text:
Difference between revisions of "Wikitravel talk:Local spam blacklist"
Revision as of 13:19, 23 October 2011
See also & archives
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)
--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)
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)
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)
9[ \.\-_/]*1[ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*4[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*[0|o|O][ \.\-_/]*3[ \.\-_/]*6[ \.\-_/]*9[ \.\-_/]*5
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)
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)
Porn tables
Can we blacklist strings of html code? Like this? --Peter Talk 12:38, 27 September 2008 (EDT)
World of Warcraft
I added a couple of terms to try and stop what I believe is a spambot which has been spamming links primarily to mmoinn dot com across multiple language versions. --Peter Talk 03:20, 13 December 2008 (EST)
...joes (& spam list trimming)
So this is the second problem I've had with Joe... I can't add trader joes website, and now can't add Hale'iwa Joe's website... spam filter is blocking... i tried adding to the whitelist... and other thoughts? – cacahuate talk 17:04, 14 December 2008 (EST)
For many weeks now an anonymous user has been turning up, and without discussion changing significant information on articles related to Israel and Palestinian issues, including such basic data as capital cities (see [10] for one such example). Wikitravel:Be fair#Political disputes is fairly clear on how politically-motivated edits SHOULD be handled, so hopefully adding terms like the one above will at least slow the user down a bit. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:24, 1 January 2009 (EST)
inugg dot com
This site has turned up in a few places lately. Hopefully it can be de-listed once the current craze for these wacky boots subsides. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:01, 5 January 2009 (EST)
removal romantica tours dot com for spam list
Hi Ryan, I am writing this to you regarding the black listing of romantica tours dot com I recently hired a company to optimize our website and improve our ranking with the search engines. By browsing the internet I find out they used unethical techniques, and one of them was to add content on Wiki Travel without my permission in various sections related to Italy. I was horrified that their stupidity had led us to be black listed on this reputable site. I proud myself to have created a company based on good and ethical practice in growing its business and I ask if you could please take romantica tours dot com off the black list. I assure you that our link will not be associated again with any content on the website and please forgive me for my lack of supervision. Thank you and best regard, Aldo
saultseller dot com
Keeps redirecting all listings to this site. Readds despite reversions by mulitple people over many weeks. --Inas 07:11, 29 January 2009 (EST)
I've added this one to prevent a certain videogame gold farming guild from continuing to add spam pages to Wikitravel like this.[11] I've seen this particular spam for what seems like a good year on Shared, and it seems to be rearing its ugly head especially now, both on shared and :en. And I can't think of a possible good reason to use this term in our guides. --Peter Talk 03:47, 4 February 2009 (EST)
geogad dot com
An anonymous user has been adding (and re-adding) links to this audio tour site. Edit history has been used to try to get the user's attention by providing links to Wikitravel:External links#What not to link to ("In particular, avoid links to other travel guides, including audio guides and audio tours.") but to no avail. If the user in question disagrees with current policy please discuss on Wikitravel talk:External links/Audio guides. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:31, 3 February 2009 (EST)
wowphilippinestravelagency dot com
I've provided numerous pointers in edit summaries and on User talk:Wowphilippines as to why a list of external links on the Boracay article is inappropriate, but my edits have been reverted six times now without comment, so hopefully the spam list will be a more effective tool. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:45, 4 February 2009 (EST)
Parisforrent dot com
Keeps recreating page, despite several deletions with edit summary, which is displayed fairly prominent when you try to recreate a deleted page --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 14:35, 4 February 2009 (EST)
Hi All, thanks a lot for these useful explanations. I was a little lost, and didn't understand why my tentative listing kept disapearing without any explanation.I thought it was a kind of bug... I have read carefully the policy links you refered at and I still think that ParisForrent is perfectly legit and wikitravel policy compliant. We are an "real" agency, focused only on Paris vacation rentals with more than 10 years of business history. We do have an physical address, both in the US and in Paris and most of the apartement we offer belongs to us directly. I would really appreciate if somebody could review our website and explain to me why we are less relevant than the other listed in the Paris Sleep section. In any case, could you please take us off the "blacklist" because it is bad for our reputation and could impact our google ranking, something that would be totally unfair. I won't of course try again to publish us if you decide that we should not be there, even I don't realy understand why... Thanks for your help! Xavier
User Talk Page Spam
I have noticed common spam text on several user talk pages. I have blocked a number of spam terms that appeared on the following pages: User talk:Harcourt, User talk:Bartholomew, User talk:Beaverbr - Huttite 04:19, 10 February 2009 (EST)
Lost Paddle Rafting
lostpaddlerafting dot com seems to be a legitimate business, but despite requests in edit comments and on user talk pages the site has been added to everything from unrelated Colorado cities like Denver to the USA article, most recently using the edit comment "grammatical", apparently in an effort to disguise the change. There are plenty of rafting outfits in the Rockies to choose from, so I don't think it hurts us to blacklist this overly-aggressive operator. To the editor who has been adding these listings: please read Wikitravel:Don't tout, which outlines the policies for listing a business on Wikitravel. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:13, 10 April 2007 (EDT)
p.s. I had to write out dot com as I am still black listed:)
putinbayreservations dot com and putinbay dot com
A very persistent anonymous editor has been changing URLs for Put-in-Bay hotels to point to this bucket site, and despite good faith efforts to discuss why this violates Wikitravel:External links continues to revert changes. If this site really is the preferred site for the hotels in questions it is mentioned NO WHERE on those hotel's web sites which seems very suspicious, so I'm adding it to the blacklist to prevent further changes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:05, 23 February 2009 (EST)
www bbvaticanstpeter dot com
Tampering with his listing, recapitalizing, and moving to top of an alphabetical list, despite a warning. Maybe this will get his attention - hardline stance on Rome since it's spectacularly prone to these things. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 18:14, 1 March 2009 (EST)
Yabancı dil
An anonymous user has been repeatedly adding a page called Yabancı dil which includes the phrase Yabancı dil. The content is in turkish and appears to be an English language school advertisement and a copy vio. I added Yabancı?dil to the spam filter in the hope that it would work. - Huttite 06:26, 11 March 2009 (EDT)
Strange adverts/spam for gold collecting and wood chopping for some crappy game called Runesca*pe keep popping up, over a very long term. I can't think of any appropriate use of the word on our site, so I've blacklisted it. --Peter Talk 01:58, 15 March 2009 (EDT)
X mas?
Any reason X mas is on this list? I couldn't edit Austin because of it. I suppose I could change the wording there, but forcing usage is not a good reason for something to be on this list. --Jonboy 10:49, 15 March 2009 (EDT)
dailyistanbultours dot com
Added to stop an absolute flood of linkspam from an anonymous user (for example, [12]) going onto every page between Istanbul districts and the top-level Asia article [13]. - Dguillaime 19:26, 21 March 2009 (EDT)
rajasthan-holiday-tour dot com
This link, along with text copied verbatim from other web sites (see shared:Copyleft#Can I copy text to Wikitravel from other sites? for why that's bad) has been appearing all over the site and many times within the same articles (see Wikitravel:Don't tout and Wikitravel:External links). If the anonymous user who is adding these links reads this and agrees to stop spamming then the blacklist listing can be removed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 08:56, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
After link spamming us for the n'th time, despite good efforts to teach the shop better manners, I think it's time for a blacklisting. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 22:50, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
Ryan tried serveral times to communicate with this user, who is linkspamming our guides in Vietnam with the above domain - as far as I can gather this resulted in the creation of a different account , not the way forward - so blacklisting. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 11:06, 7 April 2009 (EDT)
Blacklist error update
The default text in MediaWiki:Spamprotectiontext was quite uninformative, so I tried to make it a little more user-friendly. Irony of the day: since the message doesn't support MediaWiki markup, I had to write it in HTML, but my first attempt was rejected by the spam filter due to the a href format link... Jpatokal 00:52, 8 April 2009 (EDT)
Help catching new instances of old spamming trick
Can anyone figure out how to update this expression:
To also catch instances like
http://www.message_cac4ttrvar dot com/ http://www.message_acerricc4 dot com/
Thanks - --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 12:52, 9 April 2009 (EDT)
For some reason, urls ending at china .com are blacklisted, which eg hits http://www.puppetchina .com (which is the official home page for a theater in Beijing). Is this filter needed?--ClausHansen 04:41, 20 April 2009 (EDT)
Dhakaholidays dot com
This fine fellow was asked to stop, after having his spam reverted throughout the day, but instead he thought it would be productive to just step things up and spam page creations at high volume. --Peter Talk 03:47, 27 April 2009 (EDT)
toplvltrr dot com
section header name changed to escape blacklist
User has been duly warned, but shows no inclination to stop. On top of that, the spammer is leaving goofy "wikitravel welcomes business owners" messages in articles [15] and spammed across the pages of those who are reverting his edits. --Peter Talk 19:03, 28 April 2009 (EDT)
I edited Guilin and Yangshuo sections according the rules of wikitravel. And do give the right contact information of certain services which have no booking information. They are ALL CORRECT CONTACT INFORMATION NOT SPAM! I don't know why people detele my work and even block my friend's site link. As for the warn, I didn't get the message until this morning.
Please give me specific reasons not show me some links to some pages because I already wiki business pages many times these days.
Thank you!
I want to claim again that all the information are NOT SPAM. Many travelvers have been getting the services from the certain contact information which I edited. I don't know why Peter and Gorilla think they are spam. If they really think it is spam please give me the reason. I left messages in their discuss pages asking for reasons but no reply. :-( —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 188.8.131.52 (talk • contribs)
Thank you very much, Jpatokal. eventually I found the problems in the pages which you left me. What should I do now if I want to put back the agency's link? I can delete all the other irrevlent information which I edited before by myself and I will help you guys to clean wikitravel in the future. Please help me get of out it. It hurts the search engine rank badly:-( Thank you!
Why can't I add the agency link back? Which policy? I have been studying wikitravel policies these days. In this page http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Activity_listings it says if the tour operator meet the certain conditions it is okay to list. The conditions are 1.The operator must have a "real world" office with a phone number and address. 2.Do not list tour operators that act as a booking agent or travel-planner for the traveler—tour agencies should offer something as a supplement, rather than a replacement for Wikitravel guides. Listed tours should count as an activity available at a destination (e.g., a helicopter tour of a city, or a camel expedition into the Sahara). 3.Do not list resellers of tours, only list the actual tour operators. 4.Always list tour agencies if they are requisite to visit a certain area. Examples include tours required by law (e.g., Panmunjeom) and tours required due to exceptional danger (e.g., war zones and extreme environments such as the Amazon, Antarctica, Space, etc).
