User talk:XLinkBot

This is the talkpage of XLinkBot (formerly SquelchBot), a bot designed to revert spamming, or other edits that introduce external links which do not comply with our external links guideline, or with the policy 'What wikipedia is not' (not a repository of links section). Please leave new comments here by clicking this link If your additions were reverted by XLinkBot, please take time to review our external links & spam guidelines, and take note that Wikipedia is not a repository of links, nor a directory. If you feel your addition was within those policies and guidelines and are Reliable and Verifiable, you may undo the changes made by XLinkBot. Questions are welcome, however this talk page is for civil discussion and is not a complaints department.

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Verbose messages, no template comments

The messages left by this bot on user talk pages should be more concise and follow the escalation patterns of prior warnings given by the uw-spam1, uw-spam2, uw-spam3, and uw-spam4 templates. Other bots (ClueBot, VoABot) manage this quite well, and they leave inline comments indicating the warning level. When XLinkBot comes along, the message it leaves doesn't indicate a warning level meaningful to either bots or humans.

For example, on User talk:203.123.154.98, XLinkBot should have left a level-2 spam warning with the comment <!-- Template:uw-spam2 -->, instead of a long essay with no warning level. The essay was incorrectly indented too (which I fixed), making it look like a reply to the prior warning. Please consider these improvements. Thanks. =Axlq (talk) 06:22, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

No, that 'essay' is part of the first warning. It gives a {{uw-spam1}} and an explanation of why the bot reverted. Do you think that that part of (each) warning should not be indented? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I thought someone else left uw-spam1, and the bot added indented material underneath. That's what it looks like to someone reading over the page.

Anyway, why is uw-spam1 insufficient? If it's good enough for humans, it's good enough for bots. However, if you want to add more information, that long-winded 3-paragraph 'essay' could be reduced to a few lines, something like this:

Your edit [diff] was reverted by an automated bot. For information about why, see the external linking guidelines as well as the guidelines for Linking to copyrighted works and conflict of interest. If this bot's revert was in error, please let the bot creator know on User talk:XLinkBot. If this is a shared IP address and you didn't make the edit, please ignore this notice.

Naming the article in a heading is redundant, because uw-spam already names the article. The bot should also pay attention to the heading or sub-heading under which it's posting. If a ===January 2008=== heading already exists, and it's still January 2008, the bot shouldn't insert its own heading. =Axlq (talk) 15:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I have chosen to add a bit more information, as it is often the case that the link is not spam, though an unwanted link. Therefore it includes extra information (where possible) to tell why this particular link was reverted (images because they are better uploaded etc.). I could remove the indenting, that makes it clearer that it belongs in one post.

I will have a look into trying to obey the 'January 2008'-headings used by the other bots one of these days. That should not be too hard. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I solved the "January 2008"-heading. I'd like to hear some more input on how to make the warning proper for the type of link, without flooding the page. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, as I suggested above, a few lines of explanation with some "fill-in-blanks" might do the trick. For example:

Your edit [diff] was reverted by an automated bot, because [bot inserts reason below]

• links to blog/fansite/community/forum sites are discouraged by the external linking guidelines and the reliable sources policy, except in case of an official link pertaining to the subject of the article.
• links to promotional sites, whether commercial or not, are discouraged by the external linking guidelines.
• Linking to copyrighted works should be avoided where it isn't clear that the copyright holder gave permission for reproduction or distribution.
• Your edits have predominantly focused on adding this link to articles, which suggests a possible conflict of interest.
• (any other appropriate reason taken from WP:EL)

If you are associated with this link, please review conflict of interest guidelines and discuss your link on the article's talk page instead of adding it to the article. If this bot's revert was in error, please let the bot creator know on User talk:XLinkBot. If this is a shared IP address and you didn't make the edit, please ignore this notice.

