot/XWiki/exhauss-ibnkhaldoun.com.tn&diff=1173889&oldid=1170685&rcid=1218680 ), checking for added LinkSummary templates.
<COIBot> [[meta:]] edited, no LinkSummary templates added.

Not sure if it parsed the page properly or not (although I didn't add a template), but it seems to be either parsing RC wrong, or giving wrong output to cvn-sw.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 00:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

<COIBot> Stalked page [[]] edited by en:User:Mike.lifeguard ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:COIBot/XWiki/casesdecastalla.com&diff=1173928&oldid=1169068&rcid=1218719 ), checking for added LinkSummary templates.
<COIBot> [[meta:]] edited, COIBot automonitored urls: \bcasesdecastalla\.blogspot\.com (auto: 0 - 0/1000)

Seems to be parsing it correctly, I guess.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 00:58, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, for COIBot $page gets reset if it is not in mainspace .. but I should have done that later. I'll change it! Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

At least it does pick up edits to these pages now. Pff, that was a long time that that did not work properly ;-). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

wikisv.free.fr

Hi Beetstra. I've just add a new discussion here. Thx. --DaiFh ^talk 17:08, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Thx for copying it on the right place. --DaiFh ^talk 17:19, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I have copied the discussion to the report, and have answered. I think local discussions are the way forward. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 17:19, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

P.S. You can answer in the report (at the bottom; technically, behind the tag that says so), the bot will only regenerate the top of it if necessery). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 17:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Thank you Dirk Beetstra. --DaiFh ^talk 17:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

IntLinkWatcher2 on IRC

Hi Beetstra, your bot IntLinkWatcher2 is getting annoying on IRC - small sample from today:

18-09-2008 12:41:32 -!- IntLinkWatcher2!~beetstra@anonymous.user has joined #kl.wikipedia
18-09-2008 13:04:33 -!- IntLinkWatcher2!~beetstra@anonymous.user has quit [Remote host closed the connection]
18-09-2008 13:32:08 -!- IntLinkWatcher2!~beetstra@anonymous.user has joined #kl.wikipedia
18-09-2008 13:33:51 -!- IntLinkWatcher2!~beetstra@anonymous.user has quit [Remote host closed the connection]
18-09-2008 14:10:41 -!- IntLinkWatcher2!~beetstra@anonymous.user has joined #kl.wikipedia
18-09-2008 14:31:55 -!- IntLinkWatcher2!~beetstra@anonymous.user has quit [Remote host closed the connection]

A low traffic RC channel like #kl.wikipedia becomes unusable to human eyes due to your bot joining and quitting every 20-30 minutes. Please do something about it, and the sooner the better. - Kaare 13:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I know the problem, and as soon as I know what the problem is .. I do something about it. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 16:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll monitor for some time, maybe it tells me something I did not know yet. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 17:59, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

It gets stranger, there are channels where it does this, and others where it doesn't .. any ideas are welcome .. what causes this .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

This is becoming annoying .. why does it do this .. It is almost worth removing the small wikis from the list of channels, and do these in separate runs, but it thwarts our cross-wiki spam efforts (but disconnecting does that as well). I am going to try some things these days. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:44, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I may have solved it .. the bots seem more stable at the moment (since the last restart IntLinkWatcher2 is there for over an hour without disconnecting. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:04, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Still seems rather random. By the way, sometimes the quit message is:

IntLinkWatcher2 has quit (Ping timeout: 198 seconds)

- Kaare 16:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I see that now. I'm not sure where the errors come from, though it seems the ping timeout is the only one now. That one is on all channels it is on, and it then takes a long time to reconnect again. More work to be done on it, I am afraid. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 06:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

COIBot encoding

COIBot made encoding errors when output non-Latin characters. Like this.(link removed)

2008-06-18 09:51:11 (UTC): User ko:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to ko:실비오 ë² ë¥¼ë£¨ìŠ¤ì½”ë‹ˆ (diff - undo)
2008-06-18 09:51:11 (UTC): User ko:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to ko:실비오 ë² ë¥¼ë£¨ìŠ¤ì½”ë‹ˆ (diff - undo)
2008-06-18 09:51:11 (UTC): User ko:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to ko:실비오 ë² ë¥¼ë£¨ìŠ¤ì½”ë‹ˆ (diff - undo)
2008-06-21 00:01:22 (UTC): User ja:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to ja:シルヴィオ・ベルルスコーニ (diff - undo)
2008-06-21 00:01:22 (UTC): User ja:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to ja:シルヴィオ・ベルルスコーニ (diff - undo)
2008-06-21 00:01:22 (UTC): User ja:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to ja:シルヴィオ・ベルルスコーニ (diff - undo)
2008-06-21 21:04:01 (UTC): User zh:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to zh:西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼 (diff - undo)
2008-06-21 21:04:01 (UTC): User zh:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to zh:西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼 (diff - undo)
2008-06-21 21:04:01 (UTC): User zh:Matucana (talk - contribs; 68) to zh:西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼 (diff - undo)

Could you fix it?--Kwj2772 08:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I've been trying, but Perl seems to keep on screwing it up. I'll give it another try. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Could COIBot use an indented bullet and put the <s> on the same line as the data for stuff like the first addition at User:COIBot/XWiki/maraconservancy.com?

Instead of

Additions in database of this link<s>
* 2008-07-07 00:59:54 (UTC): User [[:en:User:Discospinster|en:Discospinster]] ([[:en:User talk:Discospinster|talk]] - [[:en:Special:Contributions/Discospinster|contribs]]; 14853) to [[:en:Masai%20Mara]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Masai_Mara&diff=224035988&oldid=224035982 diff] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Masai_Mara&action=edit&undoafter=224035982&undo=224035988 undo]) - Link: www.maraconservancy.com/.<!--ID 8450517--></s><br/>* User is on global [[:en:User:COIBot#Whitelist|Whitelist]]: Discospinster <-> * (Over 5000 edits on en wikipedia) 

it should be

Additions in database of this link
* <s>2008-07-07 00:59:54 (UTC): User [[:en:User:Discospinster|en:Discospinster]] ([[:en:User talk:Discospinster|talk]] - [[:en:Special:Contributions/Discospinster|contribs]]; 14853) to [[:en:Masai%20Mara]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Masai_Mara&diff=224035988&oldid=224035982 diff] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Masai_Mara&action=edit&undoafter=224035982&undo=224035988 undo]) - Link: www.maraconservancy.com/.<!--ID 8450517--></s>
** User is on global [[:en:User:COIBot#Whitelist|Whitelist]]: Discospinster <-> * (Over 5000 edits on en wikipedia) 

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 02:40, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This should not be too difficult, will make it so one of these days. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Done this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:49, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, User:COIBot/XWiki/miasto.zgierz.pl is currently listed as (SR) -- while is was at one point closed as stale, that wasn't the most recent close. Is it possible to have it listed by the most recent close?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 02:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm .. That I don't know .. then I would need to parse individual closing diffs. To me it would not really matter, if COIBot keeps reopening, it either needs to be marked as 'ignored' or added to the blacklist in one way or another. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks for being so helpful with upkeep with the bots always. You deserve some baked goods :)  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 11:59, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki/lepabrena.biz is currently listed as affecting 0 wikis. The other stats look questionable as well.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 16:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see. That has to do with the 'last user' .. it now picks up links which are added by only IPs .. and the last IP maybe only added it to one wiki. I should make that a bit clearer, and to calculate things differently (lepabrena.biz was added by two accounts, and I think there is where the count breaks, resulting in 0). I'll work on that some time. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

(I know ;-) ) --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

User listing in COIBot reports

When there's only one user, can we skip the "last added by"? It simply repeats the same info, bloating the size of the report.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 22:52, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense. I'll have a look, I am counting users now anyway. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:42, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Your userpage...

Just wanted to point out that your userpage says you are Beetstra on all MediaWiki wikis. Maybe you mean Wikimedia? :-) Thunderhead 20:57, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki/france-voyage.com

Can you figure out what, if anything, to do about this one? Seems you know what's going on.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 22:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

All clear?

Hi, do you know why COIBot cleared User:COIBot/XWiki (diff)? Does it use new criteria? A report like karlshuker.com 2008-10-25 00:27:02 COIBot 0 83.240.11.32 2008-10-25 04:26:01 84 14 13 13 14 should still show up though. So I'm guessing that's not it. --Erwin(85) 08:21, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Again here.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

No clue, it may be a problem with the wiki-server, COIBot reads the category with the open reports, sometimes the server does not return data if the server is flaky or down. I see also XLinkBot on en.wikipedia sometimes make strange error messages if it can't retrieve proper data (it then simply does not revert). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:52, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

vallenajerilla.com

Why you block vallenajerilla.com? Is a good web of La Rioja history. Can you unblock, please. I need reference to this in es:Pauleja. Thank's. ---=BigSus=- 13:32, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm .. user:COIBot/XWiki/vallenajerilla.com, excessive linking by an IP, in a way which was not constructive (linkfarming, etc.), and which was undone over and over and over (it may be of interest on Spanish wikis, but not on any of the others. And I see that there has been discussion with Spanish speaking people, who apparently also thought is was even there quite useless. I think that local whitelisting of specific documents can be a solution if certain documents do pass use. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Done, Whitelisted locally. Dferg (T-ES) 19:05, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Pier Gerlofs Donia

well hello there mister dirk beetsra

i have copied an article about Pier Gerlofs Donia out there on the ps:wiki for someone to translate into Parsi you said it should be removed: it has not for so far, now I ask you, do you known any user on that website who can write the language better then I do who could translate it onto there? it does not have to be much, just a few sentences over there on parsiwiki, just a couple of lines on the great Pier Gerlofs Donia, maybe an image from en:wiki, that is all I am asking for thanks in advance,

i am not just some vandal you see, i am seriously trying to do something good here, and for that to succeed I really good do with some cooperation, okay?, well,

good luck and take care,

86.89.146.118 08:31, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I noticed the copies, and that they were in a language which was not the language of that wiki, I guess it would be good to do such things in the future by copying them into your userspace (create your account there, and then e.g. make user:username/Pier Gerlofs Donia, do the translation there, and then when the translation is ready, copy them into mainspace. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:22, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I would love to, but you see, I cannot do any translation in Parsi. Do you perhaps know a user on the ps:wiki who can make such a translation, and if you do, will you ask that particular user to write just a few lines in that language on their wiki? That is all I am asking for, you see. Will you help me get this done, it is not much I am asking. Thanks in advance, 86.89.146.118 15:39, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

In that case, why copy the page from another language there? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:58, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Ignoring users

Can we have certain users totally ignored? WikimediaNotifier will be adding links on many (every?) wiki, which will be a pain. The bot is whitelisted, but is there anything more we can do to keep those link additions from "polluting" otherwise good results?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:24, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Meh, and here we have a link to commons:commons:User:Something, which is wrong. You might also check the links for meta.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Whitelisted users should not trigger the cross-wiki thresholds, so that should not result in reports. If the link is spammed, and also added by this bot, then these additions will be visible.