Is there anything that I miss? I don't want to be again the rules again. Thx!
Hi, there! I already read the two links above again. However, I still think I have the right to put it back:-) Because 1. as business owners, my friend and I own **** (TLT); 2. **** is NOT agency for any tour operators. We have our own tourguides, cars, offices and we offer the final services to travelers directly without any agency. Our head office is just 5mins' walk from train station and thousands of travelers have joined our tours; 3.if needed you can leave an email add for me here then I can email you our license as a qualificated tour operator in China. But no worries, I won't edit it back until I can show you that **** is NOT tout. Thank you! Lily in Guilin, China
I am not in charge of North Korea part in **** but I think my colleage already put that in order in the page. I dont know much about it but in Guilin and Yangshuo parts I have admitted that at the time we didn't know the rules of wikitravel we made a lot of mistakes. However, we have been studying wikitravel rules these days and after our domain was got out of the blocklist we really know how to behave. We have promise not to delete other's information and won't tout in our information. Our offices are in Yangshuo and Guilin. We are local tour operator of the area. I have proved that the qualifications that why we can list in tour list in Guilin and Yangshuo area. Thank you! Lily
As I have got some suggestions from here and my talk page, I think it would be better talk about our situation in the revalent disscussion pages-Yangshuo(http://wikitravel.org/en/Talk:Yangshuo) and Guilin(http://wikitravel.org/en/Talk:Guilin) sections instead of here. See you guys there! Lily
Today I found someone add the link back to the blocklist. We have NEVER add the domain back to tout or to do anything bad!!! I just came back from a business trip from Tibet. After I came back to office these days what I contribute in wikitravel are all useful items. I do all of them according to the rules I have learned. None of them are spam. Moreover, if someone doesn't agree with what I wrote plase show your repect frist:talk to me in the mytalk page and let me know your different opinoion before making this rude decision(adding our domain to blocklist directly). Long time ago, the domain was in blocklist. At the time, I didn't know the fucntion of "my talk" however, people did tried to contact me and let me know their different opinion through "my talk". Now I am really angry and concerned about this case. Lily
I am a new user on Wikitravel. I am planning to make myself an account. I already tried to eddit one page. I wanted to add the link to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Pyongaeng, but it said that it was blocked by spam filter. Please help, thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 18.104.22.168 (talk • contribs)
I am trying to add a link to this page: http://wikitravel.org/en/Talk:Crewing and am getting blocked. The link I am trying to add is extremely relevant to the post. It is latitude38 dot com/crewlist/Crew.html This is a primary site.
msryat dot org
Arabic-language site that's been added in blocks of four URLs by an anonymous user to numerous unrelated articles. Not a language I read, but no apparent value on :en. - Dguillaime 21:51, 1 May 2009 (EDT)
golden hyphen flower dot co dot id
Hotel spammer keeps recreating a page for this hotel, immediately following deletion, despite several requests to stop. --Peter Talk 03:51, 7 May 2009 (EDT)
citybaseapartments dot com
Have added this as a temp measure. Adding to many pages despite attempt to educate. Nrms 07:24, 11 May 2009 (EDT)
Since there seems to be some user engagement going on now, removing in the hopes the problem has been solved. - Dguillaime 22:38, 27 August 2009 (EDT)
topicss dot com
Spam links to this site with front linked Arabic have been showing up around the site, added by numerous ips, mostly on pages that no one appears to be following. --Peter Talk 17:40, 11 May 2009 (EDT)
Dive time dot com
Per User_talk:ScubaDiver007 & Special:Contributions/ScubaDiver007. --Peter Talk 07:16, 14 May 2009 (EDT)
travelmapia dot com
Seeing regular spam for this domain across our Latin American articles, from multiple ips, over at least the past week. --Peter Talk 15:49, 22 May 2009 (EDT)
puertoprincesa tour dot com
Pretty egregious spamming, which escalated when asked to stop. This spamming hasn't been going on long, so I think it would be fine to remove it if the owner agrees to knock it off. --Peter Talk 02:42, 25 May 2009 (EDT)
orlandodiscountticketsusa dot com
This link has been reverted multiple times from every article in the Disney World area, with numerous pointers given to Wikitravel:External links. Since it keeps reappearing I'm adding it to the blacklist in the hope of halting the spamming. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:42, 25 May 2009 (EDT)
s one dot shard dot jp
Sudden wave of spambots dropping tons of links to this one domain, e.g., [17]. --Peter Talk 04:30, 27 May 2009 (EDT)
33333 dot com dot tw
The link to the Gau Shan Ching hotel is dead on the Alishan website, so I was just trying to be helpful and update it to the right link (which is this domain, and which is actually the right website.)
crossculturalsolutions dot org
See Special:Contributions/22.214.171.124. Listing added to dozens of articles in violation of Wikitravel:External links and Wikitravel:Don't tout. Attempts to get user's attention via talk page have failed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:21, 17 June 2009 (EDT)
balipropertyconsultancy dot com
Repeated spam on Nusa_Lembongan. Gorilla Jones 09:46, 18 June 2009 (EDT)
store dot pchome
Repeated spam in failed sneaky attempts by Special:Contributions/Thung11 & Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52. --Peter Talk 06:12, 24 June 2009 (EDT)
deepcreekvacations dot com
The rental agency aggregator spam from this guy (who's used other ips as well) doesn't stop, and he's already been duly warned. --Peter Talk 10:31, 28 June 2009 (EDT)
this is google
Somewhat bizarre new spambot pattern, preceded by six random letters and with a long string of garbage in the edit summary. Coming in from multiple IPs with no apparent pattern to the target articles. - Dguillaime 17:42, 28 June 2009 (EDT)
redsevenleisure dot co dot uk
See Special:Contributions/Nivaria. User isn't responding to comments left on his/her talk page or in edit summaries and is repeatedly re-adding links that aren't in accordance with Wikitravel:External links. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:29, 1 July 2009 (EDT)
abetterstay dot com
See Special:Contributions/Big-chad. Notes left on the user's talk page don't seem to be getting attention, and this link is clearly not appropriate according to Wikitravel:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings and Wikitravel:External links. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:47, 1 July 2009 (EDT)
E d e n w a l k s
Edit warring and endless additions of a tour agency, no details, and it probably counts as a tour people could do themselves. All despite a warning. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 08:10, 7 July 2009 (EDT)
Ok I AM NOT INTERNET OR COMPUTER SAVY AND DID NOT KNOW I WAS being contacted. I am trying to help and did not want to hurt our company at all. all i saw was my post gettinng removed as well as others while i stayed.
xiahe hyphen tibettravel dot info
The usual tale of edit wars and ignored warnings by a tour agency. Gorilla Jones 08:31, 10 July 2009 (EDT)
Getting Removed from the List (roundtheworldflights dot com)
Hello Ryan and Evan I am writing in to ask for rtwflights dot com and roundtheworldflights dot com to be removed from your blacklist, I hope this is the correct section to ask. Also to apologise - didnt realise you werent allowed to link to specific page tables. Had being doing it for ages mainly because I had written and updated a lot of the content - most of that was without links. Also didnt realise there was the talk section till someone showed it to me yesterday. Yeah as you say wasnt malicious but breaks the rules. Realise its a big no no now. Kind Regards Stuart Stuart at roundtheworldflights dot com
Metacharacters And You
I've cleaned up a number of expressions in the blacklist that were escaping (preceding with a backslash) a number of things they didn't need to. For reference, the only literal characters that need escaping are:
Things that don't need escaping include spaces, colons, and hyphens. In some cases, including an inadvertent escape can cause your expression to fail in unexpected ways - "dull" would block the word dull, but "\dull" would only block "0ull", "1ull", ..., "9ull". Similar problems meant a few items on the list were previously ineffective. - Dguillaime 21:23, 22 July 2009 (EDT)
Random spam catcher
Per Wikitravel_talk:Vandalism_in_progress#Spambots, I've experimentally added the string [B-DF-HJ-NP-TV-XZb-df-hj-np-tv-xz]{5}, which catches sequences of five or more consonants in a row -- not something that should happen too often outside random spam. Jpatokal 00:28, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
Another concept: ([a-z][A-Z]{3}|[A-Z][a-z]{3}), which catches the case of a letter pair changing three times in a row (eg. aBcDeF). Still would fail on eg. German department store KaDeWe... Jpatokal 04:10, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
taxi lima peru dot com
A persistent spammer, who I can't really contact due to lack of a static ip, has been changing all the taxi links on the Lima page to his/her own, and mucking about with the phone numbers too. It's persistent enough where I've noticed some got by me today—time to blacklist. --Peter Talk 19:00, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
One of the cheapest tariffs....
Added to slow down an anonymous user adding Vodafone advertisements to every city in India; a note on their talk page and a 5-minute block to get their attention only resulted in them shifting immediately to a different address and going right back to it. Not blocking the URL itself (vodafone.in) since it shows up with some legitimacy in many other articles. - Dguillaime 03:31, 30 July 2009 (EDT)
LimaPeruTaxi dot com & Limo dot pe
See Special:Contributions/22.214.171.124 - spamming a vast number of Peru articles with taxi listings. To the anonymous user who is doing this, please read Wikitravel:Don't tout and Wikitravel:External links. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:04, 30 July 2009 (EDT)
i was inturkey dot com
We've gotten spam from this domain over the years, and it often gets by unnoticed. --Peter Talk 20:24, 30 July 2009 (EDT)
span onmouseover
This is one of the identifying characteristics of a long-running, utterly incomprehensible bot (or very bored human) that adds chunks of auto-translated text to pages -- usually Dutch, but the most recent example is Swedish instead: [22]. The phrase is part of some assorted HTML that always accompanies the edits, which references some JavaScript that doesn't exist. I can't imagine we'd ever want any onmouseover() events in text anyhow, so it should be safe to block. - Dguillaime 15:56, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
This one has been deleted twice now from User talk:TylerLee, and possibly other pages. It's a completely non-travel related advertisement for wedding dresses. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:51, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
suitesatoldtown dot com
I've left pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout in edit summaries, on User talk:Dwang and on User talk:126.96.36.199 with no luck - this listing still gets added repeatedly to numerous articles in the Orlando area despite being located in Kissimmee (according to the web site). See Special:Contributions/Dwang and Special:Contributions/220.127.116.11 for examples. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:42, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
J u l i e and Yangshuo
J u l i e just won't leave the Yangshuo page alone, and this has been going on for a long time. --Peter Talk 13:42, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
completely-crete dot com
Spammed across a number of Greece articles. Gorilla Jones 20:25, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
Toledo, Ohio
I'm trying to add a route navigation box to the Toledo (Ohio) page, and the spambot is blocking me. I'm not even trying to add an external link. Eco84 13:20, 9 August 2009 (EDT)
rabbitinternational dot com
Real estate spam on a few occasions across project articles and Dominican Republic. Gorilla Jones 19:44, 9 August 2009 (EDT)
trekkingtourinnepal dot com
Cleared our front page with spam for a good 15 minutes. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 06:07, 11 August 2009 (EDT)
guilinchina dot cn
Repeated bad faith edits: switching out legitimate hotel websites with their own and adding new ones under the same aggregator url. Presumably, the easiest way to get through to this user will be a url blacklist. --Peter Talk 22:51, 18 August 2009 (EDT)
finlandiahotelmoga dot com
Repeated additions to just about every page this guy gets near, even on project pages, haven't been around for while, but come back recently - and behaves just as badly as last time - despite a warning on a IP he/she did repeated edits on today --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 03:20, 19 August 2009 (EDT)
deconcilio1 at gmail
This guy has been spamming 'round the clock on several Italy articles across multiple language versions. A blacklisting should hopefully get his attention? --Peter Talk 16:36, 20 August 2009 (EDT)
visitbeautifulgreece dot wordpress dot com
Repeatedly replaced valid links throughout Greece, continued after warning. Gorilla Jones 11:30, 22 August 2009 (EDT)
only-apartments dot com
See Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199 - spamming across all Paris articles. To the user who is adding these listings - read Wikitravel:Don't tout and Wikitravel:Accommodation listings#Apartment listings. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:30, 25 August 2009 (EDT)
Window clean/wash - ing/ers
Various cleaning companies from California keep creating spammy user and user talk pages. This should keep them out. - Dguillaime 22:55, 25 August 2009 (EDT)
B. Bartmann
Bill, or someone promoting him, keeps spamming Talk:Travel topics from multiple IPs.
