[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Spammer trick - image uploads abused

Mon Aug 22 04:55:13 UTC 2005

I agree with Mark on this. Turning off external linking, if such a
thing could be made possible, would be much more helpful than
disabling images. Having all non-fair-use images go to commons would
be great, but I'd rather wait until Single Login was implemented
before enforcing this.

I've included Mark's post below since it was sent only to wikitech and
this thread should be kept on foundation-l.

Angela.

On 8/22/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with what you said about the German Wikipedia, however:
> 
> I sharply disagree with what you said about "all the smaller wikis
> which are not constantly watched"... which Wikis are you talking
> about? The Small Wikis Monitoring Team (SWMT) closely watches all
> recent changes on all inactive / low activity Wikimedia wikis
> (excluding inactive Wikinewses) -- Wikipedias, Wiktionaries,
> Wikiquotes, Wikibookses... -- and this includes image uploads.
> 
> So far, there have been no such abuses of image uploads on any of
> these wikis. There has been uploading of porn images (all of which
> Angela or someone else has expressly deleted), and to strange images
> (for example of a frog wearing a hat, for a spam page on the Gothic
> Wikipedia), but these are relatively infrequent, especially compared
> to linkspam (largely from China, Russia, Germany, and also
> pharmaceutical and porn linkspam in English).
> 
> Besides, "small wikis" is a very imprecise term. What do you define as
> "small"? Does it need more than 10.000 articles? More than 1.000? More
> than 100? More than 10? More than 1? "Small" is a relative term. A
> user of the Sicilian Wikipedia may not nessecarily think of theirs as
> a small Wikipedia, with nearly 2.000 articles now, but they would
> probably consider the Friulian Wikipedia to be small, with nearly 90
> articles. German Wikipedians might consider the Chinese Wikipedia to
> be small, with under 30.000 articles. It's a matter of perspective --
> many English Wikipedians seem to think that the English Wikipedia is
> THE Wikipedia, and that it is somehow entitled to better treatment or
> that it is much more important or something, as one can see from some
> of the complaints lodged by English Wikipedians against the transition
> to the international portal, and the incessant whinging that followed
> for a number of weeks. Yes, the English Wikipedia is the largest, but
> it did certainly get a head-start because it was started earlier than
> all other Wikipedias. The German Wikipedia, for example, is doing
> quite well considering it was founded well after the English
> Wikipedia.
> 
> Mark