Those interwikis to the 'strange' wikis still haunt me. I'll have a look at that, as well as another attempt to repair the encoding. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:30, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

parkguell.net84.net, spam Yes I did, but not a bad website

parkguell.net84.net, Is a good web of Park Güell. I can understand to don’t put this web in all the wikis that I’ve put. I don’t think that are not useful, but I can understand that if it’s not the language, ok. But in the English Wikipedia, and in the Spanish wiki, they are useful. So I if you put the link (or don’t block me to do) in this two Wikipedia’s, I, as Malet user, won’t make spam again. If you to know if you can trust me, see my user page in Catalan wiki (user malet).

I guess you are talking about User:COIBot/XWiki/parkguell.net84.net? That link was handled by Mike.Lifeguard. I think you should make your case there why the link should be on those two wikis, etc. As I now see it, it was linked excessively, and therefore blacklisted here. My suggestion would be to poke the local wikis and see if they will whitelist it locally. Cheers. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Bots

Hi! I've created a maintenance-only channel for es-wiki. I pretend to use this channel as our countervandalism central unit on es-wiki and I wonder if You can put COIBot there to report COI's on es-wiki and help us fighting against spam. The channel is currently in "test mode", I have only one bot there wich give us user's information and other related staff. Can You help me?, Thank you. Dferg (T-ES) 16:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

P.D.: I remember we had in #wikipedia-spam-t a bot wich alerted us when a page was changed (like StewardBot), I'm interested on having a spanish version of this bot to alert admins when some pages where changed. Sorry for the inconvenients. Ah! my channel is #wp-es-mant on freenode. Best regards. Dferg (T-ES) 16:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look. Getting COIBot there is not a problem, BLWatcher is Mike's bot, you'll have to ask him or Erwin for that one. I am at the moment not sure if I can make the linkwatchers report there, but that may be possible in time. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:44, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm waiting on getting an SVN repo on the toolserver. Once that's done, I'll probably be able to take requests for clones of BLWatcher. Remind me again in a few weeks if I forget.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 17:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Duplicated records?

Here, I see lots of additions of the same link to the same place at the same time - might the database have duplicated records? I added some domains after seeing that, but if there's an error, that should perhaps be undone.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Ohoh .. that should not happen .. I was running an updater (killed now), but that one does not duplicate. Do you have any examples? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh wait, if you see the diff, the link got added in that diff a high number of times, and every time it is added it gets recorded as a single record (so if you add free6.com 6 times in one edit, it records all six of them). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Same kind of thing here? I see only one link being added in the diffs, but recorded several times. Incidentally, since you're now listing all links added in the reported diff, it probably makes less sense to have it recorded several times for the same link, as you'll see that anyways.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 16:53, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Now this is interesting, I don't know where this error is coming from. I have in the db indeed 8 identical records (except for the id, which are sequential). The edit_id suggests that it is coming from the linkwatchers. But why this one .. and not one of the many others (I do see quite some cases coming by in the linkwatcher channel where the records say (1, 1, 1, 1) (first link addition of this link by this user in the whole db), and if I then check that record some time later, there is indeed only one in the db (I have only 1 record for adding schs.stvrain.k12.co.us in the db, and one link addition for user Longbo007, exactly as I saw it a couple of minutes ago being reported by the linkwatcher). This is an old record, maybe something wrong in an earlier version (July 2008). This is a difficult one, and I hope an exception. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:49, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

here too :(  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Nope, diffs, revids, times and for some even the users are different. 'They all look the same' .. ?? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

EEEK *applies ice water to face*  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 15:53, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

.. Drink more coffee, Mike, who needs sleep when everyone is spamming wikipedia .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 16:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Diff links in XWiki reports

Hi, could you re-add the title parameter in the diff links? tools:~erwin85/xwiki.php depends on it at the moment. If not, I could make it work using oldids only. In any case, please let me know whether or not you want to include the titles. Thanks. --Erwin(85) 21:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It now uses the diff parameter instead of the title. --Erwin(85) 10:38, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Without the title parameter, it seems undo links fail (point to Main Page). Unless there's a workaround, I guess you'll have to add the title parameter back in?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

They work in the reports I checked. Could you point me to one that doesn't? The title is included in those links. I'm simply getting it from the diff now with a query. --Erwin(85) 09:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

On User:COIBot/XWiki/francescogeminiani.com - take the last undo link, for example. Adding the title parameter fixes the link.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

This is really curious. Why does it sometimes not have a title= part in the url...

OK, heh .. Good, part of the log of #hu.wikipedia on irc.wikimedia.org:

[14:35:15] * Now talking in #hu.wikipedia

[14:35:20] <rc> Arisztaiosz MB http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=4519988&oldid=3449508&rcid=4605070 * ArthurBot * (-13) Bot: következő módosítása: nl:Aristaios

[14:35:57] <rc> Cserenkov-effektus MB http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=4519989&oldid=4245514&rcid=4605071 * Alexbot * (+27) Bot: következÅ‘ hozzáadása: ko:ì²´ë Œì½”í”„ 효과

[14:36:04] <rc> Szerkesztővita:Tukan http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=4519990&oldid=4516763&rcid=4605072 * Mdonci * (+440) /* Sportműhely */

compare for en.wikipedia:

wait ..

So simply, the the irc channels don't show the pagename in the diffurl in the wikichannels where the bots are reading. That really sucks. I could try and go around this, but that may also be messy. I guess I have to stop adding undo links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The title is provided elsewhere though. (and I notice encoding issues :)) Undo links are really useful when the toolserver has high replag (which makes erwin's tool much less effective).  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:58, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Pasting in the title in the url is not going to solve the problem, but a simple urlencode might do the trick. I'll have a look at this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:48, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Cleared report

Hi Beetstra, could you check User:COIBot/XWiki/alizeeclub.ucoz.ru? When COIBot re-opened the report it simply cleared it. Thanks. --Erwin(85) 21:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Same thing happened to User:COIBot/XWiki/guivry.blogspot.com. --Erwin(85) 21:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Curious. Those were two very old reports, which were reopened. That may have given some problems. But I don't see how it thwarted the retrieval of records. I am having a second look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:04, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I had a mistake in a SQL query, Versageek solved that temporarily, I made a workaround. That mistake in the query resulted in a failure to run the query, resulting in no records. I'll regenerate these (if there are more, ask for regenerating on IRC). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --Erwin(85) 21:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Can User:COIBot/XWiki/experimentals.de get regenerated?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

And User:COIBot/XWiki/blogsanddocs.com? --Erwin(85) 20:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

.. Running from an alternative db at the moment .. sorry .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Spam removal

Dear Dirk,

I am writing U in addition to http://travel-2-macedonia.com.mk/ being to spam list. (I type an incorect URL, so the correct is without the -)

I have done my mistake not knowing about anti-spam rules on wikipedia. I know I will not repeat this, unless asking you or any other admin. Can you please remove this website from the spam list?!

best regards, Goran

You can request that on the talkpage of the spam blacklist (Talk:Spam_blacklist), though the answer is probably going to be 'what is the use to our projects?'. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 21:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

COIBot code

Had more issues today with the bit that checks if it's logged in (I think). Versageek poked, but didn't have much success. I'd suggest putting the code in SVN so it is possible to simply revert the changes. The toolserver provides SVN if you'd rather not maintain your own repo. As well, it'd be nice if the whole thing could be modularized. I can't really do anything in perl, but I can perhaps help with more abstract planning etc if you like. For example, the LinkWatchers should be independant of the mechanism which compiles and saves reports on-wiki & responds to commands in IRC. And the maintenance of User:COIBot/XWiki should be independant of the rest. This would reduce the impact of downtime. Of course, I don't really know anything about the nitty gritty innards of how it all works, so that may be easier said than done (in fact, that's quite likely). In any case, food for thought.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The bit that checks that it is logged in? I don't see any contributions which are by the logged-out bot. I know that the new system (more modular) seems to sometimes result in not-saving parts of the bot (strangely) - I have to build a on-wiki IRC command for that. I have been thinking about SVN, indeed, that may be a good plan. I'm not sure if the code is ready to be available, I should modularize it further because there is a lot of senseless duplication in it. I'll work on that when I am back from holidays. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

FYI:

<Mike||busy> Versageek: Did you end up poking COIBot?
<Versageek> yes, I can poke it again.. but it's dying with "Undefined subroutine &main::CheckMwLogin called at ./coibot.pl line 6711."
<Versageek> it runs ok, until it goes to check that login.. 
<Mike||busy> ie... when it tries to save to the wiki, I guess
<Versageek> yes

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

That helped, another sub I did not copy from the old version of the bot. The basics run fine, but some usercommands use subs which I may have forgotten to copy (I already found a handful of those ..). If it happens on a command, tell me which command seems to have resulted in the crash, and I will have a look (the errors are 'logged', so I can see it). Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

<Mike_lifeguard> coibot report user Ercsaba74
...
<Mike||antispam> coibot whoadded /souvenir-dvd.com
<Mike||antispam> coibot whoadded souvenir-dvd.com
<Mike||antispam> ummm...
[notices COIBot is gone]

I guess the first one killed it, because it normally confirms the report is queued, and it didn't this time.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:38, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this works now, the problem was indeed the 'coibot report user Ercsaba74', problems with merging the 3 COIbots, which had different evolution, which conflicted in the UserReport procedure). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 21:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Emails

Can we have emails like User:COIBot/XWiki/robert.liew@zaidibrahim.com not reported please? I don't see how that's helpful for fighting spam - though it might be useful to report it elsewhere, for other people who are concerned about that.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:44, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, I'll try. I guess that should be handled differently. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:56, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Template:Spamlink

Currently this redirects to {{LinkSummary}}, so I think some uses (like at the bottom of User:COIBot/LinkReports/mek.oszk.hu & probably all other LinkReports reports) are broken -- would you double-check what template the bot is/should be using there?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 05:20, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

It was the old template. Strange that there is broken stuff there (and in edit view I see it is really strangely broken), it worked in exactly the same way. I see that mek.oszk.hu is a very old report, I guess it is best just to either delete it, or to regenerate it when it is of interest. It is difficult to repair it properly. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:02, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Or here - a new report.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Also strangeness with the username on User:COIBot/XWiki/riadidrissi.com - it gets split up at the spaces & added to multiple templates. But it's also parsed correctly just above the error 0-o  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:57, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

That is funny. Guess that is because the bots pick up 'firstname lastname' (i.e. with a space), and then later the stuff gets split by space. But why then also have the full name there... curious. I adapted the linkwatcher now to just include underscores for space (will remove then again on the other side). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

COIBot

Hi! There is a problem regarding COIBot:

[18:16] <Dferg> coibot whereadded link forummontefrio.es [18:16] <COIBot> 16 records; Wikis where forummontefrio.es has been added: es.wikipedia (8), es.w (8).

