Masyin:Beetstra

X-Wiki

If you are here because you visited my userpage on another wiki, and have questions about my actions, then please read the appropriate section below.

Spam

I am the operator of a number of linkwatchers (programs that try to detect link additions), and of COIBot.

The linkwatchers are evaluating every edit performed on a list of 722 wikipedia, and try to find the external links that have been added (in whichever form, references, plain links etc). All these additions are reported to IRC channels, and stored in a database, on which these bots, and COIBot are performing searches in which they evaluate the use of the external link, e.g.:

How often did an external link get added.
How often did a user add an external link.
How often did a user add the same external link.
To how many different wikipedia did a user add a certain domain.

With users who try to advertise their links on wikipedia, typically one of the latter two in the above list are high in comparison to the first two (although exceptions exist!).

These bots use algorithms which I have programmed; the bots do not take any decisions, they do not decide if a link is 'spam', or a user is 'spammer' (I prefer to define it as 'pushing links', a link does not have to be bad to be pushed). All these actions are evaluated by human editors, and they try to decide if the use is appropriate, or the edits of a certain user are appropriate!

If the linkwatchers, or COIBot have 'concerns' they report in their channels on freenode, and here on meta (see User:COIBot/COIReports, User:COIBot/LinkReports, User:COIBot/UserReports and User:COIBot/XWiki) for human evaluation.

When I revert an edit, chances are that my bots have reported these links, and I have evaluated these link additions as being 'unhelpful' (which includes the designation 'spam', but there may be other concerns as well). Generally these links have been added to a (large) number of wikipedia, and I am reverting all additions of them. You may therefor only see me performing one edit on your wiki concerning that person, and still designating it as 'spam'.

Another reason of me removing external links from a page may be that the external link has been blacklisted here on meta. To prevent further disruption on that page (e.g. if vandalism removes the link, the edit can not be reverted), or to remove true rubbish I will sometimes clean these pages.

If you have questions, the best place to contact me is on my talkpage here or on on my talkpage on en. Another place where you can find me is on IRC: #wikipedia-spam-t channel (see also channels below).

In all cases, if you believe a link I removed was helpful, feel free to revert my edits and notify me. If the link is blacklisted, contact us on Talk:Spam blacklist.

Tools

Wishlist

Channels

I am generally active on the following IRC channels on the freenode network:

Other wikis

en:User:Beetstra (main account, admin)
m:User:Beetstra (admin)

Unified user (talk) pages:

Later:

zea:User:Beetstra

en:v:User:Beetstra