How's that? If you complete the first sentence with one of the bullets, you get a concise and civil message explaining why the bot took action. You don't even need to split it into paragraphs. =Axlq (talk) 16:44, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look at making the warnings more consise later, at the moment the four things that users get customised warnings for is for 'pay per view'-pages (free hosts where people can create an own page, and when others see the page the user gets money from the site-maintainer), 'free hosts' (often problems with COI), 'media files' (which often link to copyrighted information), and 'petition sites' (not a soapbox etc.). The ones that have not been categorised get a shorter warning.

I'd like to add here, that this bot is doing something different than reverting vandalism. Vandalism does not need an extra warning, while people who add, in good faith, an external link, often don't see where their link violates WT:SPAM or WP:EL, so I think in this case a better explanation is necessery (but we do agree on that). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not particular about what message the bot leaves, but I've noticed that Cluebot will ignore prior messages that don't say what warning level was used (like in this example). What ever the visable text is, do you mind putting some invisble text that signifies what warning level is being used so the other automated bots will do their jobs? Thanks, NJGW (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

references

The other two links I added as references were from reputable newspapers and thus serve as a good source of information. Why were they deleted? Thanks.

- Alfonso129

Sophie Aldred page reverted?

I dont see how this is classed as spam, I only linked to the facebook group as a source.

Bad Manners

the band Bad Manner's official site is closed and the link is not-working, when i tried to add a link to their official myspace page i got a rejection

Squire, Sanders

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Squire, Sanders, and it appears to be very similar to another wikipedia page: Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 10:30, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

See post below. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Simmons

A non existing edit was reverted ending with a substitution of the disambig Simmons page by the Simmons & Simmons page.--Stone (talk) 14:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Bllooodddyy .. I know what the problem is, the stupid ampersand. One of the other bots had the same problemI saw that this was happening, and I have repaired that 3 days ago .. and now I look further, I actually repaired it in this sequence. There was a spammer active adding a link to a whole series of lawyer-companies sites, a lot of them with the ampersand in them. I hope I have really repaired it, please alert me if you find one after the 16th (my calculation of time has a problem now, the box is 5 hours behind me, so I have tried to repair it on April 16 at 11:18, and you are posting this at Apr 16 at 14:23. The bot reverted at 11:27 .. hmm .. that would be after the repair .. I have to keep my eyes open for this one). I do hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:21, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

some refactoring, was not another bot, I implemented another attempt to repair, and I did not see another revert on a page with an ampersand in the log. I really hope this has helped now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems to have been resolved: XLinkBot tried to revert this edit and http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Gavin_%26_Stacey&diff=next&oldid=206924462 this] was the result. Thanks again for reporting this! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

RE:Revision history of Love Boat (study tour)

Good work on your part in the effort to eliminate extraneous links. However in this particular case you did not do your research or check in depth. The friendster loveboat2000 site is an alumni site for Taiwan studytour participants like some of the others. If you look and read closely to the message board there are testimonials to the tour's impact and there is absolutely no spam nor is it used for advertising. It is further evidence of the many people who had a significant cultural experience when going to Taiwan on the tour. To delete such a link is to show a cultural insensitivity and an obtuse racial blindness to significance of these networking sites to the Overseas Chinese Community. Please continue your efforts to reduce spam and porn links on Wiki, but please also leave well meaning and appropriate links to sites such as these alone. Thank you.

Cruella De VIlle

Regarding the alteration of this page (http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Cruella_de_Ville&diff=205995108&oldid=205995092)

The CDV Wikipedia page is the ONLY up to date information site for the band...!

I included the list for videos availble on YouTube as factual information (as well as showing what few video performances of the band have survived)... and the link to facebook was only added so fans had a chance of contacting each other - again there are not many CDV sites on the internet.

So I don't understand why these have been edited... especially the video list

PLUS you've reverted to a version the contains a link to the CDV "Stage 6" webpage... Stage6 has closed down so the link was removed.

