Tool:Linkwatcher - Wikitech

Toolforge tools
COIBot, Xlinkbot, LiWa3 bots / Linkwatcher
Website	w:en:User:COIBot, m:User:LiWa3 and w:en:User:XLinkBot
Description	a bot that tries to track edits that are made by users who may have a conflict of interest, including spambots
Keywords	irc, perl, mysql
Author(s)	Beetstra and Versageek
Maintainer(s)	Beetstra, and also operated by Billinghurst (View all)
License	No license specified

COIBot is a meta and irc bot that tries to track edits that are made by users who may have a conflict of interest ('COI', see w:Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, m:Terms of use, w:Wikipedia:Spam and w:Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with close associations).
LiWa3 is an offline bot that watches link additions across WMF's public wikis.
XLinkBot is an enwiki bot that reverts certain link additions

Online commands: m:Small Wiki Monitoring Team/IRC

Data collected is stored in mysql database; domain and user reports are published by COIBot on Meta m:special:prefixindex/User:COIBot

COIBot: excerpted from enwiki

Extended content

COIBot tries to associate a users' username (or IP) with the material that they are editing:

Username similar to the name of the page the user is editing
Username similar to the external links a user is adding
user-IP (in case of IP users) in close range proximity of IP of domain (external link) a user is adding (IP of the domain as reported at time of addition by a DNS server).

Moreover, COIBot will track edits which it has been instructed to follow (e.g. certain username patterns or external link patterns).

COIBot also works closely together with LiWa3, an off-wiki bot that tracks all link additions (in content areas of Wikipedia) across the whole of WikiMedia (>> 800 wikis). LiWa3 will detect links that are only added by IPs, only added by one single user, that are redirect sites, or which have been reported to one of the spam-related noticeboards, and report them to COIBot.

COIBot has access to the database of link additions created by LiWa3, and can save reports on data retrieved from that database:

Reports all external link additions:
- on a certain domain;
- on domains hosted on one server-IP (server-IP as reported by a DNS server at time of addition).
Reports on all edits of a certain user/IP-editor:
- all link additions that have been performed by a certain user/IP (e.g. collect all domains spammed by a certain spammer);
- report all edits where COIBot perceived significant connection between username / user-IP and page edited / domain added.

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XLinkBot: excerpted from enwiki

Extended content

XLinkBot is primarily intended to deal with domains which may have a legit use on-wiki, but are frequently misused by new and anonymous users (or have a history of being misused). The bot allows established users to add links, while reverting links added by others. IP's and new users can still edit a page that contains links on the bot's revert list, they won't be reverted unless they add or change a link themselves.

XLinkBot can also serve as a good "step-up" to, or "step-down" from, the w:en:Mediawiki:Spam-blacklist, allowing time to see if the URL continues to be abused.

The Override list and the HardOverride list should only be used for short-term issues. If URLs are being abused to the point that the override is necessary on a long-term basis - they should be placed on the w:en:Mediawiki:Spam-blacklist.
Sites which are completely inappropriate for Wikipedia belong on the Mediawiki:Spam-blacklist rather than the RevertList.
At the request of the community, we have extended the ability to modify XLinkBot's revert list and revert behavior to all English Wikipedia admins. This can be done by editing the XLinkBot control pages noted below.

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Interacting with the bots

IRC channel #wikimedia-external-links ^connect
m:User:COIBot/Poke (approved users)

Maintenance

The bots run from Portal:Cloud VPS under the "coibot" and "liwa3" accounts.

coibot

# Start coibot
$ cd /home/beetstra/coibot
$ sudo ./coibot.sh &

# Start xlinkbot
$ cd /home/beetstra/xlinkbot
$ sudo ./xlinkbot.sh &

liwa3

# Start linkwatcher
$ cd /home/beetstra/linkwatcher
$ sudo ./linkwatcher.sh &