Forum:Wikia-credits block is spam

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It looks like we still have problems with Special:Export on this site.

The export function does export the article text, but spams this onto the end of every page:

<div id="wikia-credits"><br /><br /><small>From [http://uncyclopedia.org Uncyclopedia], a [http://www.wikia.com Wikia] wiki.</small></div>

This rubbish is then being pulled in by various robots and reposted back to the original site. The end-result looks basically like vandalism.

Nyp has recently been trying to repair some of the damage done here on en.uncyclopedia:

Quite the list; quite a few front-page templates appear here. Unfortunately, if Wikia has broken Special:Export, the problems are going to recur.

Banning all 'bots from the site isn't an option, as it would mean having to generate thousands of interwiki links manually. Blaming the operators of the 'bots (if they're even still active) is also no help, as the problem is being caused not by the robot itself but by Wikia. Garbage in, garbage out.

The issue has been raised before in other fora, primarily on the central Wikia, with no viable solutions offered. The matter is out of my hands (I have not run any 'bots on Wikia since July 2006) but I do see this as a problem that does need to be resolved. Cleaning up this mess by hand is a long, slow and impractical approach. Wikia needs to fix this. --Carlb 17:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

My question is why the hell Wikia needs to whore its name onto every single damn thing that they host. I remember when Rangeley came around when the Wikia Spotlight arrived, and he was suitably pissed off. Everyone eventually got him to stop his complaining, but now I can see why he voiced his distaste with it. Yes, we know Uncyclopedia is a Wikia wiki. Yes, we know there are other wikis hosted by it. If a person wants to know that, they can look at the bottom of the page and see the "hosted by Wikia" logo, click on it, and then learn all about the different wikis we have. I'm pretty sure it's become clear that WIKIA HOSTS UNCYCLOPEDIA. Neither I nor anyone else enjoys being raped in the eyes with declarations of this type. It's getting to a point where I, someone who quite understands Wikia's place here, am getting disillusioned by the constant attempts to stick the name to our wiki.~~ S i r Ljlego , GUN [talk] 18:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Until it gets fixed, I'll just run wikipedia:WP:AWB on the bots' contribs. Give me a list of the bots, and I'll add them to the list of contribs it's checking right now. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 18:09 Apr 13, 2008

Do the interwiki bots use special:export? Which are the bots spaming back in? And who's exporting anyway? where to? maybe to that mirror page which drives so much traffic away from this site? If that's the case we should ask wikia to swap that message for viagra adds.---Asteroid B612

(aka Rataube) - Ñ 15:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well they need to make money from uncyclopedia somehow, right? And in lieu of ads, they need to drive people to wikis where there are ads. That's business 101. For what it's worth, against crappy wikia credits spam.

Though can't the bots use the mediawiki API instead of the export function? You can get all the info Special:Export gives, and way more. And the revision data isn't spammed with wikia's credits message. Compare this API query (showing just about all the information you could possibly get from the page) to the result of Special:Export. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 19:48, 14 Apr 2008

Actually all I did is do a search on "wikia-credits", search in all namespaces and then I removed that line of ~~spam~~ "credits". • n y p 11:21, 15 April 2008

That's just what we advise generally. Set your bot to find and remove text with id="wikia-credits". That's the solution we came up with when there were complaints about the addition initially. I don't know bots, but I understand this isn't a big change to make.

As Spang said, gotta pay the rent. This helps ensure that anyone using content from here (like, say, CarlB's fork of Uncyclopedia ;) will be linking back here and to Wikia. I don't think that's too much to ask... in fact, some form of attribution is part of the license (this form isn't ideal, but it's something). --- sannse (talk) 15:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Attribution to the original author(s) is part of the license. Wikia is not the author. A link to the original article's history in the user tabs or sidebar would therefore be more appropriate. Feeding spam to the site robots locally seems rather pointless, though? --72.140.46.227 18:30, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Solution

Check out Uberfuzzy's patch to fix this issue. Also, forks are lame. — Sir Manticore 05:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, this workaround seems to work; and if a page has the credits before, it removes them (but I'm not sure if it's a desirable effect because the page can be exported/imported from another wiki...) --ChixpyBot 15:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Forum:Wikia-credits block is spam

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