Spam Filter Blocking Edit
The Spam Filter keeps blocking the Talk Page of the Collaboration of the month candidates page when I try to add something. ChubbyWimbus 20:44, 29 August 2009 (EDT)
The Spam Filter keeps blocking edits of Wailea, Maui page. Even when I remove all the text I added, it says the page edit is blocked by a spam filter. --Amy mci 20:54, 13 October 2010 (EDT)
Various Car Hire Agencies
elephant car hire dot com has been showing up in a vast array of articles, from South Africa to Ireland to Chiang Mai. It's a booking site, and thus not suitable for Wikitravel according to Wikitravel:External links. I'm not entirely sure that I tracked down all articles that contain this link, so if anyone knows of a more reliable way to find and remove these links please take a stab at it. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:22, 30 August 2009 (EDT)
Question - does anyone know if easycar is a legitimate rental agency, or do they merely broker with actual rental agencies? There have been a bunch of links added (and removed) to Orlando today, and looking at the company's web site I don't see any physical addresses so I'm suspicious of this one. Does anyone know anything about them? -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:27, 17 December 2009 (EST)
elephant car hire dot com do have their own fleet for cars in Cyprus but they are a broker elsewhere. Budget dot co dot uk are legitimate in the UK and easycar partially. easycar is part of the easy group (like the budget airliner easyjet) and have some of their own fleet. rhinocarhire, anycarhire and the others mentioned are all brokers.
Hi, would you please consider removing rhinocarhire dot com from the spam blacklist. We are disappointed to see ourselves listed in this directory and the practice that seems to have led us there is certainly not condoned by our business. We have traced the issues back to a former editor / SEO specialist who has not been involved with the company for some time now. I would welcome any comments or advice of any further actions that we would need to undertake to be removed from the blacklist. Many thanks in advance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 126.96.36.199 (talk • contribs)
Hi Ryan, thanks for your feedback. We understand the wiki policy on external links and where not to link (brokers / aggregators) and accept that this has happened previously, however as stated this was traced back to a former editor who is no longer involved with the company. I am at a loss to see what else we can do to be removed from the list. We accept that the actions carried out on our behalf breached the wiki guidelines and for that we apologise, however this practise is not condoned and no action of this nature has taken place for some time. I would be most grateful if you could further advise the next course of action, or reconsider our removal from the list. I hope on this occasion you are willing to accept good faith and our acknowledgement of previous mistakes. We do not attempt to be listed on wiki as understand the rules on brokers, however are powerless to prevent spam from third parties that could be detrimental to us. Would it be possible to create a separate list where we can self impose a listing so we cannot be listed in the main pages, however not be labelled as spam?
Ryan, Thank you for the reply, however I do not see the justification for our site being labelled as spam by wiki travel any longer. We accept that previous practices led to our listing, however we have been punished by this now and understand the rules and assure that any such practices are not condoned or permitted by the company. As for claiming to have cars at locations where we do not, this is not true, we are a broker like many car hire sites and market products that are available to our customers from us. We have an official car hire blog within our site, I am not aware of any fake blogs that you mention, please provide further information. We are not requesting wiki travel to recommend our company, however to continue to label us a spam is unreasonable in our opinion. I would like to point out that we were awarded Best Car Hire Website 2010 at the Travolution Awards and so find your comment regarding your recommendation not to trust our site unjust. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter further, can you please advise the best way to contact you.
Serious spammers are serious
Blacklisted hostelio who have decided it would be ingenious to use a spambot network to spam us with continously bouncing IP Addresses. How about no? -- Colin 16:40, 30 August 2009 (EDT)
triptobudapest DOT hu
Edit warring at Budapest, not responding despite a couple of messages on talk page. --inas 20:15, 9 September 2009 (EDT)
theworlds retreat dot co dot uk
This fellow has been edit warring & spamming all the Yorkshire pages with his hotel touting. Hopefully this will get his/her attention—once it has, I'm fine with removing it from the blacklist. --Peter Talk 22:39, 17 September 2009 (EDT)
Dear Stefan, i accept no multiple listings. My post above is requesting that the listing be added to a single page - East Yorkshire. This charity run bed and breakfast is not in the city but in the country. Sorry for being a pain but i think this page could really do with some more content. I have lived in East Yorkshire for many years, love the area, and would like to contribute.
Kind Regards,
proposal on policy for adding
From time to time I encounter "edit conflict" triggered by the fact that already there was a blacklisted URL or something in the article I tried to edit. Hence the proposal:
--DenisYurkin 05:16, 20 September 2009 (EDT)
perfect suntra vel dot com & barce lonapoint dot com
This spammer has spammed links to these sites over the past couple days on at least six language versions (Hebrew was spared). This is the kind of thing that makes me wish we could edit the hard blacklist, which covers the whole site. --Peter Talk 12:01, 25 September 2009 (EDT)
hotels residences dot com
Aggregator site that keeps adding themselves to cities and countries all over Europe. All anonymous edits, and never more than a couple from any single IP address, so there's been no way to communicate with them via a talk page; putting them on the blacklist is a blunt approach, but at least it should get their attention. Most likely won't need to be a permanent addition. - Dguillaime 15:52, 25 September 2009 (EDT)
feelparis dot com, feelbarcelona dot com and feel-madrid dot com
Spamming Paris and Barcelona articles. See Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199 and Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:48, 30 September 2009 (EDT)
direct-croatia dot com
Apartment spam. See Special:Contributions/220.127.116.11. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:53, 30 September 2009 (EDT)
dear sir,
This is Gopinathan Iam doing travel business in chennai,kanchipuram,coimbatore,ooty,mamallapuram. so that iam contributing in this site but my phone numbers and my travels name sare not getting stored in this site please help me
your telling iam deleting the competeters name but iam not doing like that.please consider my request.please allow to add my company contributes in wikitravel sites. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Gopinathangns (talk • contribs)
This user is continuing to spam across articles in violation of Wikitravel:Don't tout, so I've also added the company name (KEERTHY) to the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:29, 4 October 2009 (EDT)
Aditya, A One and ABC
See Special:Contributions/Adityatravel. User is removing competitor listings, and after blacklisting immediately did the same thing with additional company names. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:14, 8 October 2009 (EDT)
al-sufarahotel dot com
Has now created the article of the same name for the n'th time, time to stop this. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 17:11, 12 October 2009 (EDT)
Leonardo-hotels dot com
Bad faith editing and sock puppetry, time to stop this, at least until we got some dialogue with user. --Stefan (sertmann) Talk 07:23, 20 October 2009 (EDT)
Period space comma newline
The current wave of vandalbots all seem to end their one line with some punctuation (usually a period, occasionally a question or exclamation mark), space, and comma. The pattern added matches only that combination, and only if it's either the end of the article or followed by anything that's not a letter or number -- I think that'll keep false positives at bay, but please revert if that's a mistake. - Dguillaime 22:03, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
migente dot com
Spambot on several sites[[23]] and has a similar pattern to exchange the first section. Always anymonous users and it's always fake goods. jan 08:59, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
boards.webmd dot com
Continious spam on several sites (e.g. Cagliari three times today) always in the first section of an article. It's junk and bad faith it obvious jan 09:02, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
webjam dot com
Especially targets Israeli articles [[24]] and it's obvious junks with changing IP's. jan 09:10, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
identi dot ca
Reenters always in the Soma Bay article and it's obvious spam. jan 11:05, 24 October 2009 (EDT)
I tried to change the following part of the http://wikitravel.org/en/Kobe page Original: Hankyu Mikage station 御影駅 or Sumiyoshi station 住吉駅 Corrected: Hanshin Sumiyoshi station 住吉駅 or Mikage station 御影駅 But the spam filter page is coming up with the whole page —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 18.104.22.168 (talk • contribs)
188.8.131.52 is removing competitors
How should we deal with this user? Could anyone help to explain him what's he is doing wrong? See [25]: the only competitor removal he made. --DenisYurkin 10:52, 27 October 2009 (EDT)
goodnano-av dot com
Shows up frequently in spambot droppings, particularly the ones that create new pages; doesn't appear anywhere on the site otherwise, and doesn't appear to have any possible travel relevance. - Dguillaime 17:31, 27 October 2009 (EDT)
Can't edit Wikitravel:Votes_for_deletion/June_2009
Im trying to add an entry to Wikitravel:Votes_for_deletion/June_2009 but the page has spam entries, so now the spam filter thinks im adding spam, too. I parked my entry under Wikitravel_talk:Votes_for_deletion/June_2009, please fix, and post my entry on the archive page. -- Eiland 07:03, 29 October 2009 (EDT)
ouarzazate-unlimited dot com
See Special:Contributions/Abdel. Spamming Morocco articles, and removed competitor listings in this edit. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:38, 29 October 2009 (EDT)
Forum spam
OK, I'm officially hopeless ay regular expressions, can anyone come up with regular expressions that blocks
jetluxuryresorts dot com
Appears to be an aggregator site, and thus does not meet the criteria in Wikitravel:External links and Apt. User is not responding to comments left on User talk:Jetluxury. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:43, 4 November 2009 (EST)
Can't edit Huaraz page
Trying to correct a bunch of minor errors on the Huaraz page and the spam filter won't let me make any edits. I'm not trying to add any links, simply make minor informational edits. So I don't understand the point of the filter if it won't let the wiki act as a wiki and allow users to edit pages. Stymies the point of this whole endeavor. Thanks. {unsigned|184.108.40.206}}
easy to holiday
An aggregator site, and thus not something that should be listed here per Apt and Wikitravel:External links. Has been re-added repeatedly to articles despite comments left in edit summaries pointing the anonymous user(s) to the appropriate policies. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:01, 9 November 2009 (EST)
booking dot com
Userin User_talk:Anna_lev is very eager to add links to this aggregator site. I will put it on the black list because she is continuing after several warnings. jan 04:53, 11 November 2009 (EST)
maisondusud dot fr dot gd
See User_talk:184.108.40.206. Anonymous user keeps creating ad pages that cannot be reused; hoping this will nudge them to look at their talk page. - Dguillaime 22:43, 17 November 2009 (EST)
dentaldoctor dot us
Several anonymous users keep deleting Understand section and add this link. I will add it immediately to the list to avoid further entries. jan 09:21, 20 November 2009 (EST)
