Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:33, 19 December 2005

Revision as of 02:09, 20 December 2005

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I wish to point out that assuming good faith is an important guideline of Wikipedia, but it is not an ironclad policy. Link spamming behavior fits a definite profile. When editors meet this profile, they are engaging in activity which is detrimental to Wikipedia, no matter how sincere they may have been in their edits. We should develop responses to those who engage in this behavior which encourage them to reform into productive Wikipedians, but we should waste no time in protecting Wikipedia from the damaging behavior through reverts and blocks where necessary.

=== Wikipedia as a [[Free For All link page]] ===

The more our readership climbs, the more people perceive us as a "powerful promotion tool that anyone can edit." Modern web [[search engine]]s have wisened up to [[spamdexing]] and [[keyword stuffing]]. When you open a high-traffic highly-relevant web page to anonymous editing, with no registration process or content detection filters, clicking "[edit]" is hard to resist.

=== New users and community membership ===

According to [[WP:SOCK]], "Neither a sockpuppet nor a brand-new, single-purpose account holder is a member of the Wikipedia community." According to the categories, on the page, this is official policy. Thus, we should recognize that the decision to incorporate a link proposed by a brand new account rests with real members of the community, not those who have no purpose here other than to add their link.

== The Campaign ==

We would want a concerted [[viral marketing]] strategy involving

* the project page (this one),

* the guideline page ([[Wikipedia:Spam]]),

* user message templates ({{tl|Spam}} and others),

* a standardised edit summary,

* a cleanup tag ({{tl|Cleanup-spam}}), and

* a category ([[:Category:Wikipedia Spam cleanup]]) that also serves as a "RecentChanges" watchlist.

and a dash of mentions in help pages, FAQs and fixup templates.

== Guidelines and policies ==

* Policy: '''[[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]]''' (shortcut: [[WP:NOT]])

* Guideline: '''[[Wikipedia:Spam]]''' (shortcut: [[WP:SPAM]])

* Guideline: '''[[Wikipedia:External links]]''' (shortcut: [[WP:EL]])

== Templates ==

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* Get an account and do something to contribute to Wikipedia more than just inserting links to websites. People who show that they are committed to building a good encyclopedia have standing to argue that a link will enhance an article. People who are instead committed to other websites do not.

* This discussion should have happened on the talk page, not this page itself. It will be moved there, and future discussion should occur there. [[User:Jdavidb|Jdavidb]] 16:42, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

== See also ==

* [[WP:SPAM]]

* [[WP:NOT]]

* [[WP:EL]]

[[Category:Wikipedia requests]] [[Category:Wikipedia maintenance]]