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• Wikitravel talk:Local spam blacklist/Archive 2005 - February 2008

[edit] Removal of URL from Blacklist

Goodevening, I am writing in to ask for the url mentioned below to be removed from your blacklist, I hope this is the correct section to ask. It was added to several florida accommodation sections where the website offers villa and accommodation rentals direct from the owner. It is not an agency and so it was felt that it complied with the wikipedia regulations based on its similarity to other websites that were listed. If this is not the case then please receive our apologies and the site will not be added again. Thank you for your assistance.

Quoting Blacklist: "This URL has shown up in articles for at least a half dozen Florida cities (see Special:Contributions/90.197.99.232) and been reverted repeatedly over the past few days. As far as I can tell it doesn't meet the criteria set out in Wikitravel:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings, and the user is not responding to a message on his talk page. If the user ever responds and a resolution is reached then it should be safe to remove this from the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:08, 22 May 2007 (EDT) "

I've removed it for now, but please read Wikitravel:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings before re-adding this link to any articles. Apartment and other rental services must have a physical address - Wikitravel has been spammed over the years with hundreds (if not thousands) of rental agencies looking to make commissions, so the criteria laid out in the linked article are our attempt to draw a line that includes only those services that are of direct use to the majority of travelers. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:25, 10 August 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Blacklist nominations

• sigmahotels.com - Booking aggregator. Has been trying to replace primary hotel links (especially in Dubai with its own. I see no way they will be primary. OldPine 15:30, 23 February 2008 (EST)

• www.whattravelwriterssay.com Spamming via Special:Contributions/Poko6648 across numerous articles. Again, I see no way the link could be within policy. OldPine 15:30, 23 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Catch-all pattern

I added the following pattern on jamwiki.org a while back, and it seems to catch a significant amount of spam that hits that site. The pattern will block any list of ten or more URLs of the form "http://example.com http://example2.com..." that is added - as far as I can see there shouldn't be any legitimate edits that use that pattern, but spammers do it all the time. I'd like to add it here, but if it is found to block any legitimate edits please revert.

(http[s]?\://[^ \n\t\.]+\.[^ \n\t]+[ \n\t]+){10,}

-- Ryan • (talk) • 12:09, 1 March 2008 (EST)

I tweaked the pattern slightly to also ten of more URLs of the form "[1] [2]...". It doesn't catch links of the form "text text...", which is probably the next iteration that will be needed... -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:38, 16 March 2008 (EDT)

I wrote a new one ((\[https?://(\S*\.)+\S+\ .*\]\s*)|(https?://(\S*\.)+\S+\s+)){6,} to catch [http://example.com text] http://www.example.com.na [http://example.com] in any combination. Works perfectly in kregexpeditor, but for some reason it does not work on the blacklist if I look for 10 repetitions. Seems to work fine for 6 though.

--Nick 09:50, 17 March 2008 (EDT)

Great. Now I need to remove all the temporary links I have at User:DenisYurkin just in order to save anything new to my user page.

Can we exclude wikitravel.org from these banned links? --DenisYurkin 17:04, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

Hopefully that would be possible using the Wikitravel:Local spam whitelist? I confess I'm not sure how best to handle this, but you're right, it would definitely be ideal to not block wikitravel.org domain links using the (otherwise useful) catch all pattern. I'll give this a shot. --Peter ^Talk 17:46, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

I think that worked! --Peter ^Talk 17:50, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

Thanks, Peter--it works again now :-) --DenisYurkin 18:03, 21 March 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Regex search

Is there any way to do a search of wikitravel pages using regular expressions—to see what a pattern might catch? --Peter ^Talk 10:46, 11 March 2008 (EDT)

Try this [3], scroll to the bottom for Regular expression, add your regular expression followed by site:wikitravel.org, eg. /(a|A)(f|R)(r|R)(i|I)(c|C)(a|A)/ site:wikitravel.org will search for africa --Nick 13:31, 11 March 2008 (EDT)

I'm not sure that Exalead has worked out all the kinks of that regex search—I'm getting false positives on recent searches, and I tested that using the blacklist. --Peter ^Talk 18:07, 19 March 2008 (EDT)

[edit] switzerland-travel-guide dot info

I've reverted this non-official guide link from Switzerland four times now, the first time leaving a pointer to the Wikitravel:External links policy. Hopefully adding it to the blacklist will get the attention of the anon who keeps adding it, and provided there is some indication that it is understood that links to other travel guides are discouraged then this can be removed from the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:08, 30 March 2008 (EDT)

[edit] thepeakadventure\.com

There guys have been spamming Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son, Pai for ages now, so I'm blocking them until they learn to behave. Jpatokal 08:53, 26 April 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Phone #?