africabusiness dot com
I can't tell if this is a real user or a bot, but every 5-9 minutes another Africa article gets updated with two links that are clearly inappropriate per Wikitravel:External links, not to mention Wikitravel:Don't tout. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:32, 20 November 2009 (EST)
farebusters dot com
Has been going around anonymously the last couple of days and swapping official airport url's for his own. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 05:30, 21 November 2009 (EST)
southernresorts dot com
We've been getting spammed by this company for several years, with no response to notices left on talk pages. See Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199 for the latest episode. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:35, 24 November 2009 (EST)
aiguarentacar dot it
After spamming various Italian cities for a while, and being reverted, he/she has now resorted to adding the links to random destinations outside Italy too. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 13:53, 1 December 2009 (EST)
westwindairservice dot com
See Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168. I've left a note on the user's talk page and in edit summaries, but they seem intent on adding their listing to as many articles as possible. To the anonymous user adding these links: read the Wikitravel:Don't tout policy. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:08, 2 December 2009 (EST)
rentalocalfriend dot com
See Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199 (and other anon IPs). Listing is not in compliance with the tour listing policy and user is not responding to comments on talk page or in edit summaries. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:24, 3 December 2009 (EST)
zoominearth dot it
See Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168. Listing is not valid for Wikitravel per Apt. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:45, 4 December 2009 (EST)
expo2010 dot travel
This non-official link has been repeatedly re-added to Expo 2010 despite comments left in edit summaries and on User talk:Jimchiu. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:29, 8 December 2009 (EST)
See Special:Contributions/Kitty20091208. Adding advertising URL with absolutely no relevance to an assortment of pages, often overwriting valid listings in the process. No response to their talk page, either. - D. Guillaime 02:05, 10 December 2009 (EST)
Special:Contributions/184.108.40.206 is spamming several Florida articles and ignoring pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout that I've left in revert edit summaries and on the user's talk page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:57, 10 June 2009 (EDT)
Now I know Celebration Suites at Old Town was blocked because we violated the Wikitravel:Don't tout and we didn't notice the warning you left in the revert edit summaries. Can you remove our hotel and website from the blacklist? And when I post again I will obey the rules. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dwang (talk • contribs)
Now I know our post has violated the Wikitravel:Don't Tout and didn't notice the warning. We are a new starter here and didn't know the details. So can you remove our hotel and website from the blacklist? We will obey the rules when we post again in the future. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dwang (talk • contribs)
1cheaphotels dot com
This site is an aggregator site and thus is invalid for listing on Wikitravel per Wikitravel:External links. It's been showing up in a number of edits across the site from lots of different anonymous IP addresses over the past weeks, which looks to me like a sneaky attempt to get their URL in our guides. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:27, 11 December 2009 (EST)
queviagem dot com
This spammer hasn't been at it long, but he's hitting articles that I don't think anyone is watching. This should at least get his attention. --Peter Talk 11:35, 19 December 2009 (EST)
backpackerscarmarket dot co dot nz
We've been having a great deal of trouble with anonymous edits on Buying or renting a car in New Zealand with edit warring, inserting multiple links, improving their entries while simultaneously degrading their competitors' entries, and so forth. Most recently they've simply replaced links to other companies with their own, e.g. [27]. Attempts to communicate via talk pages have been unsuccessful. - D. Guillaime 22:49, 21 December 2009 (EST)
bh-hotels dot com
Prolific hotel spammer in Italy. Tried to educate but user shifts IP's. Maybe this will catch some attention. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 07:22, 22 December 2009 (EST)
puretravel dot com
Keeps spamming Talk:Vietnam from different IPs. - D. Guillaime 01:33, 23 December 2009 (EST)
Italian Hotel spammers
I've been wondering about this for while; Either all the touty hotels added to our Italian guides are done by the same person/agency, or there is some sort of tool to format the listings into Wikiformat, possibly automatically, since they all take a form like this recent addition:
They all have those distinct dots, and always include the address written exactly this way. I was wondering if we could blacklist "Cap:", and see what happens. I did a quick search, crawled through a dozen of the search results, and cannot did not find anything innocent this would block, as long as the colon is included in the expression.
And maybe add a comment to the line like Cap: <!-- Please use the Hotels: template in the button of the page, and skip postcodes -->
Just for while to see if it works anyway. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 20:29, 23 December 2009 (EST)
in2vietnam dot com
See Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52. Spamming a number of Vietnam articles with links to a random travel site. Pointers to the relevant policies have been left in edit summaries, but the user restores the links despite reversions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:04, 26 December 2009 (EST)
HolidayCars dot com
I am writing to request removal from the blacklist for holidaycars dot com. I had been publishing links in destinations where the business has operating partnerships AND where other car rental companies are listed with links. I have read the policies for Wikitravel:Don't tout and Wikitravel:External links and do not understand any violation we may have triggered. Can you please explain this to me? Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pchildress (talk • contribs)
Thanks for the explanation; it's clear enough. I agree not to post anymore links, so I would appreciate your removing the site from the blacklist (as you said, its negative effects are potentially far-reaching). Thank you in advance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pchildress (talk • contribs)
explorepantanal dot com
All efforts to get this company to abide by Wikitravel:Don't tout have failed, so using the blacklist as a last resort. See Special:Contributions/220.127.116.11 and Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168 (amongst several addresses used) for contribution history. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:47, 26 December 2009 (EST)
removing backpackerscarmarket dot co nz
we would like the black list to be removed for our link, we were unaware of the rules about the numbers of links in each section and appologise for this. as for removing competitors i think this subject needs to be looked into further as you will find that our entry was the first to be removed and then degraded with libelous comments edited into information about our company. the information we left was informative and unbiased and at no stage did we degrade our competitors. we did remove the competitors that had written untruths about us, and in retrospect perhaps this was over zealous, however we were not familiar with this section of the website and didn't know how to make our grievances known. there is still a lot of information that is incorrect in this section, and we will continue to optimize this section so that it can be as useful as possible to visitors to New Zealand. We have now created an account as this seems to be the best way to go, and have read and fully understand the rules on these topics, many thanks.
so if anyone actually bothers to check the edit history it is clear to see that i removed an edit from another, at the time, anonymous user which was making liabolous comments about my business whilst promoting another competitors business....mmmm. none of my edits have ever been abusive or liabolous. since that edit was made two or three users including inas have reverted my edits back to this anonymous users entry......a bit unfair and un substantiated dont you think??? i was as i have previously mentioned i was unaware of the login being so important nor of the rules about links or the talk facility etc so all i saw was various users continously removing my edits and replacing with lies made up by a competitor. i have since ceased removing these edits but still left a little confused as to the involvement of some apparently well respected members of this community in purveying malicious rumours. if someone would be so kind as to look into this and resolve the matter that would be great.--Backpackerscarmarket 22:38, 8 February 2010 (EST)
i have read and fully understand the relevant the wiki travel guidelines--Backpackerscarmarket 22:41, 8 February 2010 (EST)
At this point I'm not sure there is a precedent for leaving a site on this list once the author is engaged, unless someone else knows of one. However, there is no guarantee your site will be listed here. --inas 23:44, 8 February 2010 (EST)
my appologies inas i have taken another look back at the history and you are correct it wasn't you that reverted the edit back to the abusive edit that caused me to respond[[39]] , just to clarify we are not used car dealers, we do not sell cars we are a market, and we sell space to travelers to sell their own cars in. i have recently taken over the business and i have had a lot of problems with competitors trying to bad mouth us to bring the reputation of my business into disrepute and perhaps this is why i took the matter so personally, i can however promise that i will not involve my self with such behavior on this site again. --Backpackerscarmarket 15:00, 12 February 2010 (EST)
capeintern dot com
Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199 is not responding to pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout and Wikitravel:External links left in edit summaries and on User talk:22.214.171.124. Adding to the blacklist to avoid further additions. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:01, 30 December 2009 (EST)
loverio dot net and rentapartmentrio dot com
See Special:Contributions/Mayimbe. I left a note on User talk:Mayimbe with pointers to the relevant policies, but spamming continued along with edit warring. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:10, 4 January 2010 (EST)
in-bucharest dot com
See Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52. Site is not in compliance with the apartment rental listing policy and the user is edit warring. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:56, 4 January 2010 (EST)
archsanblas tripod com
Constant spamming of San Blas Islands and ignoring message left in edit summaries and on User talk:18.104.22.168 --Burmesedays 07:52, 5 January 2010 (EST)
editing Zadar page
I can't seem to edit http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Zadar at all because of the spam filter.
alfamahouse dot com
See Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52 and Special:Contributions/Ortsac. User is ignoring pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout and Apt in edit summaries, on User talk:Ortsac, and engaging in edit warring. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:17, 6 January 2010 (EST)
Seven Windmills B&B
Keeps double listing his business in several Amsterdam districts, despite numerous requests to stop. Hope this will get some attention. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 05:01, 14 January 2010 (EST)
I am Seven Windmills B&B owner. Firstly, let me say what a wonderful site this is.
This discriminated against the grachtengordel area and other areas of the city like the Jordaan where most of the better, safer accomodation actually is.