That's it. Regards. Dferg ^(T-ES) 17:26, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh **** .. did not think of that. I am busy with an update of the database, using a better way of storing the language and the wiki .. but while updating it will give some strange results, and may even result in strange XWiki reports. Darn. That is going to be difficult to find a workaround for that. I'll think about this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:14, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

YEP:

<Mike_lifeguard> I think I figured our coibot's problem
<Mike_lifeguard> it is saving wikis like :en:w:en and :en (and maybe more)
<Mike_lifeguard> so it thinks things are affecting more wikis than they really are
<Mike_lifeguard> and so we are getting tons of reports which really only affect enwiki, but it thinks they affect more than just that
* Mike_lifeguard wishes once again that the code was in SVN
<Mike_lifeguard> solution: sort descending by Link-Wikis and take only reports >2

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am updating the database, sorry. I have now reprogrammed the LinkWatchers to only report spam when the links have been added to more than 2 wikis. That should solve that we get less reports. Now wait until the bots are ready. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

bot feature requests

Hi!
Maybe I could recruit some helpers for #wikipedia-de-spam. :-)
Now we have some questions/feature-requests:

1. SWMT/IRC says that the first number (of the foru numbers behind links) tells how many links one user added. So far so good, but after that the manual says "Turns red when it is higher than 3." And I think that's not true. Same with the second number which does not turn red when it is higher than 250.

   It may be that the channel has +c  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

   Hmm, did I remove the colour coding there. Will have a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

2. It would be nice if BigWikiLW2 additionally reported the difference in bytes.

   Will remember that, have to reprogram the other bots as well if I do that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

3. Sometimes the bot message is too long and will be trimmed. It would be better if the message would be cut into pieces.

   Yes, but that would result in even more flooding (see below). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

4. perhaps you should get a freenode-botflag in #freenode for your bots, so that they won't be kicked for excess floods.

   Suggested that a while back... contacting Sean or James would be the first step.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

   Waiting for a cloak, after that I will. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

5. How does this "BigWikiLW2 link bl add ..." work, if one want's to add a comment?

   It doesn't, I will add some to that, but it is better to use 'coibot ml add <regex> <reason>' for that (these coibot commands are about to change). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

6. Please add irc users "Wuzur" and "Steschke" to the trusted-list. (I'm still waiting for my cloak. :-( )

   OK, I will have a look if I can find their cloaks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

   "wikimedia/Wuzur" and "wikipedia/steschke" --Wuzur 14:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

   Added. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

-- seth 19:41, 21:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

1. COIBot should provide the URL in IRC, not a [[wikilink]]  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:28, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

   huh .. it does both, or do you mean when it 'hits' on an added external link, which is now formatted in single square brackets, without http:// ?? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

   Sorry, I meant for when it lets you know it has generated a report - either by request or automatically. Right now it says "reported linking to example.com by Mike.lifeguard, Beetstra, 127.0.0.1 to User:COIBot/XWiki/example.com" (or /LinkSummary/ depending on what kind of report is generated). It'd be helpful to have that as a clickable URL instead of in square brackets.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

1. It may be a good idea to show the edit summary. --Wuzur 17:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

   In which bot? For the linkwatchers that would be too much info, COIBot may be, yes. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:03, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

2. The bot should use proper utf-8 encoding: [[w:de:Benutzer:NCC1291/Testgelände]] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=55240750&oldid=55204478 [[w:de:User:NCC1291]] http://www.thomasmermillod.com/index.php (65, 1, 1, 1)--Wuzur 14:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Long term problem, have been trying to solve it, will give it another try. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

1. Here, the last period messes up the URL & could just get removed:

<COIBot> XWiki Spam of link gourmetonline.hu by 89.133.162.245 87.97.43.152 67.159.45.24 reported to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:COIBot/XWiki/gourmetonline.hu.

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 01:53, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

COIBot trusted user

Hi, can you add "wikimedia/erwin" as trusted mask to COIBot? My host mask changed, so "wikimedia/Erwin85" can be removed. Thanks. --Erwin(85) 15:09, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:32, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Your comment in delisting request for lyrikline.org

You wrote: Sure, and that is going to help your cause! Why do you choose to ignore the massive linkadditions of 2 IPs? How would you call that? Improving the wikipedia? Abd, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a linkfarm. Links alone don't help wikipedia, content does.

I did not ignore those additions. All that I have seen is one basic edit: there is an article on a poet. The editor adds a link to the poet's page on lyrikline.org. Typically this page has audio of the poet reading his or her poetry, contributed by the poet to lyrikline.org. I find this a perfectly appropriate external link, and in no case that I've seen did the article become a "linkfarm." So, yes, those edits were improving the encyclopedia. Links are a form of content, your argument, in a word, sucks. Sometimes the most useful thing I've gotten from a Wikipedia article, in the long run, has been an external link. I would never have found it with a search engine.

We've been discussing what I consider the basic error: confusing triggering blacklist response with actually spamming. The edits of Lyrik/Lyriker/IP -- most of the IP edits were to other language wikis, where cross-wiki editors often use IP for an isolated edits, I'm doing it to add lyrikline links back to de wiki, ones that were missed, and antispam volunteers do it to remove links from other language wikis (MER-C did it on de) -- weren't spam, they looked like spam because of the volume. Now, if you want to define spam purely by volume regardless of appropriateness, be my guest. It's not going to fly, I predict. Or how about I try to add this to the spam guidelines on en, i.e., to "document existing process." What do you think? --Abd 04:37, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, they are arguably appropriate. E.g. the de and en wikipedia have quite strict regulations on link additions, and many wikis have that. Adding only links to external links sections, and that has been agreed upon by many editors on the local wikis, is generally frowned upon. I get from your remarks the feeling that you want to question those policies and guidelines. You say here, 'Typically this page has audio of the poet reading his or her poetry', for en and de that would be questionable, as linking to audio may not be accessible for all users, the audio may need a special program (note, that e.g. mp3 format is not standard supperted by linux, and those are a large number of editors that hence can't use the link), and that audio files (and that goes more for video files) are not useful for people behind a dial-in (we don't all have fast access!!). For de.wikipedia, they restrict the number of external links on pages to maximum of 5 (which is stricter than en!). I have gone through a couple of the diffs, some pages are already (way) above that limit, but the editor adds more (and repeats that). That means to me that the editor a) does not know local policies and guidelines on at least 2 wikis (should be warned, and I think that happened), and b) insists in adding the link, despite removal, warning and discussion.

However, and that is what e.g. both en:WP:EL and de:WP:WEB suggest (and other wikis have similar regulations), they maybe can be used for referencing (which I see as: "add content and use it as a reference", adding only the same link, but now in a 'references' section instead of a 'external links' section still is spammy).

I can question here the appropriateness of the additions in some cases. And I do not at all believe that the editor who added these links has read on all wikis the policies and guidelines. That hence is abuse of the link (if I see it, totally unintended), and solutions then have to resort to a) blocking accounts (which is difficult cross-wiki, especially if there are more IPs involved)!), or b) blacklisting the domain.

Please, I am seldomly saying that a 'link is spam', and I don't like the suggestion that we define everything on the blacklist as spam .. that is hardly ever true, and many of us agree on that. Lyrikline.org, uofa.edu, dx.doi.org, newenergytimes.com, all these domains are not spam. However, and I said this on en, I do insist in the view that every link, spam or not, can be 'spammed' (though I prefer the term linkpushing, or even weaker, added in an inappropriate way). Some of these were added inappropriately (well, uofa.edu was probably in a group of links, of which some were inappropriately added), and that is what we should be discussing.

Blacklisting is not the end! As I discribed, if a link is abused, we don't have the time and manpower to monitor all the wikis, and discuss everywhere, and keep cleaning up the ones which were questionable enough. Also reporting to all localities is a difficult task, and some also don't have the manpower to handle things locally. We generally try to see if discussion is attempted (except for real rubbish), and if that fails we might blacklist (but a lot gets just cleaned and closed, and COIBot does not reopen a lot of its automated catches!). Blacklisting 'forces' the editors to discuss, or to take time to look through local policies and guidelines. If local wikis then choose to follow certian links closely (users 'adopting' a link, or 'wikiprojects' doing that; and I think that happened on de with lyrikline.org), then local whitelisting of the whole domain is an option. If there is no such inclination, because editors seem not to care about the link anyway, or abuse is likely to proceed even when monitored, then whitelisting of the useful documents for specific use can be done. For that to be sucessful one would have to show that there are no other options and that the link is specific enough that it can't be used further (whitelisting everything that is not abused and marginally useful defies the problem). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:19, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll respond here, but my hope is that our agreements (and the places where disagreement may remain) will be documented at the study page I've created at [http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Abd/Blacklist], because my intention has become that I will take the unresolved issues to the community, and I want the issues to be clear. It's very easy to get distracted with irrelevancies. I take your comments above as being an "apology" for existing practice (in the classical sense of a justification), and I'm quite sure that there are very good reasons for the existing practice. However, Wikipedia looks different to newbies, most ordinary editors, and then truly experienced users and administrators. For example, most ordinary editors won't have a clue what to do if they try to save a blacklisted link. A few will go to the relevant page, and when they ask, they often ask the "wrong questions," or complain about censorship, etc., and may be easily dismissed. The most likely person to be motivated to challenge a blacklisting is, of course, the site operator, who may notice it, perhaps, or may, even more likely, be informed by a user that the site has been blacklisted. I'm not talking about spammers, I'm talking about site operators who have been blacklisted either because someone else triggered the spam radar, or someone else truly spammed, or, alternatively, they were not aware of guidelines and policies and would not continue if simply asked to stop, or if warned (or blocked).

