Abuse

Every person on your wiki can deal with abuse by, well, just fixing or removing it! This solution works almost always, and you should "let the wiki clean itself." This is good for your wiki and good for your community.

More extreme cases can be dealt with by a wiki admin — who can lock pages by changing the security settings, permanently revert and delete pages, and ban users. Wiki admins run a wiki, and are the people in charge.

This page is for the super-extreme abuse and the things you can't otherwise do anything about. Notice a wiki created for the purpose of spamming? You can't delete a wiki, so that would be a good thing to note here. An automated spamming bot? Report such wide-scale abuses here. Please do not report things which you, as a community, or as a wiki admin, can reasonably deal with yourself.

Alternative abuse contact: email <philipn AT gmail DOT com> for now.

Potential community guidelines misunderstandings (not urgent, just to keep track):

Commercial gain

I give a notice kinda like this:

• organicgoodscorp, radcom, medical, homes, skin-care-reviews, gonnella, netklix, black-wolf-gaming-systems, glassfurniture, napleshotel, insurance-software, fairfield, nylonmesh, sportjerseys, sarasotarealestate, reviewitonline, healthrajsoft, fearoverload, drishtipredictivedialer, drishtisoftsolutions, davisdoall

Commercial Gain beyond editor intervention

Okay, here's where the annoying ones reside. No editing allowed, clear cut commercial motive:

• crossfitdavis is a non-editable advertisement for a business.

Search Engine Spamming

I've wiped the content of a couple wikis now. They were creating pages that were sales pitches and links to another website. I gave a notice that contains much more content than the above, as it replaces their front page rather than simply being prepended to it:

I also included a ## wiki comment that used the three parts, "wiki", then "spam", then "seo" as one single phrase. If you wipe a wiki, use it and we can track all the notices by doing an interwiki search for the term. I signed the wipe in case a future one is a mistake — so they don't see it as some kind of automated, faceless, implacable system notice. I've run into that in the past (even just editor A using bold can make editor B think it was some kind of unappealable system stamp), and keeping real, approachable people in the loop seems like a good idea.

• Wiped wikis: health-information-management, allied-health-jobs, drugrehab, fas-money-loan, travelnursejobs, pharmacyjobs, health, floridabusinessbroker, 2buttonmenssuits

Most of these seem awfully similar — a paragraph about the same length, with a different link each time.

Notice given

barbarawrzeszcz is too new to tell (2007-7-19) but looks like a personal thing (it states on the front page that it is a wiki-blog?), as does suneworld (too new to tell)? screencapture looks like it has no intended community. Keep an eye on petroleum-monkey, sunfire, davispetnanny, annies-asian-grill

homes really looks like a clear cut case, but may just be a mislocated wiki entry? On 2008-07-31, the entry was updated and then the notice removed. JabberWokky readded it and started a comment section with a bit of cheerful offer to assist plus a quick sketch of the situation.

Wait & See / Discuss

clare looks personal (but maybe has intended community), feedoor might conflict with "Do not create a wiki for commercial gain," but we should wait a bit because it's too new to tell if it is on the "community run" side of the line. radcom looks likely commercial. meds could easily be legit (but as a popular topic for spammers is a good idea to keep an eye on).

• sanibelwiki should probably be about Sanibel Island, FL, but only lists a restaurant in Webster, NY currently.
  

• mikewang is basically a personal "blog" wiki.
  

rtea (a title company? or is it general stuff?)

• was iffy, so I asked the admin (or at least the active editor). Regardless as to if this case falls under commercial use, it might be a good idea to find a good reputable commercial host that we can recommend for those well intentioned people who do set up a commercial business wiki here.
  

• I don't think we should be recommend any particular host because it is an endorsement. Pointing to a list of hosts or something like that would be better. —PhilipNeustrom
  

• The question will come up... is there a good (fairly non-biased) list of commercial wiki hosts out there? I don't plan on searching (nor am I suggesting anybody do so), but if somebody stumbles across a good reference, it's likely worth bookmarking for future help. Just a thought as to how to handle the end result of maintaining the list on this entry — I'd rather help well intentioned people who are misusing Wiki Spot find a good home. In fact, if there is a good list (or more than one), a pointer to it might make sense for "if you aren't looking to support a community" along with a link to Project Sycamore for anybody who wants to host their own. Kind of like being friendly neighbors: "We don't fix bicycle tires here, but Bob down the street does, and you also might ask Connie up the block. If you want to do it yourself, here's where you can get a patch kit".

• Hobo Bob's Pancake Shack. Odd. So odd it could easily go in any direction.
  

• triumph. There are a couple of these now. They are (viral?) video collaboration sites for seeding. IMO, they seem okay.
  

• virtualteamwork. This screams spam site, but the three links are to legit articles from large, well known sites in competition with each other. I don't think Monster is hiring link spammers.
  

• mysoftchoice. Either Search engine spam or a user wiki... possibly read-only documentation hosting? No edits allowed.

