[Foundation-l] Use of spam blacklist

[Erik Moeller]

As most of you are aware, there is a list of bad URL patterns which
cannot be added as links to any Wikimedia wiki. It is known as the
"spam blacklist" because its original purpose was to fight
bot-orchestrated spam attacks. There are currently some open and
recent discussions on

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist

about some additions or possible additions to the spam blacklist of
sites which are not spam(med) in the traditional sense. This includes:

* Wikipedia Review, an anti-Wikipedia board. Note that WR has posted
personal information about some Wikipedia admins, and is generally
full of flames and personal attacks.
* Daniel Brandt's sites (Namebase, Google Watch etc.). Brandt has been
redirecting all incoming requests from Wikipedia to any of his sites
to Wikipedia Review. Brandt also runs his own "Hive Mind" page where
several Wikipedia admins are listed with their real world identities,
photos, locations, etc.
* Wikitruth. This is currently under discussion because it contains
content which has been deleted from Wikipedia, often for legal
reasons.
* Kapitalism.net, Lir's site, which also contains a lengthy
anti-Wikipedia rant. Lir has apparently been subverting some blocks to
add it to a few articles in Wikipedia.

Not expressing an opinion on this matter, I'd like to simply invite
more people to join the discussion on the talk page. One idea that has
been expressed is to have a separate list of sites which are not spam,
but which are blacklisted for other reasons.

It is worth pointing out that:
* The spam blacklist is used by quite a few non-Wikimedia wikis. This
may bolster arguments for separate lists, rather than simply separate
sections in the same file.
* The spam blacklist is designed to fight spam. It will not trigger on
normal mentions of a string of characters like "www.kapitalism.net"
(without the "http://").
* Even if you were to blacklist the string of characters, humans are
generally good at coming up with permutations that break filters.

That being said, please post your opinion of how to deal with these
sites on the talk page above.

Thanks,

Erik