James (a CDV fan in contact with Philomena & Colum Muinzer of CDV)

link to Christian Rap Recording Artist Myspace in relation to Christian Rap in Wiki

--142.165.222.6 (talk) 19:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)www.myspace.com/robdonison is not a site that promotes an artist. it is simply a collection of Christian rap artists that record that genre of music. is is possibly the most informative source of Christian rap artists on the internet and is an essential link ofr anyone wanting to connect with artists in this genre of music. if you are not clear on this, please check the site itself www.myspace.com/robdonison rob donison is the manager of the site and is an music award judge, not an active recording artist.

Yes, see Wikipedia:External links, the link is not appropriate, it may be appropriate on the wikipage for Rob Donison, in almost all other cases it is not. If however you think it is really appropriate, just revert the bot, it should not revert you twice. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

extra reverts

The bot is reverting more edits than just the one which adds links. If an editor has made multiple edits in a row then all of those edits may be reverted, including edits that don't add links. See Freyed knot (if noone has deleted the page yet). 144.110.129.62 (talk) 07:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Its a choice, general, anti vandalism bots revert all edits by the same user. When only reverting one edit, often not all 'vandalism' gets reverted, when reverting all it sometimes reverts too much. Difficult choice. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Illinoise

Why was the "in other media" section of Illinoise deleted? Check the edit log - the reason for deletion is not good enough. If you're gonna remove this for one page, you have to do it for every single page on Wikipedia that is laid out like this. Simple as that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.206.86 (talk) 12:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I have read the entire links "rules" page and fail to see any violation to a fan forum that is designed to provide discussion of the the article subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.4.163.198 (talk) 05:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Please read WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. You were adding ezboard.com, which is generally not a suitable page in external links sections. If you believe in this case that the bot is wrong, just revert the edit. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Non standard warnings layout

Please use the layout described in Wikipedia:UTM#Multi-level_templates thanks -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 19:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

It does add {{uw-spam1}} untill {{uw-spam4}} .. I am not sure what you mean. Could you explain? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The messages Xlinkbot leaves are so long that it seems other bots don't notice prior warnings (like in this example). Maybe you should move the warning level to the end of the posts. NJGW (talk) 20:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I have added <!-- Template:uw-spam# --> to the end of the message. Now waiting for further examples to see if it works. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Why reverting YouTube links on Durham Miners' Gala?

Linking to YouTube videos is not banned on Wiki. Nor do the links contravine copyright. Stop reverting! I am reporting this stupid bot. 88.107.110.247 (talk) 20:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have the bot report when the user edits again after being reverted, instead of reverting again? I know most vandalism bots work that way. -- lucasbfr ^talk 21:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The bot does not revert a user twice in a row on the same page, it does report to IRC for that. It has quite some 'safety features' installed (obeying 3RR, not reverting twice in a row, and when a user is adding to many links to too many pages which are 'of concern', I hope that the report on AIV gets checked properly by the admins before blocking. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:03, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

THIS BOT(PROGRAM) IS MALFUNCTIONING - get a real person in here!

SOMEBODY needs to deactivate this bot - it does not know what the hell it's doing.

75.8.35.177 (talk) 21:37, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

No, it did what it had to do, and you did what was then a solution. But still I think these links should not be there, you should discuss that on the talkpage. The page in mainspace is not a place for discussion, and XLinkBot did tell what the solution is when you upload images. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:05, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with my edits?

I added an external link to Maajid Nawaaz's and Ed Hussain's blog - the link is relevant. Why was it revereted??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Javk (talk • contribs) 23:41, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

You added an external link to a blogspot. Links to blogs are only OK when they are the official blog of the subject of the page, which is here not the case. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Dirk, that is not the policy, from WP:EL "Links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority" are normally to be avoided. That gives considerably greater flexibiity than you specified. Any blog may be used if there is a particular good reason & it isnt being used for spam.Agreed, 95% or so of the blogs added here are improper, but the tolerance is not quite as narrow as you say. DGG (talk) 22:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

You are right, David, my mistake (your description is also what the bot leaves on the talkpage after reverting blogs). Here, a blogspot was added to the external links section; though it may be that a whole blogspot not written by the subject of the page is relevant for the subject of the page, I do believe it may only be a few posts on that specific blogspot. If the bot and I are both mistaken, then please revert the bot. It should not revert you twice in a row. Hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:41, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Bad Editing