Blacklisting does force discussion, that's true, and you might note that I've been quite readily accepting the proposition that massive addition of links can be presumed to be linkspam and can be stopped, and stopped quickly, with blacklisting. In other words, I accept all the difficulties you have described here and elsewhere, and nothing I'm saying is intended to make it more difficult to stop true linkspam. And, in fact, massive addition of legitimate links is likewise problematic; but it is enough, I'd say, to force discussion. However, at the article level, discussion frequently does not take place, even if the links were accepted by consensus.

There is a serious problem with the view regarding links that you are espousing: it places decisions over the usability and appropriateness of links into the hands of a very few administrators who specialize in spam. These admins have, in general, a view of the project that isn't the same as the general body of editors; it takes a particular kind of personality to take on this work. Not everyone involved has that personality, all generalities are flawed, but the point is that a local consensus, among specialized administrators, is substituting its judgment, not merely ad-hoc, as necessary for immediate response to possible linkspamming, but more permanently. To have the same people considering and accepting or denying delisting or whitelisting is a kind of involvement that should probably be avoided. The sky would not fall if pages were set up to accept delisting and whitelisting requests, and find consensus on them. For delisting, the only original linkspam consideration that would be relevant would be the likelihood of true linkspamming firing up if the blacklist is lifted. Given the patterns with lyrikline.org, for example, there is no reason to expect that.

Yes, lyrikline.org was "adopted," as you put it, on de. However, the basic truth about the de situation, unless I've missed it, is that de didn't see a reason for the blacklisting. Someone agreed to watch for new listings and review them. I just added three links to de, restoring some edits made earlier by Lyrik or one of his IPs, editing IP myself since I don't have an account there. So far, no response. Certainly, as you have pointed out, on some wikis there may be limitations on external links. There are vague limitations on en as well. And real practice is that these limitations are largely ignored until someone comes along and says "this is a linkfarm" and takes some out. And what I've done in some of these cases, where selective removal of many links could disturb POV balance in an article, is to revert them all back in, but set up discussion of the links on Talk with a goal of deciding what ones should stay. Removing links just because they were put there by an IP editor isn't in the wiki spirit. However, again, I caution you against reading this as disapproval of removing large numbers of links (which must be done when blacklisting).

The blacklist guidelines do not contemplate and actually imply the prohibition of the kind of blacklisting you are doing. Blacklisting isn't being done as a last resort, it's being done as a first response, that's what I've seen. Collateral blacklisting is being done on the speculative basis that a site might be spammed, because a site that is related in some way was spammed. Now, if this needs to be done to protect the project, then we should fix the guidelines! However, at the same time, the increased use of the blacklist makes it more dangerous. I've read the communications of User Lyrik (on de) and Lyriker (on en). I read some emotions. This user was seriously dismayed, embarrassed, and possibly angry, all mixed up. The user removed many links, and then never returned to editing. I'd call this serious damage. Now, I see that you reverted one of my three IP edits there, Beetstra, but then you reverted yourself. Thanks. I wouldn't have edit warred, of course, but I would have asked a de admin to look at it. --Abd 21:24, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Addition: You say that 'Sometimes the most useful thing I've gotten from a Wikipedia article, in the long run, has been an external link.'. If the external link was used to draw content from, then you would not have needed the external link, then the wikipedia article would have been useful in itself. That is what I mean with 'improving the wikipedia'. I think we are hitting a major point in our differences of view. Again, both the intro of en:WP:EL and de:WP:WEB give the suggestion (for en:WP:EL: "If the website or page to which you want to link includes information that is not yet a part of the article, consider using it as a source for the article, and citing it.". You may argue that "Links are a formde of content, your argument, in a word, sucks.", the guidelines and policies say otherwise, and that is what is agreed upon by the majority of editors. And if you did not see linkfarms, there are articles on de where the link was added to a list of already 12 other links. Arguably more than 'a few' that en suggests, certainly more than the 5 that de keeps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:27, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I would be impossible to bring what I found from the link to the article. I had in mind en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_Nutritional_Approach. There used to be a link there to http://lowcarber.org. Following that link took me to an on-line community, with participation by many people very knowledgeable on the topic, including published experts, etc., and what I learned from following those discussions, participating in them, and following links there, is probably a hundred times what could be contained in a Wikipedia article. All from a simple URL. Now, there are problems with links like this. I think we can solve the problems, but we will need better process. The lowcarber.org link was removed by an admin who popped in because a COI editor was edit warring to put a link to his own web site there, one far less notable, web-wise, than lowcarber.org. The admin looked at lowcarber.org and saw advertising. It's an advertising-supported site! But the core of the site isn't advertising, it's news and discussion, among a large community. The admin took just about all the external links out (there weren't many, as I recall, I should check, I was a fairly new editor), saying that sites with advertising can't be linked to. I don't think that's true....

As to 12 links, most of the articles I saw had few. I'm certainly not claiming that every edit of this user was optimal. However, we have IP editors all the time adding links to articles; it appears that if they only add one, many of them stick, appropriate or not. As I wrote, the links added by Lyrik were arguably appropriate, and consensus on de seems to be that most, if not all, of them, were indeed appropriate. The argument that an edit is spam because a better edit could be made is surely an odd one for a wiki system that encourages inexperienced editors to edit. Here is what I'd have said to Lyrik: "In order to protect the project from linkspam, if a large number of edits from an individual editor are made to many projects, the linked URL may be blacklisted, and all the links reverted. However, if you think that the links are appropriate, you may discuss any individual link at PAGE, you may request review at PAGE, and, if you can find agreement from other editors, you can appeal the blacklisting at DELIST PAGE. Further, even if the blacklisting stands, and you have a specific link that you think appropriate, you may discuss it on the Talk page for the article, and then request whitelisting of that specific link at WHITELIST PAGE, or, if there is a global blacklisting, you may request, on a local wiki, that the whole domain be whitelisted. I apologize for any inconvenience, your contributions to the encyclopedia are valued, and if you need assistance, I'd be happy to help."

However, that's not what this editor encountered on en-wiki. The user, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lyriker was indef blocked for an alleged improper user name, a pure and clear mistake. I just asked Hu12, the blocking admin, to lift it. Declined. I tell you, Beetstra, there is a bad culture that has arisen among the spam warriors. It is damaging the project unnecessarily. --Abd 21:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I had a discussion yesterday with a German admin about lyrikline.org, and I think I understand their point of view on the whole. We called the links 'arguably appropriate', and I still think that discussion should have preceded the link additions. Also on some of the pages the link, though not inappropriate in an external links section, would have been more appropriate to expand the article as well.

I may re-consider a delisting request here for that link, though not on the basis of 'it was not spammed', or 'the additions were not inappropriate'. Although that type of reason can be argued about, I'd prefer to see it as 'the information on the site can be of a great benefit of wikipedia', or similar. For en I want to point to the wikiproject, there must be one or two who may have an interest in the link, and when they do see that benefit, whitelisting would be quick. If some of the larger wikis all whitelist, then de-blacklisting on meta is certianly the next step.

Regarding coi's etc. We all have coi somewhere, and for most editors we don't know. IPs are sometimes linked to a company and then it is clear, but when SEO companies are used, that is already more difficult to trace. Also usernames can be deceptive or accidental (it is how COIBot defines it, it just calculates a plain overlap between username and pagename/domain .. it may suggest a coi, NOTHING MORE; however, I do believe the bot is often quite right, and looking at the data, in a lot of cases it does involve self-promotion, not a serious attempt to improve Wikipedia, but it does make SERIOUS mistakes as well!). The guidelines on en do not forbid to edit with a coi, but it strongly suggests editors to discuss and prevent anything that looks like self promotion. Of course people edit in the fields where they have knowledge (my article edits when I started were all in chemistry, and I am still very much involved in that part). However, I do not cite my own articles, or articles of my (former) supervisors, or similar, I will refrain from that. If it is something that I want to be in the article because it is a major improvement or it does show a point, then I will strictly suggest that on the talkpage, even after my 10 of thousands of edits and my admin status on en and meta. For editors who do edit themselves, I would suggest them to not push it, as soon as it gets challanged (in any form), discuss. I am afraid that lenr-carn.org and newenergytimes.com are a result of partially this type of situations (both of people with and without a conflict of interest), and they have spoiled a lot for a lot of others.

en:WP:USERNAME does say quite a bit about the username. 'Lyriker' in this case states that he is not involved in the site, and I will take his word for that. However, his username is similar to the edits he performs, and suggesting that involvement. Having a conflict of interest or not, en:WP:USERNAME does strongly suggest that one should not do that. I would however suggest that Lyriker would change his username, or create a new username, just to avoid the possible confusion. I am also cautious with unblocking that username, though would unblock soon for a change of username request.

Regarding the external links, what you describe for lowcarber.org, is different from a link to a content page. en:WP:EL does clearly give that difference, and I think I also cited that above. Some sites contain information which simply can't be incorporated, but many others do. It needs a careful look at that, and keeping en:WP:NOT#REPOSITORY and en:WP:NOT#DIRECTORY in mind (sometimes it is better to use en:Template:dmoz ...). Having one (good) forum linked simply does invite more forums in the end. For lowcarber.org, I assume there will be quite some of those sites (with different quality), and I do not think that we should include all. If there are more, use the directory service, and remove all from the article self, if it is indeed just a few, leave them in. All in good sense, and I do think that the english wikipedia policies and guidelines do give these possibilities written out quite well. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sites with referral system

Hi Dirk, I came across magiccardmarket.eu in this diff. Apparently this is the first link placed, but the link contained a referrer and the site pays people to refer. How do we handle these sites? EdBever 09:54, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

coibot report swmt ...

Is it possible to have the bot do one of the following

1. Wait until each command is accepted by SWMTBot to do the next one or
2. Cycle through the bots (SWMTBot1 for the first, then SWMTBot2...)
3. Just give the commands slower

Currently both COIBot and SWMTBot flood a bit with long lists. Any of these would help a bit, I think. (For number 2, note that the bots have weird nicks sometimes, and sometimes change... might be worth adding a command to add/remove/change the list of bots COIBot can issue commands to... for example there was a few days where MelosBot et al replaced the normal SWMTBots.)

 — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I didn't write it down properly, but "report swmt wackowiki.org !" resulted in "<COIBot> Users '!' reported to the SWMTBots with reason 'wackowiki.org spammer'." where I thought it would report all the users on the report. And currently "coibot help" lists "report [xwiki|swmt] <domain> [<userlist>|!|!ip|!all|!noip]"... ! to represent all users would be useful and would match other commands (though !all is fine too if need be).  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

For tracking purposes, can you change the reason to "domain.com spammer per <nick>" so we can track who is commanding COIBot to add things to the SWMTBot blacklist?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

!: Oi .. OK, I'll change it to ignore other commands starting with '!' so it will not result in curious things. I reserved '!' for regeneration, '!all' for all users. But it is just a matter of changing the commands to do it properly (and hope that when I change I don't confuse people too much).

Tracking: Yep, doable. Will change it shortly. I should really start with a kind of i18n for the bot ..

You know, I could really use some help in writing up a manual, I find myself busy with other things too much, lately. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I can certainly help with documentation. Probably having the code available in SVN or similar would be helpful for that :D  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 15:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

urlencode

Just a small urlencode error on the history link in User:COIBot/XWiki/aycu25.webshots.com for example.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

In the early ones I forgot to replace the spaces with an underscore. I'm not sure if I should also do a urlencode on it, but if it is necessery, that is easily done. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Realgems.org

Hi Dirk, tut mir Leid, dass ich etwas rough war mit meinen Kommentaren. Ich hoffe, dass Du Verständnis hast dafür, dass ich relativ engaged bin. Seth hat mir gesagt, dass Du ein guter admin bist, der viel Verständnis hat für die Sorgen von Wiki Usern. Beste Grüße F.N. Berg 22:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

It's fine. Thanks for this. I saw a lot of discussion on en, and I am sorry, I'd rather see it whitelisted there if en agrees, then de-blacklist here atm. I hope you understand. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 23:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Dirk, dear, what means "atm"? At the moment? What a pity that you are not interested in faceted gemstones. Perhaps your wife, haaa... Think about the next Christmas wish of her, and you have to decide which kind of tourmaline you should buy for her... ;-)) F.N. Berg 19:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

:-), I'll remember that. Yes, sorry, with atm I meant at the moment. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

COIBot edit conflict

Hi, COIBot just reverted my edit. I'm guessing this should have been an edit conflict. Does it ignore those? --Erwin(85) 18:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I guess this is a coincidence, it takes COIBot a handful of seconds to parse and regenerate the page, this must just have been in this time. Not sure if I can catch this easily. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Rosario Poidimani on et:

I made this edit because that article suffers from attacks from both sides. I think that the content of the article is more or less neutral, and therefore the links to POV sites are in place in order the views of all sides to be known. I don't think that those sites should be blacklisted. Better the articles should be watched. Andres 18:08, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The abuse is quite large, and cross-wiki. If you think you can handle it locally, I would suggest local whitelisting. Would that be an option? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 21:50, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Andres 13:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Re-opening XWiki reports

Here, COIBot overwrote my comments. Mind taking a look at how it is re-opening these reports?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:56, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I see erwin had the same thing a few sections up - perhaps nothing to be done then.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:57, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

COIBot not reporting in

Leaving you a note here since I'm probably not irc tomorrow. Coibot seems to hang regularly in saving linkreports, I did one restart this afternoon but now it seeems to be hanging again... I'll restart it now, but you'll probably want to check Special:Contributions/COIBot when (if?) you check in tomorrow. Regards, Finn Rindahl 00:39, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I have to write a bit better logging for the bot so I can finally figure out where it hangs. I as yet don't understand. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki

Could you leave cells blank instead of "ND" where applicable? I think this will allow the table to be sorted as numbers instead of text, which would be useful, I think.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 01:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll try that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Looping/hanging of the LinkSaver

Seems it got itself into a bit of a loop regarding User:COIBot/XWiki/fuck this one... Finn Rindahl 23:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

This is the same problem as the hanging of the LinkSaver. I built in a catch for cases where the LinkSaver can't save a link for some reason, where the link is put back into the database for another attempt (e.g. if there was a timeout or the wiki was down at that moment, as that might result in loss of reports). However, this did not catch the cases where the bot, for whichever reason, REALLY can't save the report for other reasons (blacklisting of a link, title-blacklist, impossible names for the page, etc.).

I patched it, it now should do three attempts to save a link, if it fails, it deletes it (but restarting the loop of three until the link is not returned into the database for other reasons, like ongoing spamming, poking or IRC-report-requesting). Error messages regarding this go to #wikimedia-external-links. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:06, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

coibot report swmt domain.com

The SWMTBots got renamed... could we use CVNBot9 now, instead of SWMTBot1?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 03:23, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

It's now a setting in User:COIBot/Settings. Hence: {{solvified}}. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:36, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

broken regexes?

Broken regex \bbr\.geocities\.com\ (perl-corrected: \bbr\.geocities\.com\) on pt.wikiquote.org blacklist, error: Trailing \ in regex m/\bbr\.geocities\.com\/ at LinkSaver.pl line 2041, <LIST> line 853.

Something like this appears on a lot (all?) of reports. Is that normal?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 23:09, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Well .. no, it is not normal. I have contacted a local admin to repair it (as the regex is broken!), but to no avail. Maybe I should poke somewhere someone again. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:29, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

See q:pt:Usuário_Discussão:Chico#Question. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:31, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

COIBot rights command

Hello Beetstra, I've found a bug on the COIBot rights [...] , here is the source: [10:20] <MrDferg> rights Dferg

[10:20] <COIBot> Dferg is sysop on w:es, meta; bureaucrat on w:es; rollbacker on w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en, w:en I think the bug is only in the rollbacker group cause I checked Drini and: [10:21] <COIBot> Drini is sysop on w:en, w:es, w:nah, n:es, q:es, meta, commons; bureaucrat on w:es, w:nah, n:es, meta; steward on meta; checkuser on w:es, q:es, meta, commons; editor on w:als Best regards, —Dferg (talk) 08:20, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep .. it was one of the things that the LinkSaver was hanging on (this was a secondary task of that part of the bot, when it did not have to save linkreports). I have separated it from that bot now .. annoying, I'll have to write something special for this. Don't know though why it duplicated. Thanks for reporting. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:18, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

q:pt

Vide http://pt.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist&curid=16834&diff=90719&oldid=71217

--Chico 22:22, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Gracias! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:43, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

coibot has left the building

or #external-links at least, guess you're the only one who can start it again.... Finn Rindahl 15:54, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Heh, most bots left the building. Most reconnected after the, what I assume was, a netsplit, others have been restarted. It is one of the ways of getting the bots 'down' (though most still run, and still work in the background, we only lost the IRC tools .. ). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:18, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

COIBot stats

Hi!
COIBot does log (almost) all link additions, doesn't it? So are there somewhere statistics about the number of link additions for example in w:de?
related: de:WP:FZW#Externe_Links. -- seth 10:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I could write a command for that in the Commander. Yes, in principle the linkwatchers log everything, except for some hard-ignored links (xxx.wikipedia.org/xxx.wiktionary.org, say, the internal links which look like external links). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:46, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, that would be a nice gimmick to have, although it won't really help us in anti spam fighting. -- seth 15:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, mostly a gimmick, but it may help making general statements in guidelines and policies. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 20:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I had...

...to ban-forward (from cvn-wp-es and -external-links) your bot to #wikimedia-overflow because it is part/joining constantly the channels. Please unban it from #wikimedia-external-links when the connection of the bot is fixed. Regards and sorry, —Dferg (talk) 11:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Dei Beetstra, ter ynformaasje: itselde is niiskrekt dien op #cvn-sw troch Kylu, wêr't itselde oan 'e gong wie. Groetenis, Wutsje 12:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Versageek took care and the bot is fixed and unbaned, regards. —Dferg (talk) 22:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Nothing in the logs, nothing to see. No clue what happened, but ping me or Versageek, we both can kill it and restart it if it happens again. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes strange things happens :) Regards, —Dferg (talk) 10:04, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

COIBot reports

Hello Beetstra, please correct me if I'm wrong, but, aren't COIBot reports suposed not to be indexed by search engines? (see diff of Robots.txt). I saw that sometimes those reports appears in Google results. Would be possible for COIBot to add {{NOINDEX}} to every new report it creates? Thank you. — df|  15:30, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

No, you are correct. Thing is that, already before that edit to the Robots.txt, COIBot is adding {{NOINDEX}} to all his reports (I added that because of the complaints, while we were still waiting for the 'global' noindex). I am however curious to see a couple of those reports which show up on Google, somewhere must be something wrong. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:04, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello Beetstra, thanks for your reply. I asked because I've found the reply on Talk:Spam_blacklist#www.travel2macedonia.com.mk strange. I quote: [...]The Google hit (ranked 12 in my search) links to the COIBot report[...].

