Yes we know, jeff.

regarding this HAVE YOU NO CLUE what spam is? there have been massive attacks by spammers recently there was one user that added 142 links to the same site, the reason? to increase the sites rank in google. as for blog, myspace.com the reason is simple there is no need to link to jimbobs blog as per my reasoning at WT:EL Betacommand On 1/21/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: > > I've brought this up at the talk page at [[Wikipedia:External links]] > and ended up with more contempt than actual answers, so maybe some > people in the know will be nice enough to actually clear some things up > for us. > > 1) If we're going to blindly attach "nofollow" to all the external > links, why are we allowing Wikia links to be propped up artificially? > Are we in the business of conflict of interest now? > > 2) Myspace blogs were recently added to the spam blacklist by Raul per > request of Jimbo, although no one else seems to know why, how, or per > what rationale. I won't pretend to know what Jimbo's been up to past > not having edited Wikipedia since the is-it-or-is-it-not-a decree, but > perhaps some more explanation on this would be worthwhile? Seems like > we're blocking a shitload of otherwise worthwhile primary source > material for many of our articles for the sake of...well...nothing. > Meanwhile, a blog ''not'' hosted on MySpace is still a-okay, which is > patently absurd on its face. I'm wondering what the thought process was > on this, since no one else seems to want to chime in. > > 3) Did you folks know we have a bot that reverts links that are > arbitrarily considered spam? I didn't until today. > [[User:Shadowbot1]]. I convinced him to post the blacklist where we > could see it, and while some (most?) are useful, others are pretty > screwy, and I'm not sure this is helpful in the long run. > > I'm starting to think that our focus on spam is becoming a problem > rather than a benefit to the project. How much collateral damage are we > willing to accept in the project to take care of this "problem" that > people think is massive? One out of every 10? 5% poor hits? Do we > have some sort of measurement we're using here?

regarding this HAVE YOU NO CLUE what spam is? there have been massive attacks by spammers recently there was one user that added 142 links to the same site, the reason? to increase the sites rank in google.

as for blog, myspace.com the reason is simple there is no need to link to jimbobs blog as per my reasoning at WT:EL

On 1/22/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: I'm not completely sure what you mean, but I think you're asking why nofollow is applied to links to pages hosted at Wikia. The answer to that is that MediaWiki treats external links [1] differently to interwiki links, and nofollow is only applied to external links. So if my wikitext had [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite] I would get an external link, with nofollow, but if I had [[w:de:Hauptseite]] I would get an interwiki link without nofollow. This is sort of a bug, since there are many many sites which can be linked to this way: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map

On 1/22/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: Other blogs aren't a-okay, but it's simply not possible to block all blogs. Personally, I will allow blogs as sources when its contents can clearly be attributed to a notable individual. 99% of MySpace members isn't remotely notable at all.

Other blogs aren't a-okay, but it's simply not possible to block all blogs. Personally, I will allow blogs as sources when its contents can clearly be attributed to a notable individual. 99% of MySpace members isn't remotely notable at all.

Because there were enough MySpace blogs in particular being used as spam links to be a discernible individual problem, with no known cases where they were the right link and just the MySpace page itself wasn't.

What actual (non-hypothetical examples) do you have where the blog is an apposite link rather than the MySpace page itself?

- d.

Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> writes:

> I can't give anything but hypotheticals, but the idea that MySpace blogs > can't be useful as primary sources for their subjects is crazy.

True. For example, http://www.myspace.com/mkaku is a good source for Dr. [[Michio Kaku]], though it looks like the current editors of the article have removed it from everything except External links.

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: So because most blogs aren't useful, we'll simply assume they all aren't. Hey, most websites aren't useful, either, why not disable all external linking altogether?

Looks like Wikia is treated as an interwiki link, which assumes it's part of the same project. I'd report it as a bug, if I were you.

MySpace blogs are never a reliable source for anything other than a MySpace blog, and they are virtually never notable, so I don't see a problem.

I knew, but I've never looked at the blacklist. I've just trusted it... was I wrong to?

I don't think there is much if any collateral damage from our anti-spam efforts. I can remember one problem with ShadowBot removing a link that it shouldn't have, and I think it was resolved by fixing the blacklist (I don't remember exactly, I wasn't actually involved to a great extent).

On 1/22/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote: > It's very annoying to have to remember to hit "reply to all." Can list > admins fix this, please?

Jeff, I'm surprised that a process follower like you complain about the bot, that was approved via the usual channels , got consensus, and thus approved. Process was followed, don't you tell me that process isn't always good and thus should be ignored. How is that possible jeff??