I recently tried to edit a page and did it incorrectly, my apologies.66.210.5.90 (talk) 17:37, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

over zealous deletion

1. You are reversing edits if any part of them is adding a myspace link. This is deleting good material also. e.g. [1]

2. We have no absolute rule against linking to myspace if that's where a subjects official page is. WP:EL says "normally to be avoided" not always prohibited. Are you doing this automatically, or is a human looking at what you are doing? DGG (talk) 22:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Re 1. Yes, it reverses all edits by the editor (can be changed in the settings), it is impossible to parse out only the link, that is too prone to leaving garbage, as there are too many ways of inserting external links.

Re 2. Indeed, therefore the bot can be reverted, it only reverts once, it does not revert to other antivandalism bots, it obeys 3RR, it only reverts unestablished and IP editors (except when whitelisted), and it does not block itself (I hope the admins reviewing on AIV do check before blocking after bot-reports), etc. etc. Rules here should have a pretty low error rate, but there will always be errors (and therefore the built-in safety features; if there are indeed too many errors, then the rule should be removed). All reversions are mentioned on IRC, and there are quite often people watching (unfortunately there are not enough people watching the link addition feeds, as opposed to the recent edits patrollers (though they probably also remove quite some unwanted links). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

My bad

I was unaware of the Youtube thing, sorry.72.0.36.36 (talk) 04:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Eagle Claw

I do not see anything wrong with what I did but thanks anyway if I did do something wrong. --86.41.91.199 (talk) 20:41, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Your ridiculous note on my talk page

Hey! I never even added any links to Demi Lovato! I think something got to your head or maybe you're dumb, but I did not add ANY LINK to the Demi Lovato article! I think that it was stupid and unfair to leave a ridiculous note like that on my talk page. I don't even care if you still think I changed the Demi article. i just don't want you to leave messages like that on my talk page again. DemiLovato15 (talk) 01:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You edited a myspace.com link that was already there (btw: either of those link formats work for her site.. the longer one redirects to the shorter one).. It's good that the bot reverted you though. When you made those two edits, it seems you inadvertently removed some wiki-markup which broke the page formatting. --Versageek 02:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You shouldn't be butting in on conversations that don't even involve you! This is between me and XLinkbot, not you! Mind your own business! DemiLovato15 (talk) 21:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Please, stay calm. It actually has everything to do with Versageek. XLinkBot is, as the name suggests, a bot that is run by Versageek. Any problems with the bot should be forwarded to him. Paragon12321 (talk) 21:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey! Mind your own business next time! This doesn't concern you. DemiLovato15 (talk) 21:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I do have to agree with you. You didn't add a link, you just fixed one. I don't know specifically how this bot works, but it probably just reverts any myspace links. Just remember, this is a bot, and there are false positives. Just stay calm next time. You can remove the warning if you want. Paragon12321 (talk) 21:42, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for agreeing with me! By the way, I removed the warning just now. The warning practically filled up my entire talk page! Again thank you! DemiLovato15 (talk) 22:42, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. Just keep a cool head and you'll find that people are more helpful. Paragon12321 (talk) 23:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't get it. Demi, were you expecting the bot to reply? Enigma ^message 00:04, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I guess this isn't the only bot... Enigma ^message 00:06, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It is also possible that Demi didn't know that they were automatic bots or just someone that has "bot" in there name. Paragon12321 (talk) 00:32, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey! Don't talk about me behind my back! DemiLovato15 (talk) 01:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Jerry Cornelius edit

Hi - I've just edited the Jerry Cornelius page, and my edits were removed because of having myspace page links. I am in one of the bands referred to, and this was a preliminary action to me putting on a page about our band..... I've just read the conflict of interest page.... I've contributed to other wikis, so I'm used to NPOV policies, which hopefully should be evident from this initial edit - can you do a page about your own band, if you restrict yourself accordingly? (please reply on my talk page if possible!) --The Space Banana (talk) 13:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)