I checked this on my own and I have found that it is true, at least for User:COIBot/LinkReports/travel2macedonia.com.mk and I supose it is not the unique. Perhaps Google is ignoring the {{NOINDEX}}es tags? Thanks for your time. — df|  20:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Now I don't know. Maybe we should either first discuss it on the spam blacklist, or maybe immediately a bug-report? It would be really bad if Google is ignoring the noindex. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 06:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll post this discussion on the discussion section of the SBL so that other admins/experienced users can share their opinions. Thank you, — df|  10:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC) P.D.: Talk:Spam_blacklist#COIBot_reports_showing_up_in_Google_results — df|  11:06, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Category:Open Local reports for es.wikipedia.org

Hello. Will it be possible for COIBot to close all the reports on that category that are older than 2 weeks? Thanks, —Dferg ^(disputatio) 15:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I am regenerating, that will clean the old ones. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 20:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Huge resource consumption by your bot

Hi, did you know that your bot produced 217775 edits of avg. 95732 bytes for a total of 19 Gb raw data. Is meta the right place for this kind of data? Erik Zachte 03:04, 20 December 2009 (UTC) http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TableRankArticleHistoryByArchiveSize.html

Eh. Wow. Well, yes, the problem is, where else? Meta is the place where the global spam blacklist is located, and that is also where the bot reports it's reports. I could consider localising a subset of it, but I think that it will still be by far the largest editor then anyway. I must say, we are working on another solution, but that will take time. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 15:05, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Are these operational data where older history is irrelevant ? (I have no idea). I don't assume you could autodelete obsolete info with a bot? Probably not, if bots could do that that would be very risky. Maybe you could start a new page each month, and file pages older than x months for deletion? But then I see you have many satelite pages. Maybe you could host a separate wiki? Or we could discuss a separate WMF wiki for operational data like this, where auto delete is allowed. Besides general concern my worry is that dump creation gets more and more difficult when more and more bots use this online storage scheme. (Ronald also does this for proxy data) Erik Zachte 18:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Can the dump process be modified to exclude these pages? They might be useful to dump if we ever want to import them to another wiki, but they're useless for most applications.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 06:23, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Hosting them on another wiki removes the difference between User:COIBot/LinkReports/example.com and User:COIBot/LinkReports/noexample.com (i.e., we now that example.com has been examined in the past, while that was not done for noexample.com). That is information which we would want to see immediately, and may even be interesting for very old reports. I'd be more inclined to await a live-linksearch (something that is being worked on), so the bot-data could be made smaller (I could remove a big part of the pages under User:COIBot/LinkReports, while keeping that only in the pages under User:COIBot/XWiki). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Autoclosing when blacklisted

Could you put some newlines in, and double-check the bot is using only one signature? See [3] for my example tweaks.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 22:38, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Oi, that is not nice. I will repair that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:14, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

test

--Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

• Hoi Beetstra. Can you restart COIBot? It's flooding with part/joinings on IRC. I had to ban it from the -es channel. Thank you! — Dferg (talk) 21:03, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

¡hola! Dferg. It seems to have stopped, and the bot was unbanned again. I have to figure out why it is doing that, it is annoying. Seems to happen every now and then. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Coibot taking a break...

...from refreshing the Xwikilist, [4], no update since yesterday. Finn Rindahl 11:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep, bot died (don't know why). Versageek restarted it. Please poke me or en:User:Versageek (or better, both) on en.wikipedia, at least I read en.wikipedia more. Thanks anyway!! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Will do - didn't know that Versa was still around or I would have poked them as well. Finn Rindahl 19:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Something odd about the summary display

FYI: Starting with this edit, the tablular display at User:COIBot/XWiki has changed to display much less information. --A. B. ^(talk) 02:52, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The box is down .. no bots (at all) for some time, and a, by now, huge gap in the database. Sorry. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:08, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I appreciate what we have, gaps or no gaps. It's not as if you don't have a day job, too. --A. B. ^(talk) 16:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The box is back .. now the database again. Thanks for the nice words, really appreciated! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 11:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Broken regex

Hi, I've just noticed a following message in several COIBot reports ([5], [6]):

Broken regex (?<!www\.)\bmybrute\.com\b (perl-corrected (?<!www\.)\bmybrute\.com\b) on meta's global blacklist, error: Sequence (?&...) not recognized in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/(?& <-- HERE lt;!www\.)\bmybrute\.com\b/ at LinkSaver.pl line 2584.

Is it possible to fix it anyhow? Cheers, --Mercy 07:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that one. I will have to look at that, I think I did 'solve' that, but it takes some time to update (COIBot makes off-wiki copies of the all 'blacklists' every now and then, and uses those, it is impossible to load all '3 x 750' blacklists on every save). Is it still there in the new reports? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Solved .. my mistake, I did do it correctly for all saved lists .. I only forgot that the global blacklist is not saved but read before every save. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:33, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Great! Thank you! :-) --Mercy 12:29, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

How being unlocked ??

Dear Sir Beetstra ( beste Dirk ) I'm herewith confirming next request on my talkpage user talk: D.A. Borgdorff as follows and perhaps FYI ... hopefully ...:

• I still don't understand this in advance quite simple-minded It-Nick (to be stated in 1915?) conclusion of narrow awareness to my opinion, because I've done no-one & nobody harm to defending myself, but with writing about modern Traction Systems for Railroads / Tramways * Light Rail Transit. Further a treatise on the famous Van der Pol equations and i.c. nl:overleg:Van der Pol-vergelijking Quantum-Electro-Dynnamics and also Electro-Medical as on Cardioversion et cetera. Further see my contributions on various Philosophical and Maths-paradoxes as described in nl:Overleg:Driedeurenprobleem to be found in title under the en:Monty Hall problem ... Sofar and in my humble opinion, where and while the ArbCom didn't answering at all, I should be unlocked and wishing to appeal the block to be unblocked as well.!! I'm reading: "You may be an innocent victim of collateral damage, but are currently unable to edit pages on Wikipedia (*even*) with Disabled Email" and so onwards ... I'll remain with my last quote: *Thank you so much for your welcome again mr. Beetstra, and You're welcome too.!...
  With Kind Regards & Sincerely Yours: en:user talk: D.A. Borgdorff 17:17, 4 November 2009 (UTC)* so ... Saludos Cordiales Y Atte: user: D.A. Borgdorff = 86.83.155.44 11:40, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Again most obliged with greetings from D.A. Borgdorff - e.i. = 86.83.155.44 11:54, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, the text says "You may be an innocent victim of collateral damage", but here it is certainly not the case. You have been warned, blocked, unblocked, re-warned and re-warned, reblocked and re-unblocked, you have (been) brought (it) to ArbCom on NL (where I am not even able to unblock you), on en.wikipedia you have been repeatedly warned and blocked, but you don't seem to get it. Your style of editing, your self-promotion, you have to adapt that, and in my humble opinion, you have had all the chances to do so, but you never took any of those chances. I am sorry, you will need to contact ArbCom via email, and explain your situation to them, I am not unilaterally going to unblock you again, I've tried to show more than once good faith in you (I have unblocked you twice on en.wikipedia), later blocks where by other admins. Good luck and all the best, --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:54, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I really thank you for commenting, but it seems to me that you're repeating those subject statements, that were delivered only by (my) Dutch *stalkers*, like Robotje - MoiraMoira - Baas c.s. (bias which you yourself dealed and dealt with, e.g. about the above stated nonsence of selfpromotion etc.) is more prominent than my scientific work mentioned. What is this for Encyclopedia to smear ones Name and fame with shame and blame./?. Nevertheless, I still will thank you for your opinion, for I once trusted you too :-) and you corrected some of the most absurd blocking-policies on this planet.

• In time and advance, I got warnings from my scientific colleagues on the strange way of handling matters, but unfortunately neclected them. So far: it seems I'm one of those few exeptions as ostracized victims, I believe of them would calling it, mostly because of my extraneous style of writing /?? Again, most sincerely Yours, I am D.A. Borgdorff 86.83.155.44 12:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

P.S.: [the] ArbCom never responded or I'm blocked there too, where my messages and requests didn't seem to come though ... i.e. I never got any reply.!

D.A. Borgdorff, you can call them stalkers, but I think that I saw the problems before they also came to the English Wikipedia. Other editors indeed came, but if so many editors have problems with your edits, maybe it is time to adapt your style. Something that, on the English wikipedia at least, never did. Please start to reflect on yourself. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay Beetstra, you shot and I got the ball in return, without the possibility of a personal style, only (to have) conform a doubtful *policy*... I ought to be the understanding people, 'cause of enduring threatening with the ultimo blockages and lockouts I underwent, without parole for the 2nd, 3rd & 4th et cetera time for the same socalled crime in that system(s) thinking, not personally meant of course. I'll keep my obligations in behalf of my ethics "notwithstanding" those absurd Wikipediae-*paradigmeta* :-) dAb per 86.83.155.44 12:55, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Beste D.A. Borgdorff. 'absurd Wikipediae-*paradigmeta* ... maybe they are absurd, but those policies and guidelines have been established by many editors. This is not blogspot.com, this is not forums.yahoo.com, this is not the next experiment of geocities .. we are writing an encyclopedia here, and rules have been established for that. If you run in to so many warnings, and in the end get blocked a couple of times, since you do not want to follow even some simple rules we have established here .. en:WP:NOTANARCHY .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:14, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

If the police is warning you 10 times not to drive faster than 120 on the highway in the Netherlands .. and on the 11th time gives you a big fine, and on the 15th time withdraws your license .. are you then going to say that 120 km/h is an absurd Dutch rule? And then you wait until you get your license back, you do it again? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:15, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Dear Beetstra, I've never done so for 40 years keeping my license without any warning, even driving as testdriver a couple of HTM-pioneer trams and trains, I'm not against rules -- on the contrary -- but only protesting the absurd, wrong application of those rules: = *unilateral* against my person only, where lots of contributors find no harm of/or consequences of their edits. This problem started as mentioned with Robotje, Erik Baas and (specifically) MoiraMoira, who *nailed* me for fringe science on the Meta-wall, while self writing that same lemma about Matter-waves (only in the Netherlands) subjective, even wrongly about i.e. Vallée, and deleting all my refs on Tramarticles and continously prejudiced, bíased against this Science they didn't / don't even understand ...!!, only to further put harassment onto me [...] that's their only goal in those possibly simple minds: destruction of too scientific lemmata, I suppose ...

Sorry coll. Dirk Beestra, that is part of my humble opinion so far: a them sort of biased reaction without enough tolerance.!... -- Though with full respect, I remain Yours Truly: D.A. Borgdorff via 86.83.155.44 15:30, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

On en.wikipedia, you did not follow the simple rules. I recall you kept editing others' comments, something that you were told not to. And I am afraid, that also on en.wikipedia you did not start on the right foot with your self promotion.

I'm sorry, you'll have to get through ArbComm, as I said, I am not unilaterally going to unblock, this does need wider discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 16:21, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Your sorry *Accepted* ;) but I'm not afraid into the debate that wrong editting was only the case in the *first year* of my being on those wikipediae (Sept. 2007/08) but in between already on some 12 projects putting my new *nl:materiegolven* article -- which was nowhere refuted -- only by that stupidity in Holland (as I see it) the title was arbsurdly changend from the correct English en:matter wave, so most problems risen from Holland incl. six Tramrefs: all deleted, half my archive + bibliography erased, continued blaming me to being a "vandal", needed literally *eternal* detention bans (in cc and so on) too hard to understand for a second-generation WWII-victim. See the camp-pic. on my several UP.

• Unfortunately I don't understand *which* ArbCom you meant, DUTCH or ENGLISH, but all are unreachable by this *Lock+Block* too, but You do.?!
• I hope you don't bothering on that of asking international asylum.?... and you don't surely have to unilaterally acting upon this situation that (imo) evolved strangely enough.
• <+> Regards: D.A. Borgdorff via 86.83.155.44 17:03, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
• Ref: nl.+ en:user:百家姓之四 and en:matter wave in March 2009.

