 | This page documents an English Wikipediacontent guideline. Editors should generally follow it, thoughexceptions may apply.Substantive edits to this page should reflectconsensus. When in doubt, discuss first onthis guideline's talk page. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Spam is the inappropriate addition of content to Wikipedia with the intention of promoting or publicizing an outside organization, individual or idea, and is considered harmful to the encyclopedia. Do notdisrupt Wikipedia with spam. If you find spam, please remove or rewrite the content. |
There are three main types ofspam on Wikipedia:
Articles considered advertisements include those that are solicitations for a business, product or service, or arepublic relations pieces designed to promote a company, organisation, or individual. Wikispam articles are usually noted for sales-oriented language and external links to a commercial website. However, a differentiation should be made between spam articles and legitimate articles about commercial entities or other organisations.
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Blatant examples of advertising masquerading as encyclopedia articles can be tagged forspeedy deletion with the template{{db-spam}}. The same applies to pages inuserspace, thedraft namespace, or any other namespace. Other advertisements posted on Wikipedia can be dealt with by eitherproposed deletion or listing them onWikipedia:Articles for deletion. On some occasions, the content can be removed temporarily on the basis of a suspectedcopyright violation, since the text is often copied from another website and posted anonymously. Before trying to get an advertisement masquerading as an article deleted, please check the article's history to see if an acceptable revision exists there. If so, please revert to the latest acceptable version of the article.
When an article on an otherwise encyclopedic topic has the tone of an advertisement, the article can often be salvaged by rewriting it in aneutral point of view. Elements of articles about products or services with brand names can also be combined under a common topic or category to facilitate unbiased and collaborative information by including information about the competition and about different alternatives.
Spam may also occur byhijacking articles. In this case, information is changed to the subject being promoted, and the article is "hijacked", or changed, to promote an entirely different subject.
Some articles, especially those pertaining to Internet topics, are prone to aggressive spamming from multiple websites.
If articles have spam, and you haven't got the time or ability to remove it, you can tag them with{{Advert}}. This template expands to the following:
 | This articlecontainspromotional content. Please helpimprove it by removingpromotional language and inappropriateexternal links, and by adding encyclopedic text written from aneutral point of view. (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Another possible tag to use is{{External links}}, which expands to the following:
 | This article'suse ofexternal links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Pleaseimprove this article by removingexcessive orinappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate intofootnote references. (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The third useful template is asubstituted template {{subst:No more links}}, visible only while the page is being edited. After spam links have been removed from a Wikipedia article, this template can be substituted into the top of the external links section of the frequently spammed article as a pre-emptive measure.
<!-- {{No more links}}Please be cautious adding more external links.Wikipedia is not a collection of links and should not be used for advertising.Excessive or inappropriate links will be removed.See [[Wikipedia:External links]] and [[Wikipedia:Spam]] for details.If there are already suitable links, propose additions or replacements onthe article's talk page.-->A fourth template, used for citation spam, is{{refimprove-spam}}, which looks like this:
 | This articlecontains references thatappear to be spam. Wikipedia is not a collection of links and should not be used for advertising. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. SeeWikipedia:External links andWikipedia:Spam for details. (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Finally to advise the Wikipedia community to watch an article for abuse you can add to the talk page (under the project banners and other page headers, but before any discussions){{Prone to spam}} which looks like this:
 | This article is prone tospam. Please monitor theReferences andExternal links sections. |
Adding external links to an article or user page for the purpose of promoting a website or a product is not allowed, and is considered to be spam. Although the specific links may be allowed under some circumstances, repeatedly adding links will in most cases result in all of them being removed.
Citation spamming is the illegitimate or improper use ofcitations,footnotes, orreferences. Citation spamming is a form ofsearch engine optimization orpromotion that typically involves the repeated insertion of a particular citation or reference in multiple articles by a single contributor. Often these are addednot to verify article content, but rather to populate numerous articles with a particular citation. Variations of citation spamming include academics and scientists using their editing privileges primarily to add citations to their own work, and people replacing live or dead URLs with links to commercial sites or their own blogs. Citation spamming is a subtle form of spam andshould not be confused with legitimate good-faith additions intended to verify article content and help build the encyclopedia.
Source solicitations are messages on article talk pages that explicitly solicit editors to use a specific external source to expand an article. Editors with aconflict of interest should follow Wikipedia policies and best practices scrupulously when soliciting editors to use a specific external source to expand an article. Every article on Wikipedia can be expanded as a matter of course, but the question is in the details on a per-article basis. It is not possible to simply say "all articles of X type can be expanded using Y source".
There is no hard rule on when this crosses over from being a legitimate attempt to improve the article into being internal spam, but some guidelines and questions to consider:
A few parties now appear to have a spambot capable of spamming wikis from several wiki engines, analogous to the submitter scripts for guestbooks and blogs. They have a database of a few hundred wikis. Typically they insert external links. Likeblog spam, their aim is to improve thesearch engine rankings of the external sites, not to directly advertise their product. (This does not work on Wikimedia wikis because of the use of thenofollow directive.)
