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This page will introduce the anti-spam features available on IMSLP, as well as the most effective way to utilize them.
It is necessary to understand why spammers spam if we are to fight spam effectively. The main motivation behind most spam, especially automated spam, is to put external links on IMSLP. These external links in turn drive up the Google ranking of the external site, the ultimate purpose of the spamming campaign. Therefore, always target the external links first when trying to block spam.
The main spam blocker on IMSLP is the custom IMSLP special page Special:SpamBlacklist. Using this page, you are able to:
Note: The blacklist will automatically be cleared whenever the web server is restarted (which is usually rare, e.g. every few weeks). This should not really affect the functionality of the blacklist because spamming campaigns rarely last that long, but just a heads up so that you'll know why items on the previous blacklist disappeared. Note 2: You must be an administrator (i.e. possess the right to delete articles) in order to use this special page.
View blacklist: You can view the blacklist simply by visiting Special:SpamBlacklist.
You can add an item to the blacklist by using the following syntax:
where <item> is the text to be matched. For example,
blocks all edits that contain "somesite" in them (i.e. maybe to block links to "somesite.com").
Clear blacklist: You can clear the blacklist by visiting the following URL: http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:SpamBlacklist/clearlist