Is it possible to add phone#'s to this list? If so, we should add +91 33 64603695. It's for a travel agency that relentlessly adds it to several hotel listings across some Indian pages – cacahuate ^talk 11:22, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Yes, it's possible. The only problem is that it can be tough to account for all the ways they can mangle that number and still have it legible -- see [4] for what we had to do last time. Jpatokal 12:30, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Ugh. Japanese to me – cacahuate ^talk 20:52, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

9[ \.\-_/]*1[ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*4[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*[0|o|O][ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*9[ \.\-_/]*5

I've added it: 913364603695 and 9[ \.\-_/]*1[ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*4[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*[0|o|O][ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*9[ \.\-_/]*5 --Nick 04:56, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

Oh thanks Nick, just noticed this, nice work :) I think it worked, I don't recall seeing this guy around for a while now – cacahuate ^talk 15:17, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

[edit] apartmentsholiday dot com

This one has been repeatedly re-added to articles despite pointers in the revert edit summary and messages on talk pages to the Wikitravel:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings guideline. See Special:Contributions/Elliottfox, Special:Contributions/189.25.14.129 and others. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:24, 27 May 2008 (EDT)

[edit] trip2syria

Added due to continuous adding of inappropriate urls to Syria and Damascus. -- Colin 02:59, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

[edit] farmersdaughterhotel

Added farmersdaughterhotel since they just can't seem to stop spamming LA and California. Most of their links are SEOed for LA. The last one they tried to replace the official California link with their link. Since they can't stop, here's some help for them. -- Colin 03:44, 14 July 2008 (EDT)

yeah, i don't get this one... they're actually a good and popular place, not sure why they're resorting to these tactics – cacahuate ^talk 19:10, 27 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] z dash index

Just as we block "display colon none" to prevent CSS-based spam, we've been hit with a few today that use "z dash index". As far as I'm aware none of our templates or any other valid edits would need this CSS parameter, so I've added it to the list, but please revert if it is found to block any legitimate edits. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:25, 31 July 2008 (EDT)

[edit] fisheyestv dot com

An anonymous IP has three times created an advertising article for this web site, all of which were then deleted. To the anonymous user - please read Wikitravel:What is an article and Wikitravel:External links. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:23, 27 August 2008 (EDT)

[edit] jetabroad dot com

This one has been repeatedly added to a number of pages over the past several days, with the links hidden in an out-of-place "About" section. I'm not sure about the contributor's motivation, so hopefully adding this link to the blacklist will get his or her attention. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:40, 4 September 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Removal of URL from Blacklist | Jetabroad.com

Move from User talk:Wrh2:

Hi Ryan, I am writing this to you regarding the black listing of Jetabroad.com, and hope this is the right section.

Recently I set a team up to optimize our standing with the search engines. I was appalled to find that not only had they resorted to stupid techniques, they had ruined the quality of the information provided on Wiki Travel, by placing citations in random places throughout the destination sections. I was even more horrified that their stupidity had led us to be black listed on a reputable site, and seeing as they reported to me, it’s now my job in jeopardy. I appreciate the fact that you have removed the evidence of their brainless mistakes and ask if you could please take Jetabroad.com off the black list. I assure you that dim witted link insertion like this will not be prevalent again on my watch and I urge you to forgive me for my lack of supervision over the idiots that thought they would be quick rather than smart.

Regards, James

Link removed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:31, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Subdomains and Russian Wikitravel

For some reason, when I list subdomains on the Russian blacklist, it is blocking the main domain as well. For example:

"best\-windows2005\.narad\.ru" blocks all instances of "narad.ru" (narod changed to narad to avoid blacklist problems).

Any ideas why this is happening? --Peter ^Talk 09:07, 23 September 2008 (EDT)

Never mind, figured out—it's on the Main List of blocked content, so I just whitelisted it. --Peter ^Talk 22:32, 25 September 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Porn tables

Can we blacklist strings of html code? Like this? --Peter ^Talk 12:38, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

Can't see why not, simply blacklisting BGCOLOR should work. I'll test. --Nick 13:16, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

I have added ([Bb][Gg][Cc][Oo][Lo][Oo][Rr].*){5,} to the spamfilter. It should block all pages that contains the word bgcolor more than 5 times --13:30, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

Great! --Peter ^Talk 13:52, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Accor/Ibis Hotels Blacklist

Do we really want to blacklist this hotel group? It understand a single user has been added entries for multiple hotels, but we allow people to do it for other major hotel chains. At the moment I can't edit any entries with accor hotels, which is a considerale number --Inas 23:35, 28 September 2008 (EDT)

Agreed, it's one of the world's largest hotel chains, and should not have been added without discussion. I've un-blacklisted it. Jpatokal 11:11, 29 September 2008 (EDT)