Interesting Wiki Spam

August 17, 2005 @ 10:43 am

So here’s a new scam I’m seeing on my wiki from time to time. There are entries from various sources that post actually useful entries but embed links back to their Web site for advertising and cross link purposes I suspect. For example:

http://www.west-wind.com/wiki/wc.dll?wc~MetaRefresh

In the content of explaining the Meta Refresh tag they are using their own URL as the example. Clever.

Fair enough I guess as long as the content provided is actually useful I don’t really have a problem with this sort of implicit advertising.

The lengths people go through for cross-links/ads is just amazing to me. The whole of Web advertising and link rating etc. is a completely flawed system that is based all around SPAM and scam artist tactics. As long as we have a system like this SPAM and various link high-jacking themes are going to be with us. We can actually blame Google and the other major Web advertisers for much of our problems with SPAM and general Internet advertising madness.

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re: Interesting Wiki Spam
by Havagan August 17, 2005 @ 12:17 pm

I've heard quite a bit about this type of issue on any publicly editable data (be it a wiki or social tagging), however, I don't know that I would consider this to be purposeful spam. If the URL example provided was to a personal or corporate site I would agree but about.com is a community site meant to help and inform.

While the editor could easily have used "www.domain.com" as an example at least this links to a helpful site where theoretically a user could garner more information on Meta Refresh. There may not have been anything nefarious about it, the editor thought they were being helpful by linking to a web design resource.

I guess I could always edit the wiki entry to point to the meta tag definition on the W3C website. =)

Hav

re: Interesting Wiki Spam
by Rick Strahl August 17, 2005 @ 12:20 pm

Havagan,

That entry didn't look to me like somebody would just type that up. It was a placed prepared entry, which is why I was suspicious. But as I said, I'm OK with the implicit advertising as long the content provided has value - fair payment.

re: Interesting Wiki Spam
by Brian Vander Plaats August 17, 2005 @ 1:47 pm

While I really respect Google for the cool services they provide, I am starting to be more wary of some of their underlying technology and methods. I'd say a majority of the time Google's links have helped me, but other times they are completely out of place. A humorous example occurred a few weeks ago when I went to look up a word on Merriam Webster. They have a little frame on their main page that flashes random words, apparently in an attempt to help improve your "word power". Well that day one of the words was - and I kid you not - faggot. I assummed they meant the "bundle of sticks" version, but no, they really intended the gay definition. What's more, the ads by google had a listing for "Chad Hunt Specials" on ebay - which turned out to be some male porn star. So the question is, did Merriam Webster online intend to provide me with direct links to XXX videos as part of their service?

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