Berfore the 'Amsterdam' page was restructured so that the city is clinically divided into administrative regions, we had many enquiries and lots of happy guest (mostly families) staying in our B&B. When the format of the page was changed, and no link to the grachtengordel area existed in the 'Sleep' section our page hit rate went to zero, and enquiries virtually stopped because of the way the main page was written - with a focus on cheap travel for singles.
It took me a while to figure why the enquiries had stopped. When I saw this new format it was clear that this situation might not be considered fair by some inckuding myslef, with my small business.
I also noticed a saw a block of text from the CityMundo booking agency in the 'Sleep' section directing everyone to their booking engine - and also notice they are not blacklisted here like my business ? How can this be so ?
So, in response, may I ask that I be allowed to advertise on Wikitravel under the grachtengordel section, and that my alteration to the 'Sleep section' whith a link to the grachtengrodel be allowed to the remain on the Amsterdam page ?
Many Thanks, Kerk
a2zrooms dot com
Booking agent inserting their email address and url into sleep lisitngs at Liverpool. --Burmesedays 08:03, 12 January 2010 (EST)
MS Salute
Keeps overwriting a competitor's entry in Hanoi, no response to talk page comments (anonymous IP). No URL, so trying the hotel's name instead to catch their attention. - D. Guillaime 23:59, 24 January 2010 (EST)
madagascat dot co za
I have gone out of my way to assist this user at User_talk:Madagascattravel but no response, and continues to spam various Madagascar articles with a booking site link. --Burmesedays 11:20, 30 January 2010 (EST)
iwasinturkey dot com
The site is in the spam list. Is it possible to remove the site from the list or give us the reason why the site is in the spam list? We will do all the necessary actions to clear the site's name. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 184.108.40.206 (talk • contribs)
You can be sure that it will not be added any more.
Is there any news about this?
Any news with this issue? It has been almost 2 months.
too broad marine(dot)ru
Currently the following URL is not allowed, referring to a pattern 'marine(dot)ru' -> 'marine\.ru'
Probably the pattern should still allow anything that has a letter immediately following "(dot)ru". --DenisYurkin 14:05, 2 February 2010 (EST)
Baoshan district of Shanghai
I am trying to link to the official webpage of Baoshan district government in Shanghai but gets this message: "'baoshan dot sh dot cn' -> '\w+\.sh\.cn'", how can this be fixed?, ClausHansen 02:02, 8 February 2010 (EST)
Panama Spammer
I've blacklisted these today, after continued spamming/vandalism on project pages, despite a pretty stern warning on the users talk page.
GTV resort dot com
This spammer (User talk:Bandhavgarh, Special:Contributions/22.214.171.124, special:contributions/126.96.36.199) has been adding listings/links for his hotel across multiple articles, usually 3–4 times per article, and more obnoxiously uploading loads of images of his hotel to both :en and Shared. There is one legitimate place for this listing, but I have now removed that too [40], for as long as the website will remain blacklisted. --Peter Talk 11:59, 15 February 2010 (EST)
Edgewater Investment Group
To avoid spending 4 years on this user as Wikipedia has done, since he is apparently both relentless, persistent and thoroughly unable to work within online communites, I propose a blanket ban (blacklisting) on all Edgewater Investment Group websites.
More details here: Talk:Put-in-Bay. If in doubt, I urge you check out the many links to the users activities on Wikipedia --Stefan (sertmann) talk 13:23, 15 February 2010 (EST)
www dot handy-sparen dot de & www dot handy dot de
Both sites are daily inserted in the Germany article and are a clear violation of our xl policies. Only reactio so far but spammer was that he changed the IP. jan 05:41, 18 February 2010 (EST)
VecheaVama dot ro
An anon user is very persistently reinstating this link, which really doesn't seem to be official in any way, shame or form, despite claims of the opposite. Maybe this will get some attention so we can engage with the user. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 18:23, 21 February 2010 (EST)
deraghotels dot de
Has been reinstating apartments that are only bookable for 14 days or more, contrary to our policies in apt, hope to get some engagement so only hotels or apartment available for ordinary bookings are listed on Wikitravel. --Stefan (sertmann) talk 18:45, 21 February 2010 (EST)
paris-pyla dot fr
Listings that aren't in compliance with Apt keep getting re-added to Paris/5th arrondissement, Paris/6th arrondissement and Paris despite comments on talk pages and revert summaries. See Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52, Special:Contributions/Sunduk, and probably others. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:51, 22 February 2010 (EST)
Don't understand ...
I tried to add a hotel-listing at the "Darjeeling"-page. Reads like this:
Saving is blocked by Spam Filter.
Removed url -> Saving is blocked by Spam Filter.
Removed email -> Saving is blocked by Spam Filter.
Removed both -> Saving is blocked by Spam Filter.
So what? Does somebody know? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Serkhang (talk • contribs)
Works like a charm! Best thanks! I'm sorry for not signing my contribution, before. I only ticked the add-signature checkbox after submission. Newbie! Cheers serkhang 15:01, 27 February 2010 (EST)
extremehotels dot com & swellsurfcamp dot com
The Cabarete article has been the subject of a long-running edit war between this business and another. I removed both from the article with a message on Talk:Cabarete that the owners would need to work out their differences before either could be re-added, but this listing has re-appeared several times since then so I'm adding it to the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:41, 1 March 2010 (EST)
Roman Homes
Hello, I am not familiar with editing in Wikitravel, and so I am not sure that this message will be read. If it is, please reply to this problem. I tried to write (in the "sleep" section of Rome) a brief description of our company Roman Homes, offering vacation rentals in Rome, also mentioning our website romanhomes dot com, but it doesn't go through. Seemingly our site is blacklisted. I read here that it could be that someone "removed competitor information". Now a few days ago an employee of mine said that because the policy instructed not to edit the website URL, than he removed all the URLs he found in the "sleep" section, because he believed that other competitors were violating your rule (!). Today I went to see the page he mentioned, and I found that the links of these competitors were there, and it wasn't possible to include a link to our site romanhomes dot com. Now I read that removing competitor information is a breach etc. Again this employee of mine thought that he was doing a good thing (!). Only now I understand that it was bad, and I am also glad that one can publish the URL of a website, to inform visitors about it. Can you kindly remove the "ban" on romanhomes dot com, as now we understand your policy, and we will abide by it? Thanks in anticipation. Mauro Abate - owner of Roman Homes, website romanhomes dot com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Romanhom (talk • contribs)
We read well your policy, which I found in the link you prompted me to, and we agree with them. We honestly don't understand why you could not find the address and details of our agency, which I wrote in the edited text, and which can be also found in our website (please see the entry "Meet your guests" in the "Overview" drop-down menu of our site. The details are as follows. Roman Homes, address: Via Nettunense Nuova 65, 00040 Marino Rome (Marino is a little village in Rome's periphery, it is more ancient than Rome itself). Our phone numbers are: (+39) 069352216 or (+39) 3332420210. Our agency, working usually with exclusive rights agreement with the owners of vacation rental agencies, is one of the oldest and most reputable of Rome, operating since 1997, although it was active since 1990 as a cultural society of Rome University, hosting people coming to Rome for cultural purposes. Throughout the years, we have been pioneers in many aspects of this activity in Rome (first agency to organize in the 90s a network of room rentals for people coming to Rome solely for cultural reasons, first website in Rome to use digital photography and especially panoramic photos, first agency in Italy to organize online a car service etc.). Usually, our website is sadly plagiarized by copycats, for which we had to resort to lawsuits. Among the copycats, some of the other agencies edited in wiki Travel. For ex. the agency Rome Sweet Home began in 2001, editing their website largely by copying/pasting text and photos from our website, which is considered one of the best and most complete presenting Rome (and not only the sheer apartments rented). Should you require additional information, I will be glad to provide it. Thanks, and keep up your good work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Romanhom (talk • contribs)
Thanks Ryan, and before posting anything I will read well again the apartment listing policy and also the "Don't tout", although it is sometimes hard to understand the borderline between the allowed or correct listing information, and what is touting. I will do my best, hopefully it will work out. Regards, Mauro.
This is a second message, after reading the apartment listing policy and also the "Don't tout" policy. We understood well both, and we'll do our best to follow the guidelines and the policies. Thanks again Ryan. Regards, Mauro Abate
Added in the slim hopes that it might halt some unusually dumb and sadly persistent vandalism. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:20, 15 March 2010 (EDT)
skijapantravel dot com
Travel agent that has consistently spammed Hakuba and other articles.--Burmesedays 09:21, 21 March 2010 (EDT)
mbt2sale dot com
One of the few spammers that consitently create nonsense articles about shoes and varies the text but not the link. jan 05:52, 22 March 2010 (EDT)
sagatravel dot is
Travel agent who spammed multiple Iceland articles. All were deleted and messages left, came back and did the same again.--Burmesedays 10:20, 22 March 2010 (EDT)
A very persistent tour guide from Nigeria who continues to place his ALL-CAPS listings on the top of articles from Africa to Nigeria to Calabar. See here, here, here, and I'm sure several others. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:24, 22 March 2010 (EDT)
holidaysinkeramoti dot com
Persistant spamming sub Rome articles and talk pages. States in summary holidays in greece. jan 16:03, 24 March 2010 (EDT)
bedbugspictures dot net
Creation of spam articles (e.g. Bedbugs) that are always full of new xl violations. jan 10:15, 25 March 2010 (EDT)
vienna-cityapartments dot at
Several users tried to advise this business that their listing is against our Apt policy and started instead with front linkind and reinsertion. jan 04:45, 28 March 2010 (EDT)
Hello Ryan,
what can I do that you remove my site from the blacklist? Please help me.