No intended community

• breanna — commercial images. Notice given 2008-4-29.
  

• thebears — Personal Wiki? No notice yet (no significant content yet).
  

• danielledesma — Wiki about a single person (who isn't Paris Hilton). No intended community.
  

• mygirl — Solely used for one guy's declaration of love for a gal. No intended community. Guy who started this blanked the hub's front page.

Misunderstandings

Wikis that were meant to be pages on some wiki.

lumina

Phishing

The account Famke appears to be running a phishing scam — or possibly just seo spam — on Runescape players connected to some service called "rs2" and then "pl.com".

Wiki Spot Spam

Sometimes it's hard to tell when somebody creates a Wiki Spot entry if it is leading to a wiki or if it's just a simple spam entry. I use the following (note the link to Cleanup):

''This entry appeared to be '''commercial spam''' and has been removed.  If it was not spam (see the ["community guidelines"]), it was removed through an honest misunderstanding, and you are encouraged to restore it (and possibly rewrite it or add to it to make it clear how it fits here at Wiki Spot)["Cleanup" .]''

Comments:

dont enter into this box:

IPs that have been seen spamming: 61.55.135.167

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2007-05-31 07:47:40   http://edge.wikispot.org/ looks like it's just some guy —ArlenAbraham

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2007-07-21 15:25:13   business creating a wiki for itself that is un-editable. There are several problems presented by this case including that the chosen wikispot prefix is a namespace collision. This is not the first time that it appears that a business has set up a wikispot just for their business, but the other examples didn't lock out editing and it was possible to suggest moving their listing to a local wiki. —JasonAller

Here's the email I sent out to him. We should probably have a "form email" ready for this kind of stuff, so we don't catch anyone off-guard:

Hey there yesuman,

Some folks noticed you created a wiki on Wiki Spot by the name of 'yolo.' It seems like the purpose of the wiki is to promote your business, YOLO AIRPORTER / TRANSPORTER. Wiki Spot is a non-profit, member-supported group of folks dedicated to helping communities use wikis. We want to make sure our communities have the best home possible, so we have established a set of very broad Community Guidelines — you can read them at http://wikispot.org/Community_Guidelines.

There is strong consensus that Wiki Spot supports only non-commercial projects. Your wiki seems to violate this guideline. We ask you to please delete it (in Wiki Settings, down at the bottom).

There are many other places where information about your business would be appropriate, such as on the Davis Wiki (http://daviswiki.org), the Woodland Wiki (http://woodland.wikispot.org), and potentially the Sacramento Wiki (http://sacwiki.org).

Let me know if you have any questions.

Best,


Philip Neustrom

2007-8-2 I nuked "yolo" and "michaelgilbert." Yolo was notified via email, and michaelgilbert had a note on it for two months. —PhilipNeustrom

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The following is a proposition coming about from the recent activity of Steven Ostrowski and his administration of the Redding Wiki. Whereas a "wiki" is an interlinked set of Web pages written by the people who use it. The beauty of a wiki being that anyone can edit and contribute. The Wiki Spot is a nonprofit, member-supported organization dedicated to helping communities use their wikis.
Whereas it is against community guidelines, and hence often considered abuse, to create a wiki with no intended community, ergo using this software as a web log or for personal vanity.
Whereas it is against community guidelines, and hence should be considered abuse, to create a wiki with the express purpose of being malicious to a person, place, or object.
Whereas the Redding Wiki Administrator had issued bans for WikiSpot users BrentLaabs, WilliamLewis, and JamesSchwab upon creation of the wiki exclusively excluding them from the community.
Whereas the Redding Wiki Administrator had issued bans for a user without warning or justification in accordance to the Redding Wiki Regulations, or apparent abuse of generally accepted policy (as above).
Whereas it contradicts community guidelines to create a wiki with the same intended purpose.
Whereas the statement of the Redding Wiki is as a center for community contributed information, opinions, announcements, and everything else about Redding and the surrounding region.
Whereas it is also stated throughout the wiki that "Anyone may edit this site", with the only qualifications to this principle being the aforementioned community guidelines.
Thus, members of the community who do not wish to violate the guidelines of the wikispot organization, they are unable to act towards the intended purpose of a city wiki for Redding, Ca.
Whereas exclusive members of the community have been disallowed from this community without just cause, and therefore prevented access to information maliciously.
As such, the Redding Wiki, and its administrator have demonstrated an abuse of the wikispot community. The unreasonable action has created an unreasonable situation whereby people whom wish to support free information for this geographic region may not without justifiable cause. As such, I propose a change in administration of this site to an individual, or some means of forcible conflict resolution. I do not mean to propose that wikispot forces a change in policy on the wiki, nor do I mean that it should act against closed groups. I however do feel that it would be a bad precedent to allow for this abuse whereby one can simply create a group which excludes members of the community without due course of some policy or law. Though one may set up a policy of zero tolerance for defined abuses of behavior, limiting an exclusive group of individuals from even participating in the community is akin to the former racial segregation of the educational system. This is clearly abuse of the principles of community, a contradiction of the spirit of wikispot, and a violation of the principles of the Redding Wiki. I believe we must set the precedent that the wikis are not created for the privilege of their creators, but for the whole of their community. As such I propose that Steven Ostrowski lose the administrative control of the Redding wiki, and that this be handed to a member of the geographic location. As there are no such users, I propose that in the interim that such control either be left to Philip Neustrom, Jason Aller, and/or myself, so that the community may hopefully grow until such a time that there is a majority quorum of users from or in that geographic locale.
~Reverend David Alonzo Poole III.