Which .. well .. the English for en.wikipedia; the Dutch for nl.wikipedia .. seems clear. If all seem unreachable .. well, I don't think that I can change anything for that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:12, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• I'll kindly thank you so much for replying as co-operation too. Sincere Regards: D.A. Borgdorff per 86.83.155.44 09:54, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

COIBot/XWiki/parascientifica.com

Hey man, it said that you maintained this bot, so could you check this out please? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:COIBot/XWiki/parascientifica.com We also spoke here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Olekp#Indefinitely_blocked --Olekp 10:58, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi! Yes. I'll poke the report, I'd prefer independent review here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 12:08, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

A review of what? Why the page should be unblocked? --Olekp 20:11, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes. There are apparently others who have concerns as well. I feel involved now, so I'd like to hear other admins discussing it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:31, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Well I am convinced that my site is wrongly blocked from wiki as it is a good source at places like the encyclopaedia. And like [[User:MuZemike] said:

 You agreed to release said contributions when you hit the "save page", and you cannot revoke them, hence why I blocked you. –MuZemike 17:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Olekp#Indefinitely_blocked )

I do admit that I did some over the top things like adding sources to pictures, but after some discussion with you, I learned that that is not the way and that it makes people think that I'm spamming.

Another argument that I think supports my cause is that the admin deleted the source but not the content. He also said that the source is spam but the content is not? How reliable is content without source? Why not delete both? So after a little problem with that and some discussion with you and User:MuZemike But at the end you both agreed that I am not trying to spam and that I understood/learned from my mistakes.

Please tell me if I was too vague on some arguments. --Olekp 10:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Soo, any news? --Olekp 17:59, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

See Talk:Spam_blacklist#User:COIBot.2FXWiki.2Fparascientifica.com .. still waiting for others to have a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 18:06, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Do you have any clue on how long that could take? :P I have no idea about the speed here. --Olekp 06:12, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey man, haven't heard of of you in a while. Is there any news on the whole link thing? --Olekp 10:39, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, nope. Maybe you should add something to the thread. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:52, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#User:COIBot.2FXWiki.2Fparascientifica.com I so hate these people, they just abuse their power and so stuff without any reason or explanation. I probably should just give up as It's always some other person replying and they all seem to ignore any of my arguments/apologies.

I just wanted to thank you for listening to me and taking my side in this unwinnable battle. I lost most of my trust in wiki and all of my will to contribute anything at all.

So thanks again and good luck. --86.88.205.181 19:31, 25 September 2010 (UTC)--Olekp 19:32, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

User:COIBot/XWiki/dutcheastindies.webs.com

Quote:"See COIBot report for more details. --COIBot 03:37, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

   This may have some interest left and right as a reference, but well, that does not need a live link to a book anyway (ue the ISBN). But it is so gravely misused throughout, there are a handful of IPs having multiple warings on en.wikipedia, and the editors are blatantly reverting XLinkBot, that this now goes onto the blacklist. If you need this as a reference, whitelist it. Added Added. --Dirk Beetstra T C (en: U, T) 08:28, 15 August 2010 (UTC)" from: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:COIBot/XWiki/dutcheastindies.webs.com

Hello Beetstra,

The Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 Website has moved from geocities (which was shut down) to www.dutcheastindies.webs.com. I have progressively been repairing dead wiki links. There was nothing blatant about reverting XLinkBot entrys. They said they could be undone. The warnings stated that the new link may be useful to users, which it was. It is not available as a book so there is no ISBN. I tried to fix a link on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Spence_%28soldier%29 where I had accidently inserted an extra "www." and found that the new site had been blacklisted by you. Would you do something about this?

Regards 210.1.205.153 05:25, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, indeed. I counted that 25 links were linked from talkpages. It does not happen much that I see SO MANY WARNINGS that link additions are inappropriate, but all that I saw this weekend, was that you (? At least one of the IPs that is involved in this) blatantly REVERT to re-add the links. Yes .. I know, it may be of interest here and there, but we are NOT writing a linkfarm here, but an encyclopedia. You (?) apparently did not care for a long time that the external link additions were inappropriate (note, XLinkBot does not revert references, there it would have been fine). You are linking to a book, there is IMHO hardly a need for a direct external link, we have ISBN for that. May I ask you to read the policies and guidelines mentioned in the warnings, and reconsider the edits? Then I will reconsider the blacklisting on meta. Otherwise m:MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist is the place to be, I am afraid (and that for specific links, with specific explanation, not for the whole domain). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 05:52, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Hello Dirk, Thankyou for the reply. The Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 Website is not a book, it is a collection of web articles by Mr Klemen & others. There is no ISBN. I read the warning and proceeded on the basis that the links were useful and pre-existing. Yes it was me. I have not added any new links, only edited existing links I found by searching for "dutcheastindies geocities". For example the link from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Spence_%28soldier%29 was placed by AustralianRupert on 31 May 2009. There are many links (many as references) to the Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 Website so I am certain people have found it of use. As for the timing - Mr Klemens has only recently found time to put the website up again, on a free website. This version is add free so avoids the adds in the margin from geocities. There were a lot of warnings because there were many many dead links to fix. Again, I did not add any new links. The link changes on de.wiki are human moderated and they have gone through. The links are not inappropriate, even if a bot reported them as such. if you were to check when and who first entered these links you would find a wide vairety of times and users who have thought a reference or external link would be useful. There are more dead links on my search list that I have not yet edited. Have I missed anything?

regards Graeme 210.1.205.153 06:24, 16 August 2010 (UTC) P.S. Thank you the information about the bot not reverting references, it helped to explain what I thought was random bot activity.

Hello Dirk,

I noticed that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Sumatra_%281942%29 (which I have been assisting in the translation from the German) no longer has hyperlinks for 2 enties although entries but retains the Author name and title. It has your name on the edit.

Is it because Tom Womack is the author of a book as well as a web article at the 'Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 Website' that you think the 'Dutch East Indies 1941-1942 Website' is a book?

regards Graeme

210.1.205.153 07:28, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I was reviewing the issue. Thanks for the remarks and the discussion. I think that should already have been done quite some time ago, blatantly undoing the bot and carrying on like that gave a (false) impression of 'spamming', and the first couple of edits I checked were all external links. My point is, I believe that in many cases, the weblinks are inappropriate in the external links sections. There are massive articles, which link to a text which IMHO hardly adds, and hence it fails WP:EL. I would suggest that all of them are re-evaluated for their appropriateness, maybe they should be used as a reference for text in the article.

May I ask you to create an account, and edit using that. I will de-blacklist the link, and I am then also whitelisting your account so it does not pop up anymore (leave me a note before updating links, otherwise the bot will also start reverting the account ..). But I strongly suggest that if someone is warning you (even if it is a bot), that you do discuss and not just carry on. With so many warnings on so many talkpages, someone might just start blocking (I actually considered to block your whole range, but saw that there would be too much collateral damage). This not only goes for the English Wikipedia, other wikis have similar rules, and some are quicker in blocking than the English Wikipedia.

I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:01, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Dirk,

The bot messages do not make it easy, or urge you, to discuss it with a human. I put a message on the discussion page after I received the 1st bot message that the geocities site had been replaced by the webs site, but I did not expect the bot to read it. The only other choices, if a link was 'useful', besides undoing the bot was to leave a dead link or deleting it. It took me quite a few links to find your name after I received a blacklisted message.

If the bot does not do references, then I expect the reports it produces will be about external links.

I appreciate what you say about re-evaluated their appropriateness, but this will be a much larger job than repairing broken links (it should of course have been done when they were first made).

Are you able to reverse the deleted links?

I have created an account: Graeme347

regards Graeme Graeme374 08:47, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S. A note on warnings. A warning is not a prohibition. It does not matter how many warnings are given, if they are all the same then the same action will be taken e.g. if I am warned once or 25 times that the coffee is hot, I will take the same action and be careful that I am not burned by the hot coffee.

Graeme Graeme374 09:05, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I hope that I undid everything again. I've whitelisted this account, the bot should not bother you (poke me if it does). I hope that you will also take some time to see if the external links where they are there are still appropriate, or that they can be used better. Again, thanks for discussing. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:11, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Re the P.S. Indeed, you will be careful that I am not burned by the hot coffee. Reverting the edits despite the warnings was not the same as that ... in fact .. you got 'burned'.  :-) Anyway, happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

COIBot reports

Hoi, ik zie net dat COIBots meldingen een andere layout hebben met als gevolg dat tools:~erwin85/xwiki.php niet werkt voor recente reports. Kan ik in de nieuwe layout simpelweg het revid-argument van {{User:COIBot/EditSummary}} gebruiken om de pagina te bepalen? Groet, Erwin 10:00, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Hoi. Ja. Alle data is nu in dat template, zodat het gemakkelijker is om het een beter format te geven, of om de data op een andere manier te laten zien. XWiki, Local én Linkreports gebruiken alledrie hetzelfde formaat nu, dus het script zou in principe op alledrie kunnen werken! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:14, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

My big URL redirector dump

Hi there Beetstra. Thank you very much for taking care of that big piece of work so quickly. As I implied, I have about a hundred more listings to post once it's possible to do so without hitting the transclusion limits. Would it help any to post the corresponding regex when I do the second half of the list? I didn't think of it until I had posted the first part, but I can easily do so if it will save work. If it won't save any work in practice, then I'd rather not make the posted section 20% longer. Gavia immer 15:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I am using the tool to add it anyway. From that perspective, and from a tracking perspective, I'd prefer LinkSummaries. Thanks for the work. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 17:41, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Gotcha, I'll do it that way then. And I'll confirm having read your other message as well - thanks. Gavia immer 17:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

How come COIBot triggered on this one?

User:COIBot/XWiki/unitarforbundet.org - seems to have been triggered by a single revert of removal of content. Just notifying you in case there's something wrong in COIBots setup - if not, just ignore this ;) Finn Rindahl 18:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The key is in the line 'Link redirects to mittbryllup.wordpress.com/, which is revertlisted by \bwordpress\.com on en.wikipedia.org' ... it is a wordpress blog. Some of those do need more attention (en:WP:EL actually 'forbids' to use the redirect site, but suggests to use the real url). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:11, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, thank you - that makes perfect sense ;) Finn Rindahl 11:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

hockeyfights.com

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hockeyfights.com

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Hi, you added hockeyfights.com to the blacklist. I saw your note was about the videos and also a comment about editorial oversight. I requested removal of it, and this was the note I left:

This was listed as spam due to a false presumption that most pages contain embedded copyrighted video. Most pages are statistical in nature (wanted to leave sample links, but the update was blocked) and are used as sourcing throughout media and even Wikipedia. There was a comment about editorial oversight, but it's not editorial in nature, it is based off of official hockey penalty statistics. To add: the videos that are there are mostly from Youtube and are posted by and/or under claim/control of the proper leagues and/or broadcasters. No copyrights infringed.