Greetings from Vienna Guido
I dont understand why I´m on the Blaclist here. Please help me to remove me from the blacklist. I´m not a travel agency. Here are many Privat apartments with their link. Why cant I do this? Please help....Kind regards Guido
who can help me to remove my homepage fron the blacklist. I will put my apartment on the right place here und add my adress. Please help me here. Im sorry about the the mistakes that I did. Thank you forwarding. Kind regards
Hello Ryan,
please give me a second chance for my site dot at here. Thie is my mainside. In the future I will follow the rules here. Thanks forwarding for your help. Kind regards Guido
cretan-nutrition dot gr
Violation of dt and xl plus frontlinking in the Crete food section. jan 04:56, 31 March 2010 (EDT)
baylodging dot com, islandclub dot com, and putinbayresort dot com
See Talk:Put-in-Bay#Edgewater Investment Group. --Peter Talk 22:55, 1 April 2010 (EDT)
begin of the skype highlighting
It seems like a Skype plugin is broken and is adding meta tags when certain users edit articles. Hopefully blacklisting this tag will solve the problem. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:45, 7 April 2010 (EDT)
Skype highlighting?
swept in from pub:
For the skype uninitiated, could someone explain why edits like this [41] are occurring? Is there anything we can do to stop this from happening? --Peter Talk 10:29, 7 April 2010 (EDT)
villabrasilmotel dot com
At Santa Monica, user pasted his listing over the top of an existing competitor and then inserted his url into six other listings, deleting the correct urls. --Burmesedays 01:45, 11 April 2010 (EDT)
Why is Angelfire on the blacklist? I've got a Buy listing whose web site is on Angelfire. LtPowers 22:56, 23 April 2010 (EDT)
galapagosonline dot com
I've removed this one numerous times from the Galapagos Islands article because the site is a reseller of tours, not an actual operator, but it continues to be re-added. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:36, 28 April 2010 (EDT)
zanys dot com
Rental agency that spams Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese articles with their promotion and ignored warning. Finally started to edit warring, so block and blacklist. jan 05:57, 29 April 2010 (EDT)
mommitaslodge dot jimdo dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:220.127.116.11 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:15, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
sandovallodge dot jimdo dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:184.108.40.206 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:15, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
shirlbaywalkpensionhouse dot webs dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:220.127.116.11 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:15, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
coronvillahermosaguesthouse dot webs dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:188.8.131.52 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:15, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
orientallodginghouse dot webs dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:126.96.36.199 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:15, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
amorpensionhouse dot webs dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:220.127.116.11 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:15, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
coronsunriseinn dot jimdo dot com
User_talk:Zaldyangulo or anonymously User_talk:184.108.40.206 continiously enters his business in the Coron and Busuanga Island article in a very touty way and ignored several warning by multiple users. I'm going to blacklist all of his regular entries. jan 07:27, 30 April 2010 (EDT)
extremeiceland dot is
This address has now been added and reverted three times from Talk:Iceland. To the user who keeps doing this: talk pages are for discussing the corresponding article, not for advertising a business. In a similar vein, please read our policy on listing tour companies. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:42, 1 May 2010 (EDT)
grammy dot com
Anon user 22.214.171.124 has spammed several articles with this link. It violates several policies. jan 04:20, 10 May 2010 (EDT)
lidodivenezia dot it
This hotel booking site keeps adding about a dozen links to the Venice/Lido article, despite pointers to Wikitravel:External links. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:18, 13 May 2010 (EDT)
Hoianeasyriders dot wordpress dot com blocked
I made an entry a while ago for a local business in vietnam (http://wikitravel.org/en/Hoi_An) and some punk recently removed it.
See: Hoi An Easyriders (Hoi An Easyriders)
I've attempted to add it back in but when I attempt to save it with the url="Hoianeasyriders dot wordpress dot com I get a spam block notification.
I don't know why it is blocked but it is very frustrating. I would like to add the URL back in. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Davidgelman (talk • contribs)
Expanded out the pattern a bit to catch new attempts including overwriting of competitors, cf. [42]. -- D. Guillaime 20:34, 12 February 2011 (EST)
mahindrahomestays dot com
See Special:Contributions/Mahindrahomestays. I'm not sure whether this site is valid for listing here per our accommodation guidelines, but the mass updates of improperly formatted listings are clearly not inline with the SEO policy, and the user hasn't responded to messages left on his/her talk page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:27, 17 May 2010 (EDT)
suites-et-compagnie dot com
This listing is not in compliance with the apartment listing policy, but despite pointers to that guideline it has been re-added to Bordeaux at least four times. -- Ryan • (talk) • 14:08, 17 May 2010 (EDT)
I added for the city of Jamshedpur(India), the following:
There is no URL or anything, has someone an advice? —The preceding comment was added by 126.96.36.199 (talk • contribs)
hotelsneardelhi dot com
Several links in the understand section in cities and towns around Delhi in blatant form. jan 06:51, 18 May 2010 (EDT)
peacemission dot info
I am trying to update a link to our church's website from the old one fdipmm dot libertynet dot org to the new www peacemission dot info but its getting spammed. What should I do?
I'm sorry, it is this one: http://wikitravel.org/en/Montgomery_County_(Pennsylvania) on Woodmont Palace Mission Inc. Thank you
Thanks a lot, it worked!
nanuksbungalows dot com
See the history of the Nusa Lembongan article - anonymous user(s) have been replacing numerous URLs on the page with this one and have ignored all warnings (per Wikitravel:Don't tout) to stop. From the article history this looks to be a particularly egregious abuse. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:12, 21 May 2010 (EDT)
loveblogspot dot com
Spambot that create new sites all having a link to the above mention site. jan 11:20, 22 May 2010 (EDT)
nexgenam dot com
Spamming Talk:Main page is not only egregious, it is stupid. User has already been warned in the past. --Peter Talk 10:04, 26 May 2010 (EDT)
hoteldeals dot ae
See Special:Contributions/220.127.116.11. User has been spamming us with hotel aggregator links and isn't responsive to comments left on his/her talk page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:47, 30 May 2010 (EDT)
travelgrenada dot com
Rather ballsy ongoing spam at Grenada. If user replies and agrees to stop, please remove from blacklist. --Peter Talk 20:20, 1 June 2010 (EDT)
I am having difficulties in editing Coorg http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Kodagu&action=submit please could you help? It says some spam filter is blocking things. Fredericknoronha 17:21, 3 June 2010 (EDT) Fredericknoronha
noxedge dot com
Spamming the talk page of our main page is stupid and frontlinking makes it only worse... jan 07:22, 4 June 2010 (EDT)
gringorent-a-car dot com
Spamming our Margarita Island unser username Mustsee and with anon IP. Has been warned but kept inserting. jan 11:26, 5 June 2010 (EDT)
I was unaware of the talk feature and thought someone was removing the information out of spite or compitition. I will follow the rules and apologize for not understanding. Please remove from the spam list. Thanks, MustSee
Hi Jan, a competitor has been deleting/changing the Margarita Island board and I need help. Thanks MustSee 13:23, 17 October 2010 (EDT)
Hi Ryan, sorry I am not real sharp with a computer. Since those listings contained incorrect phone numbers, I didn't see the harm. If you look at the history you will see this spammer has been up to this for awhile, just recently posting other companies. The spammer is only out to cause harm. I asked Jan for help in my talk section awhile back, but I must have done something wrong. If I goofed I apologize.
I noticed the http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:External_links#What_not_to_link_to states " Rental cars operators, in cities where they are common (10 or more operating in the city). Typically we don't provide details of national car rental chains in local guides. Providing details at the national level, and mentioning the name and location at local level is sufficient if required."
Since GRC is the only car rental agency in Playa El Yaque, I am requesting that a link be permitted to be placed under the Playa El Yaque portion. If you think it should say something other then what it does I will need help in formatting because computers are not my bag. Thanks MustSee 16:23, 17 October 2010 (EDT)
Maybe this will help? http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:User_ban_nominations#Outstanding_nominations Cheers MustSee 20:27, 17 October 2010 (EDT)
sheraton dot com/senggigi
Sadly a nice hotel in Senggigi has started to spam our article with multiple listings. Several warnings have made and efforts to contact them. The Sheraton still spams the article so we need to blacklist them because otherwise business owners in the region will cry foul. Please revert on spot. jan 03:38, 7 June 2010 (EDT)
travelingtolisbon dot com
Non-compliant Apartment agency that continiously places ther listing in Lisbon and has been reverted by most active admins in the last weeks. jan 05:33, 8 June 2010 (EDT)
barcelonacheckin dot com
One of the bunch of aparment agencies that keep spamming our Barcelona in multiple ways and occasions. jan 07:54, 11 June 2010 (EDT)
Time to trim the blacklist?
There are some disadvantages to having a long blacklist - large regular expressions are slower, it's tougher to manage a long list, and some of our patterns may be overly broad or targeted to specific users who are no longer vandalizing the site (example:
((h|H)(e|E|é|É|/?)(l|L)(p|P)).*((c|C)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(m|M)(b|B)(a|A)).*((h|H)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(m)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(s|S)(e|E|é|É|/?)(x|X)) ((h|H)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(m)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(s|S)(e|E|é|É|/?)(x|X)).*((d|D)(e|E|é|É|/?)(t)(e|é|é|é|/?)).*(((r|R)+)(e|E|é|É|/?)(n|N)(t|T)) ((h|H)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(m)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(s|S)(e|E|é|É|/?)(x|X)).*((w|W)(o|ó|O|Ó|/?)(r|R)(s|S)(e|E|é|É|/?)).*((a|A)(n|N)(i|I)(m|M)) ((s|S)(o|ó|O|Ó)(d|D)(o|ó|O|Ó)(m|M)).*(t|T)(r|R)(a|A)(v|V)(e|E|é|É|/?)((l|L)+)((e|E|é|É|/?)) ((thr..t|d.t.r+.nt)\sto\ss.c.{2}ty.*(s.d.m.st.?|d\S{2}th|c.ns.nt.{3})|=?p.rv.rt\S{,3}[=_-\s\\\/\']*(or|and)?[=_-\s\\\/\']*(l\Ssb\S{,2}ns?pr.v.nc.\.org|\sc.p.t.l|p.{2}pl.|.v.nts?|fr.{2}ndly?|tr.v.l{2}(.rs)?|life|f.st.v{,3}|mardi|t.l.r.nc.?|v.s.t.rs?|r.ghts?|act.v.t\S{,3})|(gay|lesbian)[_-\s\\\/\']*p.rv.rt.{0,2}) 1259135415\.info 22101822 22442047 22442051 22442591 22492591 22845062 24551491 28400811 3319\W?11437 33630631 39012240 322973398779 4564564 55543695 69443695 9339424307 9433483411 9830233754 9830794541 9831031895 98312240 9883508673 © 20\d\d accomodations-ragovij\.cn adgfag Aimersoft
www dot africanbluetours dot com
Continious violation of dt and tours plus places ad in most South African articles. I tried to contact but no reaction. jan 03:43, 15 June 2010 (EDT)
Error in Digha article
When I wanted to revert this mass, unexplained removal, I've been notified about a blacklisted link in the article. As far as I can see, there is only one external link in the article (the one at the intro), and I can't tell whether it really is an official homepage (and thus really deserves to be at the top), but it certainly is not blacklisted (or, at least I couldn't notice it in the list). How to get around this problem? – Vidimian 04:52, 16 June 2010 (EDT)
Hostel Ukraine dot com
Business owner appears to be deleting competitor info and replacing it with his own. That's about as shameful an edit that one can possibly make on Wikitravel, so I'm happy to add this one to the blacklist. --Peter Talk 22:44, 16 June 2010 (EDT)
Can we get this one off the blacklist?