• It does seem to me rather hypocritical that Steve-O lists as cardinal insta-ban offenses, basically everything he's been doing in the Davis Wiki. Pre-emptively banning several Davis Wiki users that he doesn't like just strikes me as fear that his history may follow him wherever he goes. Which it will. If Redding is to have a wiki it will not benefit the city to have him controlling the content in the manner that we know he would. I think some of the language above by David is a bit strong, however, it is very clear to me that his approach to knowledge and conflict resolution will kill whatever sense of community there is or will be in the Redding Wiki.

  This raises another issue - as we can see here, some people, when banned from a wikispot-hosted wiki, may take it upon themselves to do as Ostrowski has done, and decide that they will create their own wikis for themselves, in defiance of their recent ban. More annoying than the self-serving personal and commercial wikis that do/will crop up from time to time on wikispot, banned-user-created wikis such as this will have a more community-destructive bent.

  I don't know if removing SO from administering the Redding Wiki would be prudent, but this at least shows that the Wikispot community (and admins) should work on how to deal with these kinds of cases. -KJM

• We'd talked about this kind of situation before and came up with a plan for how to deal with it and preserve autonomy, which I feel is incredibly important. The solution is to allow anyone to download a full export of the wiki, and allow wiki creation based upon exported data. Then if a hell-bend person comes along, or someone deletes a much-loved wiki, there is a recourse that the community as a whole can take. —PhilipNeustrom
  

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2007-09-17 16:27:14   Haha, apparently Steve Ostrowski has also banned me from reading/editing his wiki. Keep in mind that I haven't violated any of his wiki's regulations, and even "defended" him on his own wiki. "Let him have his empire" is pretty much all I put on his wiki. Just yesterday I had a thought to contribute to it by creating a page for Lassen Volcanic National Park, but now it seems I cannot do that. Awww... and I had so many pretty pictures I was willing to release under creative commons... Guess not!

Note: I have not banned SteveOstrowski from either the dnawiki or the madison, nor do I plan to unless he becomes destructive and is uncontrollable. Even after this slight, I don't plan on it. I'm confident that he has no particular desire (or expertise) to edit anything on my wikis, and I'm not so wrapped up in personal vendettas to make my wikis an extension of my lack of positive attention while growing up.

Like I said on the Redding Wiki, let him have his empire. See it fizzle out as no one desires to contribute to it. The wiki community is not made welcome at the Redding Wiki so leave it alone. We have more important things to do with our time, and each attempt to circumvent his personal vendetta bans only gives him the attention he craves. Don't edit the Redding Wiki. —KarlMogel

- Update: It has, of course, fizzled out. Problem solved! - KJM

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2008-02-20 09:44:45   No no, Petroleum monkey is just a game group. just for fun, but ive had skool lately havnt been able to update much so as soon as i can i'll update i'll be in a few days to update it.. sorry if theres been some sort of communtiy thing —122.57.186.169

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2008-04-16 01:37:44   Banned yangandjiao from the hub for spamming. —WilliamLewis

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2008-06-09 15:02:55   I've started a weekly interwiki scan for drugrehab and alcoholabuse, which appear in URLs that are being spammed by various throwaway accounts across Wiki Spot. They are only ever semitopical, and seem to be an attempt to create a high number of links into the sites, which are skeleton sites with not much info. Presumably it is occurring elsewhere and the sites will be flipped to a scam of some sort or another in the future. (Incidentally, there is one wiki entry that matches those terms that is legit, should somebody else start doing this as well). —JabberWokky

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2008-09-26 11:46:27   cardollar at isp: 123.237.8.121 spammed my front page and it looks like quite a few others were spammed as well. —amycsj

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WideCircles (dot com) is an example of a nasty new subtle effort at spamming wikis and social networking sites. It looks like they fired off a test salvo from 59.90.201.5 under the username lauren. Buy a hat — it looks like the spammers see subtlety as their next "trick". —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards — Edited to remove the link so they do not benefit from this page like the many pages they have spammed.

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2008-11-25 04:02:17   91.142.162.226 is a Ukraine IP that is spamming across Wiki Spot. Also posted one actual positive edit. —JabberWokky

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2008-11-25 04:07:45   I just submitted a feature request to be able to see all the anonymous edits that have come from a certain IP address. Probably useful for catching spam. —WilliamLewis

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2009-04-09 03:03:43   Automated spam? —JabberWokky