Back to my own comments: I found out about this after someone alerted me when trying to add a player profile to a wikipedia page. I'd be happy to provide you specifically with any information I can since you seem to have a lot of influence over the blacklist and added hockeyfights.com for incorrect reasons. ---- David, webmaster, hockeyfights.com— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.193.43.118 (talk)

I added it, the report is by someone else (and with possible copyright violations, I prefer to err on the save side). You might want to review Talk:Spam_blacklist/Archives/2010-09#hockeyfights.com and w:en:MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/August 2010#hockeyfights.com for the reasons. If I look at the video's (well, I looked at one), then I don't really see the information of the original, it appears that hockeyfights is the uploader, and owns the copyright. But lets wait what the discussion says, I can't decide here on a talkpage, it has to be discussed on the spam blacklist discussion page. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

ok, thanks for the response. I see the trail now (new to the wiki-world outside of reading). There's been no response to my request yet, hopefully soon. As for Youtube and copyrights - copyright holders can pull the videos down - or - they just claim rights to it. No ownership will change from a user perspective. In the control panels you see a notice, and the copyrights holders will have control of the video (they could have it taken down, but they can also have ads put on the page - which doesn't benefit the uploader, only the copyrights holder). If you can lend any advice as to what type of information I could add to that page to move the discussion forward, I'd appreciate it. - 10:22, 7 October 2010 (UTC)— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.193.145.132 (talk)

I don't think it makes a difference. see en:WP:COPYRIGHT .. we can link to the originals, that is good enough. And if a fight is interesting enough, it will be covered by other media as well. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 07:05, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The video there usually is an original. The point is it's not a violation, and the site itself is mainly a statistical database that is also original (I can't recall WP pages linking to the fight pages with videos, only the stats). There's no valid reason for an outright ban from mediawikis. If there's a different source, then any wiki editor can feel free to use it, I'm not pushing for linking, just an unban. To ban the site based off of incorrect copyright infringement claims and non-understanding of the nature of the site is not just harmful to the site's reputation, but shows there was very little background looked at when the ban was put in place. I just want to clear it up, because it's very straightforward if someone wants to read about it. You can see the NHL's policy on Youtube here and an explanation of the claiming: http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/64792 - 1:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I think I get it, but .. eh. "most pages contain embedded copyvio videos (usually from YouTube) of television broadcasts whose copyright is presumably owned by the broadcaster and/or league." .. the video that I see has your tag across it, suggesting that you uploaded it, not the original broadcaster .. still, I think this should be discussed on the talk:Spam blacklist itself. I'll keep an eye on that discussion. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 13:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You might want to poke en:User:Rrburke and en:User:A. B. about this. They were the ones bringing it here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

lenr-canr.org

Beetstra, your arguments on the spam blacklist talk page here are not going to look good when this is reviewed. I don't know what that will mean in terms of consequences, if any, but it's clear that the long-term behavior of the blacklist workers has been abusive at times. There was no spamming at all for the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org, I reviewed what JzG had put up with the request, and Mike.lifeguard concluded only that there had been "inappropriate promotion," which was irrelevant to spam, and which also wasn't true. I reviewed the evidence, no spam and no "inappropriate promotion." Not even a remote basis for that.

The copyright claim might be relevant if there was spamming, but it is also bogus. The site is notable as a source of information, I've put up just one link. I could put up many. That link shows that lenr-canr.org is actually recommended by the "flagship multidisciplinary journal" of Sprinter-Verlag, one of the publishers whose copyrights would supposedly be being violated. Lenr-canr.org is very prominent in google searches in this field. I saw someone who once claimed that they had received a take-down notice, but I've never seen evidence for that directly. Might have happened. They host thousands of papers, they can make mistakes, I'm sure.

But there is no legal hazard from linking to a site like this, period, unless it is known to be a copyvio, the specific page. And Wikipedia policy is clear on this, even if the policy is often misrepresented. (And a site full of copyvio could create some presumption of knowledge. But most pages on lenr-canr.org are not likely violations at all. Many papers hosted are actually preprints, of the paper as submitted, the actual publication would have, generally, only formatting changes and maybe some spelling corrections, and anyone could compare a preprint with the actual paper if concerned.... and the publishers generally allow authors to share preprints, I've seen the instructions for authors.)

All the arguments presented were irrelevant to the purpose of the blacklist, to prevent spamming, and what ArbComm rejected was the idea that the blacklist could be used for content control. This is, now, likely to go back to ArbComm, because their direction on this is being disregarded, not necessarily by you, but be aware that all of this is likely to come under scrutiny again. I now have a fast track to ArbComm, having been topic-banned by an admin claiming arbitration enforcement under discretionary sanctions. --Abd 15:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Note, I did not decline, I only suggested. For the rest, we are finished, Abd. Again, you have no clue, but really. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 18:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

But well, I am, amongst others, one that have concerns with this site, and I have explained my ideas and concerns with this as well (preferring to err on the save side ...). But your arguments should be at the blacklist, and I am sure that an admin there will evaluate it in the end. Or maybe it will just stay and become another dead horse. Please keep the discussion localised (i.e., on the blacklist). And good luck with the ArbCom. I'll be watching, it is generally fun, they make a greater mess than what the original situation generally is. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 19:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Need a litte help with spam filter

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projo.com

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Hi, I'm ja:User:Tomo Suzuki. I recently tried to add a link that begins with projo.com on Japanese Wikipedia, but was rejected by the spam filter. projo.com is managed by en:The Providence Journal, thus I do not think it is necessary to block this link. It seems that "bprojo\.com\b" is listed on the black list, and that may be the reason the request was refused. Thank you. --Tomo suzuki 18:48, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I see it is mentioned on the blacklist. I will remove it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 06:49, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

 Removed. Thanks for the report and the understanding. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 08:22, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

oneclickpharmacy.co.uk

Hello, I am not quite sure what we are still doing wrong, initially you had an issue with links, so we removed the links and posted important information only. This was neutral and informative. How is thos wrong too? we went ahead and did it correctly assuming that is that you wanted without links so I still have difficulty understanding how we are spamming? Please help. Thanks— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 78.105.106.225 (talk)

Please keep discussions centralised, etc. etc. May I ask you, why are you adding OneClickPharmacy to Wikipedia? It is because you want the name to be known, right. That is the basis of advertising, and that is why we remove such information. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:27, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I no, the reason we are adding oneclickpharmacy as this is the website that was the uks pharmacy marketplace, the comapny that did it, it is like saying amazon or ebay. there is no point announcing the news or the information without mentuioning where it happened or who did it?

For example, in the line below, you have Dr. FOX, this is a link to their website, clearly could be seena s advertising, but also theyir name is mentioned as it is the service they provide, just like oneclickpharmacy being a marketplace, the only one in the world for pharmacy... so I still dont know what we are doing wrong as the line for Dr Fox is more advertising than ours is? Which is not what its meant to be.— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 78.105.106.225 (talk)

Well, it clearly is advertising, and so may other links that are there already (see en:WP:WAX). And you put your link above that... Moreover, you do seem to have a conflict of interest. But as I said, lets discuss on the talkpage of the spam blacklist, I will let others comment there, see what they think. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 14:28, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Reply: Russian Referrer-Spamer

I found Referrer Spamer from Russia (casino gambling spam) on my Wiki, and this Spamer even if he was blocked tray it over and over again. So i expect that other Wikis have problems with this aggressive specific links and i Post it in Wikipedias Blacklist (i have in the last 3-4 years only post 2 time links in to the blacklist of Wikipedia, this included.)

The Spamer has even use my one address, an i have overlook this and was stupid enough to post my one link in to the blacklist, stress-flub, sorry! (I hardly tray to remain anonymous, i have no resource to defense my site against hard attacks or act of revenge. Like you can see i post the Links with a Proxy, because of possible revenge (DoS or Spam Attack etc) from russian or chinese Spamer mafia. A chinese spamer try once to hack the site (1 week long, 2 ago years), fortunately unsuccessful, only a script kid maybe.)

If it is not OK to Post Spamers emerged on other Wikis, i am sorry for the inconvenience and i will not post anymore Links on Wikipedia witch are only emerged on my Wiki. I am inexperienced with Wikipedias policy in this cases.

Pleas delete my webaddress runtime-b... from my blacklist entry/log if possible to reduce the risk for my site. tanks!!!

If you have questions, don't hesitance to ask, i tray to respond. (Sorry for bad english)— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 173.193.219.190 (talk)

Thanks for the explanation, and don't worry about the English, I am not native in it either.

It is fine to post them, especially if they are persistent like the one you describe, and even more if they are cross-wiki. It is merely that we would like to have some more explanation in the requests, pointing to typical abusers etc. Otherwise we have to go and research it all ourselves (while you have all the data available). I'll have another look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 09:40, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your replay, after i have seen that i put my own link on the list, i panic a little bit (i tray to fight against spamers an now i blacklisted my self... really stupid...)

Pleas delete my own link from the list runtime-b... thanks very much and sorry!

The Link are obvious casino gambling spam, and they emerged a referrer spam (as referer and user-agent) over a few days repeatedly (normally they come an go quick). So i expected that they spam wikis to. Before i posted such spamers on http://chongqed.org/, but this site is closed now, so i posted them here. Some spamers are smart enough to left there fingers from Wikipedia, but not from other small sites like my one.

I check the links and check the IP even here http://dnsbl.abuse.ch/lookup.php?ipaddress=91.201.66.28

I am not a expert or professional Administrator, so not very experienced in such things.

I took that one out. Could you consider to create an account (or activate SUL). Makes communicating easier than with a quickly changing IP. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} (en: U, T) 10:46, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Tanks very much for your help and sorry again that i use a bit of your time.

If you need more infos about the spamer, i need a hint what exactly you like to know more. Otherwise i take this little adventure as complete. I will return soon to see if some questions remain. Tanks and Bye.