I reply to messages here.


If you are in touch with the developers and sending them bug reports, what do you think of "anonprotection", as a halfway point between a protected and unprotected page. An "anonprotected" page could only be edited by logged-in users.

It would be unfortunate to treat anons as second-class citizens, but it seems like the only alternative is to keep en:PHP vprotected almost indefinitely... 67 spam edits in less than 10 hours the last time we tried unprotecting it on Feb 8.

We'd also want captcha to prevent bots from registering new accounts (to prevent spambots from getting around "anonprotection" and prevent a repeat of Wik's vandalbot).

-- Curps 07:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This has been suggested before but it doesn't seem likely. Focus right now isn't on adding features. If you want to file a bug on this as a request you can do it at bugzilla.wikipedia.org. Unfortunate, but we'll have to do what we can with what we have. Silsor 08:20, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

The attack is spreading to new pages. I'd say block 6x.to and uni.cc and .su -- Curps 08:06, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That's a very serious consideration, actually. There are currently only 5 external links on en: that use 6x.to and uni.cc, I don't know about .so though. These could be worked around. Silsor 08:20, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

more on the spambot edit

Two more spambot domains today: Baccarat.mordovia.su and Pain-relief.adygeya.ru

It might be good to block these .ru and .su domains at the TLD level... we didn't see mordovia.su before, but we already saw Gambling.adygeya.ru, so just blocking adygeya.ru would work best. Same for his other .ru and .su domains, he's just generating an variety of subdomains with them.

Also, is there any way to achieve a faster turnaround time for adding new domains to the spam blacklist? Only two new domains were seen today, but they required re-protecting the affected pages. Adding to the spam filterlist seems like a labor-intensive overnight process, perhaps by design.

-- Curps 00:35, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Weird, I was just blocking adygeya, mordovia and bryansk right before I got this message. I was also considering unprotecting the pages and monitoring them to try to draw out the spammers into giving away all their domains. This would require staying at the compy for a while though. silsor 00:41, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)


Jackpot!!!! edit

I was googling for this guys domains, he's really hammering other wikis, guestbooks, comment pages, etc. This is by no means limited to Wikipedia.

But guess what Google found!

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:W3_4ZjbAApgJ:www.e-projects.ru/e-catalog/jump.php%3F17+karacol+su&hl=en

Block all the TLDs listed below, and I think we're golden. I can read Russian, this is a free-domain hosting service. If they host spammers, block 'em all and let God sort 'em out.

abkhazia.su adygeya.ru adygeya.su aktyubinsk.su arkhangelsk.su armenia.su ashgabad.su azerbaijan.su balashov.su bashkiria.ru bashkiria.su belgorod.ru belgorod.su bir.ru bryansk.su bukhara.su cbg.ru chimkent.su dagestan.ru dagestan.su east-kazakhstan.su exnet.su georgia.su grozny.ru grozny.su ivanovo.su jambyl.su kalmykia.ru kalmykia.su kaluga.su karacol.su karaganda.su karelia.su kemerovo.ru khakassia.su komi.su krasnodar.su kurgan.su kustanai.ru kustanai.su lenug.su mangyshlak.su marine.ru mordovia.ru mordovia.su msk.ru msk.su murmansk.su mytis.ru nalchik.ru nalchik.su navoi.su north-kazakhstan.su nov.ru nov.su obninsk.su penza.su pokrovsk.su pyatigorsk.ru ru.net samara.su semsk.su sochi.su spb.ru spb.su tagil.ru tashkent.su termez.su togliatti.su troitsk.su tselinograd.su tula.su tuva.su vladikavkaz.ru vladikavkaz.su vladimir.ru vladimir.su vologda.su yakutia.su

-- Curps 00:50, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to bug you, any luck with this?

-- Curps 01:49, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ooh, good find. Just got here and I'll be taking a look at this. silsor 02:11, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)
Hey, please revert this!!! All this are geographical russian domains, they oftenly contains official sites of the cities, etc. You create very serious problem in russian wikipedia after adding this list. Begemotv2718
See discussion at ru:Википедия:Форум#Spam blacklist. Begemotv2718
In general, it would be a good practice to ask members or admins of the corresponding national Wikipedia before adding sites in national domains into the spam blacklist. Admins usually understand english. Or you think that all non-english users are spammers? Begemotv2718
These sites were creating a very serious problem on all wikis, and a site for free registration under these domains was pointed out. I also used Google to search Wikipedia for use of these domains and did not add any which were being used. Under these conditions, I think it was good to add the domains. Nevertheless I will remove them now because of the request and because spammers usually change their tactics after a while. silsor 01:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)Reply
Well, investigation shows, that indeed many of this domains sells hosting to anybody. But I don't think, that adding geographical domains in the blacklist is a good idea. Anyway, it would be better to remove at least the following domains from the blacklist:
vladimir.ru (www.vladimir.ru official site of the city of Vladimir)
msk.ru (Moscow domain, but it was already removed)
spb.ru (Sankt-Peterburg domain. Well, they host a lot of spammers, but I am afraid blocking the entire city domain is not an ideal solution)
kemerovo.ru (www.kemerovo.ru - official site of the city of Kemerovo)
and probably most of the others in the domain .ru. Since the domain .su is now deprecated, some investigation is needed before removing them from blacklist. Begemotv2718

Don't ban what you can't read! Almost all of the banned domains are geographical - and User:Curps seems to be either a benevolent idiot or a Russia-hating maniac. Just try to read a geographical map or run whois before banning. Maxim Razin 18:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

pillsbook.com edit

The Russian vandal or someone very similar is also using pillsbook.com

The entire TLD needs to be blocked, see my note at Talk:Spam blacklist.