I have no connection with the management or owners of this place, I just wanted to add it as a useful piece of information:
http://www dot sitio-do-alemao dot 20fr dot com/ Mariusm98 12:19, 23 June 2010 (EDT)
A gift shop owner has now re-added this listing to the Bali article four times and ignored requests to stop. Individual businesses go in city articles, not region articles, and given the user's behavior this seems like a toury advertisement and thus isn't something we even want in city articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:15, 27 June 2010 (EDT)
manalimedicalaid dot ning dot com
Major spam attack ongoing and one of the regular sites listed. jan 15:37, 1 July 2010 (EDT)
studentdoctor dot net
Major spam attack ongoing and one of the regular sites listed. jan 15:43, 1 July 2010 (EDT)
connect dot cityname dot com
Major spam attack ongoing and one of the regular sites listed. jan 15:54, 1 July 2010 (EDT)
Amethystbangalore DOT Com
Hi, Tried adding some content, ot says something about spam filter.. Not sure what it refers to as the listing was genuine and not spam. Can some one pls help. —The preceding comment was added by 22.214.171.124 (talk • contribs)
wanndo dot com
See Special:Contributions/Happyclick and Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52. The URL that keeps getting re-added to articles isn't even a functional site ("coming soon"), but it appears from the listing text that this is an attempt to market a t-shirt. The same user has previously spammed us with advertisements for a volcano tourism outfitter. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:01, 14 July 2010 (EDT)
expeditiontrips dot com
This link keeps getting re-added to the Antarctica article on a near-daily basis, despite pointers in edit summaries and on user talk pages to the Tour and Wikitravel:External links policies. It looks like a decent site, but they list tours offered by other companies and thus is not appropriate for listing here according to our guidelines. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:50, 15 July 2010 (EDT)
skisilverthorne dot com
An anonymous user has been returning every morning to re-add this listing to six or seven different articles despite being provided pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout. See Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168 and Special:Contributions/22.214.171.124. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:25, 4 August 2010 (EDT)
falafelbus dot com
Repeatedly added and re-added to numerous Middle Eastern articles, from country-level on down (like so and so). User hasn't responded to requests to stop, see User talk:Deanot78. — D. Guillaime 02:40, 11 August 2010 (EDT)
Barcelona Apartments blacklist
Should not be listed at all, as they don't comply with our apartments policy:
Should not be in district articles, as they offer apartments in more than one disrict:
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by DenisYurkin (talk • contribs)
Hello, I am trying to add a guest house I stayed at to the list of budjet accomadation in Bishkek. It wont let me and refers me here. Perhaps I am making some mistake, I am not sure. There are two email addresses and two phone numbers involved but I tried it without them, in otherwords just a sentence and I was still blocked. Could someone please explain this to me. Thank you.
What I want to add is:
Sabyrbek's Guest House, +996 312 300710, +996 312 300710, [email protected] [email protected] The home of the famous Kyrgyz author T. Sydykbekov, is now managed by his son the amiable Sabyrbek. It is very centrally located. 21 Razzakova (just south of Moscovskaya), opposite the German embassy. Guests are welcome to use the kitchen facilities and internet is available.
Thanks, I have never done this before so I am not clear as to how it works. The first few times i tried to post it by editting the budget accomadation section that is when i encountered the problem mentioned above. I then noticed the add listing button for Sleep in general, that is the sucessful edit you have pointed out. However, I can only see that edit if I use the link you placed above. If I just open the Bishkek page it is not there...is there some delay? Also I dont see any way of placing the new listing under the buget heading instead it is alone above that between sleep and the budget subheading. How do I change this? I realize this is not really the place for questions like this but I dont know what is, if you could help I would really appreciate it.
I'm hoping to discourage the neverending attempts to get phone numbers for a certain few hotel booking agencies in the lovely city of Kolkata, for hotels in other towns, among which Mandarmani of course ranks high in importance. --Peter Talk 17:25, 15 August 2010 (EDT)
I've tried repeatedly to post the following today but am getting prevented:
Deputy High Commissions
Zepppep 17:20, 15 April 2011 (EDT)
Gorumara.*[blacklisted expression]
Enough w/ the freaking West Bengali spamming... --Peter Talk 13:12, 19 August 2010 (EDT)
indiandestination dot com
Another indian spammer plasters his ads in a wide range of articles throughout India. Has not stopped after warning and instead increased his spam intensity. jan 09:33, 2 September 2010 (EDT)
This listing has been removed from Marrakech at least ten times now with pointers provided to the Tour policy. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:08, 5 September 2010 (EDT)
www dot free hostel dot pl
In Kraków/Kazimierz#Budget, it appears there is a hostel which actually is named "Free Hostel". The web site is activating the spam filter. It appears in an older version of the record: [46] In fact the address was in both email and website fields of the listing (should be just one). I left the article with {{districtguide}} added but with website and email gone for this listing. The hotel comes up with this name when listing hostels in Krakow on other websites. --Bill in STL 20:43, 8 September 2010 (EDT)
www dot omeida dot com dot cn
I don't know why I can't save the web address above. It's the official website of Omeida Chinese Academy. Please help to remove this site from the blacklist. Thank you very much! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lsz0719 (talk • contribs)
Hello Ryan! I was trying to put the website onto the following pages:
I can only save the website as www.omeida\.com.cn. Whenever I try to save it as www dot omeida dot com doct cn it says "The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter.This is probably caused by a link to an external site." The same thing happens when I try to save the email address [email protected] dot com dot cn on to the page.--Lsz0719 20:35, 13 September 2010 (EDT)[[User:lsz0719] • (talk) • 22:46, 12 September 2010 (EDT)
Thanks for your reply, Ryan. Is there any information we could provide to let you consider remove our website from the blacklist? Our school is the biggest Chinese language school in Yangshuo. I'm sure it is worth being listed on Wikitravel guides.--Lsz0719 03:11, 15 September 2010 (EDT)
moroccantravels dot com
See Special:Contributions/Morocco, Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199, Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199, and probably others. All pointers to Tour and Wikitravel:Don't tout have been ignored, with listings re-added to multiple sections of the Morocco article several times per day for several days. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:42, 22 September 2010 (EDT)
Can't add my listing for Assisi, Umbria
I am trying to add
in Assisi, Umbria but I keep getting an edit error. What am I doing wrong?!? I am following the template provided.
This user has been busily adding the official tourism web site for the country of South Korea to dozens of articles. Since per Wikitravel:External links this link is appropriate for the South Korea article (and only the South Korea article) a permanent blacklisting is inappropriate, but how would people feel about temporarily removing it from the South Korea article and then adding it to the blacklist as a way to try and get this user's attention? It is a waste of time for the user to keep adding it to articles, and a waste of time for patrollers to then revert those additions. Since the user isn't responding to talk page messages I'm not sure what other options are available. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:26, 14 October 2010 (EDT)
A tour operator has added this listing to Kumbakonam at least a dozen times, and been reverted with pointers provided to the Tour and advertising policies each time. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:08, 16 October 2010 (EDT)
See Special:Contributions/Mohd_faidi. User has been giving multiple pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout and continues to spam Jordan and other articles. -- Ryan • (talk) • 10:09, 23 October 2010 (EDT)
See Special:Contributions/Rita_KC. There isn't even any pretense of usefulness for travelers - the user is simply deleting large chunks of articles and adding in spammy advertising. I deleted the user page and am quickly blacklisting this one as I suspect she will hit as many articles as possible. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:26, 26 October 2010 (EDT)
shankarpur dot co dot in
As far as I'm aware Shankarpur is our current most regularly spammed article - touts have been changing phone numbers nightly in that article for months. Lately the above URL has also been appearing in the article. Some pointers were provided to Wikitravel:External links, but as the link continues to regularly be re-added and reverted it's worth adding to the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:54, 3 November 2010 (EDT)
An anonymous user keeps returning to place seven copies of the same listing on the Similan Islands (two examples of several: here and here). Pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout in edit summaries and on talk pages haven't worked, so let's give the blacklist a try. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:22, 29 November 2010 (EST)
I can't edit the 'Get in' list. Here's my change "
By train
Malda is well connected by Railways. There are some direct trains from the local main station, i.e. Malda Town; connecting Bangalore, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Dibrugarh, New Delhi etc."
What's wrong here?
Thanks @jan
hawaiianpaddlesports dot com
See Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168. User added five or more listings to the Maui article and did not respond to pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout left in the article history and on the user's talk page. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:16, 31 December 2010 (EST)
Editing Coorg page
I'm trying to edit the iteneriary section and add the below text and it's triggering a spam filter. The roads leading to Talavauvery is pretty bad after the recent rains.--Gowthammano 05:32, 17 January 2011 (EST)
thebrightonremovalcompany dot co dot uk
I'm not sure if it's a bot or a real person, but this hauling company has spammed us with advertisement articles twice in the last two hours. It's in no way travel-related, so adding to the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 18:15, 18 January 2011 (EST)
palazzogiovanni dot it
See Special:Contributions/Silvio77. User has returned repeatedly over the last two days to push a link to articles ranging from towns to Italy and even to Europe. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:23, 20 January 2011 (EST)
explorenorthkorea dot com
This company is repeatedly re-added to the North Korea article. See Talk:North Korea#Travel Agencies for the reason why this was originally removed. -- Ryan • (talk) • 22:50, 24 January 2011 (EST)
Oanvoanc 10:28, 26 January 2011 (EST):as i mentioned in the "discussion paragraph" of northkorea - tours already: i travelled with explore n. korea tour group in march 2010 and had no problems with them. the communication was very good (skype and mail) before and after the trip. i have no idea what happened here exactly with this url (adding and removing) but i wouldnt hesitate to recommend this company for ppl who want to travel nk on small budged.
