We treat it just like anything else. We wouldn't add the New York Times to the spam blacklist -even if- some idiot was spamming "SUBSCRIBE TO THE TIMES TODAY!" links all over the place, because there are potentially legitimate uses that good editors may make for such links. Instead, we would stop the spammers while permitting legitimate use.
There's no good reason to permit the thing on userpages or anywhere else. It serves no legitimate encyclopedic purpose there. On the other hand, there -are- articles in which it really does serve a legitimate, encyclopedic purpose. Let's take it off the blacklist, whack the spammers, apply semi-protection as needed, but let it be used where it's genuinely encyclopedic and appropriate.
Seraphimblade
On 5/3/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Thu, 3 May 2007, David Gerard wrote:
As I said on the blog:
A flashmob of fight-the-power morons are still spamming an allegedly illegal number into every input box on the web. The Wikipedia admins collectively declared "FUCK OFF YOU SPAMMERS." (Some have gone rabid "ZOMG LAWSUIT" and we were getting a pile of oversight requests as well ― I didn't zap, Fred did, until Erik told us not to. Mind you, it nicely short-circuited the idiotic deletion review.) Eventually it was put into the spam filter, because distributed spam is spam.
I entirely agree the number shouldn't be put in a zillion places in Wikipedia. But I get the impression that the loudest objections are about use of the number *at all* and that getting rid of number spamming is merely a more publically acceptable first step towards getting rid of it period.
The proper response is to allow the number on Wikipedia, but ban its use as spam, not to completely ban it in any form whatsoever.
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