-- Curps 19:16, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ban-request edit

Hello Silsor! Please be so kind and ban vho-dot-org, at least for the german wikipedia. They serve various books banned by the german law and various other stuff (antisemitic, "revisionistic holocaust-theories" etc. pp.). I would be happy if I didn't have to give a link (there was one today to a banned book), cause promoting that kind of desinformation is a serious crime in Germany.

There is no way to ban a URL on only one wiki. Ask your local admins to handle this. silsor 17:37, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks... edit

for your quick work on interia.pl! -- Ranveig 13:17, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Prison reform edit

I've been disambiguating Victorian and came across Prison reform, and BOOM!:

The following text is what triggered our spam filter: h ttp://www.prisonreform.com (modified to post this message)

I believe it's the reform part that made it sad. Can you fix please? The site seems legit. Josh Parris 02:57, 6 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Removed, thanks. silsor 12:13, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Reverting my entries ? edit

Hi,

Since you reverted my entries, what do you propose to prevent these spams ? http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Angela&curid=49&diff=65352&oldid=65350 Yann 11:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

I removed your entries because the talk page was flooded with requests to remove URLs as a result. To prevent the spams, first block the user or protect target pages if there are any, then block specific domains, then block top-level domains as necessary. Also try a google search for "site:wikipedia.org yourdomain.net" before blocking specific top-level domains, since some of the ones which are used for spam are also used on hundreds of articles in different languages. silsor 11:48, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

privoxy heads-up edit

I undid some accidental damage which seems to have been caused by your privoxy. [1] -- Jeronim 17:07, 26 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for catching that! silsor 18:44, May 26, 2005 (UTC)
and again [2] -- Jeronim 01:31, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Argh, filed a bug against Privoxy for it. Thanks. silsor 18:07, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

Spam block edit

Solsor: I am having some kind of problem with spamblock. I can't edit the Puerto Rico article or even the Meta talk page about blacklisted sites. I can edit otehr pages on Wiki, but that's it... Please help.216.220.232.220 17:25, 5 November 2005 (UTC) (Gator1)Reply

Okay, I fixed the Puerto Rico article on enwiki, but I don't know what's wrong with Talk:Spam blacklist. I was able to edit it properly, so the problem probably isn't with the blacklist. silsor 19:28, 5 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Alvaro : Merci edit

Merci beaucoup to you for that ;D Alvaro 21:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

I just wanna let you know your a great guy.

Jamima

Chinese Wikinews edit

Hi. Since you voted to support, you might be interested in this userbox. Dovi 08:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Spam blacklist and ntsearch.com edit

ntsearch.com is added via spyware, so I asked that it be added to the Spam blacklist. Later, I was doing a google search on it across the English Wikipedia, to find any places that still linked to it. However, I found something very strange: en:User talk:62.179.86.244 says it had already been added to the list, in 2004! Looking at the list's history, I found it had been removed by you here, on 9 November 2005, with the explanation "rm dead domain". The problem is that the link is added by spyware; even if the domain was dead, it must be kept forever on the list to prevent damage (a simple google search can show places in lots of different Wikipedias where it had been added by the spyware). Be more careful next time. --cesarb 17:25, 21 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Guerilla postering campaign edit

I love this idea... do you have any time to work on poster designs this weekend? I'll be around, and so wikk User:B4; maybe we could get advice from Zanimum and/or fir. I just met some people who run a serious industrial printshop near where I live, and another group down in NJ who does digital printing; we could get nice cheap prints in runs of 1k or so, if a test run turns out well. And if we can get them interested in Wikimedia, they also know everything there is to know about distribution networks and outsourcing distribution... I'd love to arrange things so that some of these hefty companies sponsoring part of our little outreach project and helped it get off the ground. A good design will help win them over, for sure. (Most of them don't know about WP, or why they should care, but love education.) Sj 00:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

What guerilla postering campaign? silsor 08:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Reply


I am not a spammer edit

You have reverted a delete of notice that holds insults and not proven content. I believe you are misinformed.
I a not a spammer.
I have added links to good content (not commercial product, relevant content, no multiple links etc...).
They have been removed by Ruud after a dispute on a all different topic.
The webmaster of linked page estimated the removal is no important and I have never added them again.
Thus I am not a spammer. I hate dispute but I'll be obliged to enter a resolving dispute If the notice, that is an attack against an enterprise, (not again me, the one who has previously added the link) is restored again. The link was added into the Algorithms and History of programming language pages at Wikipedia and the linked page is a site of algorithms and history of language, with no commercial product.

Splang 05:34, 4 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

Spam blacklist and OmniNerd.com edit

I exchanged emails with you a while back concerning my request to have OmniNerd.com removed from the blacklist, at which time you said you'd review the situation. Have you had a chance to do so? I'm curious as to what you thought. uriah923 22:02, 27 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I like it where it is. silsor 22:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

confirm edit

Hi, this is FYI; on the page Meta:Administrators/confirm the confirmation procedure for you is currently active. Please also note the recent created page Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat. You can find it on the RC. Please put this page on your watch list. Greetings, Walter 10:37, 31 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

Email contact edit

As you are admin on meta, I would like to direct your attention to this. Thank you, M/ 21:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I have enabled email from other users. Don't know how that got turned off. silsor 23:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)Reply