This business is now trying to evade the blacklist by using URL redirectors (e.g. [50]) rather than cleaning up their act, so I'm expanding the pattern a bit. User has a long and exceedingly annoying history, and has also started using proxies to (thinly) disguise their activities; it's pretty easy to find on almost any edit to the Tours section dating back to roughly October 2009, and you'll find a lot of the early mischief from Special:Contributions/188.8.131.52, before the evasion really started. — D. Guillaime 20:26, 27 January 2011 (EST)
shanghaipathways dot com
Keeps re-adding fairly spammy entries to Shanghai that aren't at all tour-compliant (example: [51]), even after being pointed at it on their comment on Talk:Shanghai#Deletion. Hoping this gets their attention instead; shouldn't need to stay in place forever. — D. Guillaime 01:30, 1 February 2011 (EST)
cheapoair dot com
This is a bucket site that will never be appropriate for use here per Wikitravel:External links. See Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199 - user replaced numerous valid hotel URLs with this one. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:55, 7 February 2011 (EST)
Dharamshala Page
I tried to edit this page originally adding the Dalai Lama's website www dot dalailama dot com I got the spam error. Assuming it was because of the URL I entered I hit the back button and removed this url. Saved again and was still getting the spam error. So went back and took out all URL's (which I didn't enter) noticed some were of businesses so this may have caused the spam notification. Though even after deleting all URLs page would not save. Don't know what else to do about it other than post it here. The specific section was the 'To Do' section Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Himalayafunandtours (talk • contribs)
apnabus dot in
This is apparently an Indian ticket broker and thus not appropriate per Wikitravel:External links and the Tour policy. User has ignored talk page messages and returned after temporary blocks to spam dozens of pages, so it's time to put this on the blacklist. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:02, 26 March 2011 (EDT)
scorpiotech dot info
See the history for both User talk:Scorpiotech00 and User talk:Scorpiotech0. An SEO company is trying to abuse Wikitravel for marketing/SEO purposes. -- Ryan • (talk) • 21:45, 29 March 2011 (EDT)
creditcardhelp dot com dot au
Suspected work of a currently active spambot - Articles and images have been listed for deletion per Votes for deletion and {{vfd}} as I do not have sufficient access to deal with them directly. Jan subsequently deleted the forex related content. I think Ryan has his eye on this suspected spambot activity.
felix 02:01, 30 April 2011 (EDT)
pbali dot com
pbali dot com appears to be a operation purportedly promoting villa rental and sales. Clickable links to their website have been placed into the Bali article and subsequently removed by myself and other editors. Both the User:Marine and User:Crewman appear to be accounts operated on the same campaign. The edit content is identical from both users and they have been placing the covert url link into the Bali article text. The link points to pbali dot com. The website has no contact details provided for the promoters other than a browser page contact form. I am wondering if they have been active elsewhere on WT as well.
The covert link edit is written as follows and inserted into the article copy.:
<span class="plainlinks">[http://www.pbali dot com/ <span style="color:#000000;font-weight:normal; text-decoration:none!important; background:none!important; text-decoration:none;">Bali Villas</span>]
This is an example of one edit.
It then displays as; Bali Villas and becomes clickable if rolled over -- (the bolding is my own emphasis).
The covert link points to pbali dot com when it is supplied with a correctly formatted address.
Registrant: Sergey Gorshkov Krasnaya 21a, 4 Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad region 236000 Russian Federation
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: PBALI.COM Created on: 23-Feb-11 Expires on: 23-Feb-12 Last Updated on: 23-Feb-11
Administrative Contact: Gorshkov, Sergey [email protected] Krasnaya 21a, 4 Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad region 236000 Russian Federation 7-911-452-9608 Fax --
Technical Contact: Gorshkov, Sergey [email protected] Krasnaya 21a, 4 Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad region 236000 Russian Federation 7-911-452-9608 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order:
Sergey Gorshkov is also associated with balivillaonsale dot com. tel: +62 8138 157 3288 [email protected]
A Sergey Gorshkov was also a well known Admiral of the Soviet Union navy during the Cold War and died in 1988.
The Sergey Gorshkov associated with the Bali villa marketing seems to to be in Kaliningrad, Russia.
Related sites as per http://whois.pho.to/pbali dot com
capezebratours dot com and capeafricantours dot com
Links to this company were copied to numerous articles for South Africa, with at least four separate entries in the Cape Town article. Since then they have returned to add multiple entries to the Cape Town article at least a dozen times, despite pointers provided on user talk pages and in edit summaries to the Wikitravel:Don't tout policy. -- Ryan • (talk) • 16:36, 3 May 2011 (EDT)
See Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199. This Facebook group has been re-added to the Buenos Aires article five or six times in the past two days despite repeated pointers to the Wikitravel:External links policy. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:22, 17 May 2011 (EDT)
www dot butterfly-massage dot com
Escort/prostitution services consistently added at User_talk:Xiali1208 --Burmesedays 03:24, 11 June 2011 (EDT)
www dot shanghai-in-massge dot com
Escort/prostitution services consistently added at User_talk:Xiali1208 --Burmesedays 03:24, 11 June 2011 (EDT)
Talk:Tajpur notes on an edit/s and west bengal scamming activity
Upon tracking a suspect tel number to another article I came across the Tajpur article today. The entire Tajpur article seems a little dubious. It has the appearance of having been established for the purpose of listing either entriely fictitious or baiting accommodation listings attributable to known listing hijackers and listing vandals associated with articles in this region. I have removed the offending number and noted that the edit histories had evidence of another scammer involved with the article. I have now applied some generalised copy editing to the article to clean it up but it is still a bit questionable. I note that on (07:46) 17 May 2009 ChubbyWimbus raised some concerns aboout this article.
Upon examination of the various articles concerned and their edit and content history it appears that the contact numbers used have been those associated with previous misleading or hijack edits in various West Bengal articles.
Today I have made edits to the article and some others today that are displaying similar lineage and number commonalities I have removed +91 33 8100291011 from Hotel Sonarbangla Resorts in the Tajpur article as this tel number has beeen listed the Rojana Beach Resorts listing in Digha and removed in an edit today for that reason. The previous listing for Safarsonhee in this Tajpur article was removed by Peterfitzgerald on 11 oct 2010). The prior Safarsonhee listing used a number 90spamfilter51115228 listed to Safarsongee Tours & Travels, Kolkata, Telephone: (033) 4004spamfilter8685, 90spamfilter51115228, Address: 9B, Esplanade , Kolkata-700069, West Bengal. The Hotel Amorabati-Bakkhali has also frequently been listed to 90spamfilter51115228 on travel websites
As I know the activities of the west bengal idiots are of interest to others I thought this may be of interest here.felix 06:40, 16 June 2011 (EDT)
West Bengal scammer +91 33 8100291011
Maybe it's time for this idiots number to be spam blacklisted-- felix 10:53, 16 June 2011 (EDT)
Here are some more: -- felix 15:09, 17 June 2011 (EDT)
[email protected] and [email protected] have an established pattern with scammer numbers and multiple listings ie. Shankarpur Hotel Sandy Bay, [email protected], Jhargram Mps Resort, ☎ 033 9433585945 [email protected], Falta Hotel Sea Bird +91 033 9831254202 [email protected] also +91 33 943358 5945
+91 33 9831254202 has a scammer profile: Falta Hotel Sea Bird +91 033 9831254202 Digha Hotel Sonar Bangla, Barrister colony, ☎ 9831254202
+91 33 2248 0626 has a scammer profile Digha Tourist Lodge Hotel Dolphin Larica Sagar Tourist Lodge Digha Hotel Suman's Digha Mandarmani Samudra Sakshi Resort
Eastern Tourism of 190A, Harish Mukherjee Road, Kolkata - 700 026 has a scammer profile with multiple listing and relisting of +91 33 2455 1491 Other numbers listed to this enterprise include
Mobile :
ukraine vacation guide dot com
Mass spamming of various Ukraine articles. Examination of site reveals no content that could ever be useful at WT --Burmesedays 06:13, 23 June 2011 (EDT).
vietnamairlinestickets dot com
This URL has shown up repeatedly in several Southeast Asia articles over the past week. It's a booking portal - the URL for Vietnam Airlines is http://vietnamairlines.com - and the users in question are ignoring requests to stop re-adding this URL. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:26, 5 July 2011 (EDT)
motorbiketours-hoian dot com
After ignoring several specific warnings about writing their details into a competitor listing at Hoi An, did it again.--Burmesedays 08:30, 19 July 2011 (EDT)
Touristdriver.aqaba at gmail.com
This tax driver has been adding lengthy advertisements to various Jordan articles and ignoring pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout. See Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168 and Special:Contributions/Jouli for some examples. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:55, 23 July 2011 (EDT)
kuakatatours dot com
There have been several new articles created in the past twelve hours that do not meet the Wikitravel:What is an article criteria. The user in question hasn't responded to talk page messages so I'm putting the tour company URL he/she has been using on the blacklist in the hopes of getting his/her attention. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:36, 27 July 2011 (EDT)
wadirumdiscovery dot com
This tour company has ignored repated requests not to list itself multiple times (per Wikitravel:Don't tout), and has now started removing competitor listings from the Wadi Rum article. See for example Special:Contributions/Momo2010. -- Ryan • (talk) • 12:05, 31 July 2011 (EDT)
bandarbantours dot com
User has ignored many messages and continues to create spam articles designed to promote this travel agency.--Burmesedays 07:36, 1 August 2011 (EDT)
taxi-makarska dot com
See Special:Contributions/Ijujnovic. There has been a long running edit war going on over Makarska. Initially requests were made to de-tout a listing, and eventually to discuss before re-adding. Adding to the blacklist now to prevent further edit warring. -- Ryan • (talk) • 01:32, 28 August 2011 (EDT)
easyrider dot vn and easy-riders dot net
See Special:Contributions/Easyridervietnam (amongst others). Talk page messages and edit summary pointers to Wikitravel:Don't tout have been ignored repeatedly over the past couple of weeks. -- Ryan • (talk) • 11:22, 12 September 2011 (EDT)
tripz dot advisor
A few accounts are spamming this gmail address. Looks more like bored trolling than actual spamming, so this can be removed later. --Peter Talk 11:46, 25 September 2011 (EDT)
internetmarketingdirect dot com dot au
Repeated SEO spam on User talk:IM2011Direct. Ironically, the spam was touting the company's "white hat" strategies, but doing so by spamming a travel wiki. -- Ryan • (talk) • 23:08, 28 September 2011 (EDT)
This travel agency has been spamming Agra and other random pages daily for the past week. Edit summary pointers and talk page messages pointing the user to Tour and Wikitravel:Don't tout have been ignored. -- wrh2 10:40, 11 October 2011 (EDT)
comparecarrental dot co
See (for two examples) Special:Contributions/18.104.22.168 and Special:Contributions/126.96.36.199. User has been inserting this car rental portal with misleading edit summaries. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:16, 17 October 2011 (EDT)
User:Dalatcitytours keeps editing competitor's business listings, such as here [52]. How about a cool-down for a while?--globe-trotter 09:14, 23 October 2011 (EDT)
User:Dalatcitytours keeps editing competitor's business listings, such as here [53]. How about a cool-down for a while?--globe-trotter 09:15, 23 October 2011 (EDT)