If you see a bot inserting external links, please consider checking the other language wikis to see if the attack is widespread. If it is, please contact asysop on theMeta-Wiki; they can put in a Wikimedia-wide text filter. Any Meta sysop can edit theWikimedia-wide spam blacklist to add or remove the patterns that are recognized by the filter, with the changes taking effect immediately. New links can also be added to the list if a new spammer should start making the rounds.
Sysops are authorised toblock unauthorisedbots on sight. Spambots should be treated as vandal bots. Edits by spambots constitute unauthorised defacement of websites, which is against the law in many countries, and may result in complaints to ISPs and (ultimately) prosecution.
The link spam problem extends far beyond Wikimedia projects, and is generally worse on smaller wikis where the community struggles to keep it clean.mw:Manual:Combating spam describes features available in MediaWiki (for administrators running this software).
Many times, users can be confused by the removal of spam links because other links that could be construed as spam have been added to the article and not yet removed. The inclusion of a spam link should not be construed as an endorsement of the spam link,nor should it be taken as a reason or excuse to include another.
Even if they are related to the subject or are an official page for the subject, external links containingaffiliate orreferral codes are considered spam. If the linked webpage is otherwise appropriate, please remove all referral codes from the URL.
Adding links togratis online videos that promote a site or product is not allowed [see exception below]. Often these videos have been uploaded in violation of theircopyright, which adds an additional reason for not linking to them. A video might be a spamming video if:
Exception: Generally, a video is not a spamming video if it refers to the official site associated with the Wikipedia article. For example, if the Wikipedia article is on a movie named "xyzMovie" and the official site for the movie is "xyzMovie.com" then links or references to "xyzMovie.com" are legitimate for a video at a video sharing page. Although all other links at that video page should also be legitimate, some judgement is needed. If the posted video just advertises a bunch of products associated with the movie, then it is a spamming video even though it refers to the official site.
Sometimes Wikipedia seesbookspam, which is the insertion of text mentioning books to call attention to the books, rather than to contribute to the article. This often takes the form of inserting book listings into reference sections although the book is not used as the source of any information in the article. Bookspam is also seen as the addition of books to "external links", "further reading" or similar sections, although the books added do not add any useful and relevant information.
Examples in articles tend to attract spam, as in these sentences:
Such sentences tend to attract editors to add more examples because it is far easier to add a link to the end of this kind of sentence than to add encyclopedic content. Examples should only be given if they are highly relevant to the article topic, and should always be sourced withindependent,reliable sources.
Sometimes, people come to Wikipedia with the intention of spamming: creating articles which are mere advertisements orself-promotion, or addingexternal links to a web site over many articles.
Some people spam Wikipedia without meaning to. That is, they do things whichWikipedians consider to be spamming, without realizing that their actions arenot in line withbuilding an encyclopedia. A new editor who owns a business may see that there are articles about other businesses on Wikipedia, and conclude that it would be appropriate to create their own such article. A web site operator may see many places in Wikipedia where their site would be relevant, and quickly add several dozen links to it.
The following guidelines are intended to suggesthow not to be a spammer—that is, how to mention a web site, product, business, or other resource without appearing to the Wikipedia community that you are trying to abuse Wikipedia for self-promotion.
When it comes to warning spammers, use the list of spam warning templates. {{subst:uw-spam1}} (general note) is a useful "first warning" to put on theTalk page of a spammer. For new users. {{subst:welcomespam}} is the alternative and it should only be used if a user may have added a spam link in good faith according to an edit filter that they triggered that indicated that they have possibly added a spam link in good faith.
Subsequent offenses can be tagged with {{subst:uw-spam2}} (caution), or more strongly, {{subst:uw-spam3}} (warning) and {{subst:uw-spam4}} (final warning). If an editor spams numerous articles in a systematic fashion, they may be warned with {{subst:uw-spam4im}} (only warning) as the only warning that they will receive before they are blocked. The template {{subst:uw-sblock}} indicates that the spammer has been blocked.
If you have tagged an article forspeedy deletion with{{db-spam}} because it is blatant spam, you may add {{subst:spam-warn}} to the originating editor's talk page to warn them of the impending deletion, and to allow them to possibly edit the article so it is no longer spam.
Please remember tosubstitute these templates using for example{{subst:uw-spam1}} instead of{{uw-spam1}}.
Editors who have enabledthe Twinkle feature can use thewarn tab to insert these templates.
Sometimes an article attracts so many improper external links that it "crosses thespam event horizon". Links should be removed and editors should be advised ofour policy against promotion. Editors who continually add inappropriate links should receive escalating warnings, and if it continues, should be reported toAIV or3RR, which may result in them being blocked from editing.
A spambot is an automated process that will vandalize a wiki by adding spam links to user pages and articles, or by creating a mass of spam pages.
Operating spambots on the English Wikipedia (or any Wikimedia project) isprohibited by theTerms of Use.