Editing Help:Contents (section)

=== Spam Pages ===

The most common sort of "page that needs deleting" that we encounter on this wiki is the ''spam page''.  These are pages with no /tg/ related content, and one or more links to an external web page or pages.  They are either trying to boost said page's Google rank by making it look like more people are linking to it (which won't work, because this wiki -- like all MediaWiki wikis using the default settings -- specifically tells search engines not to use said links for page ranking purposes) or get people to click on that link, driving traffic (which won't work, because people view pages on this wiki that are interesting, which spam pages usually are not).  If you encounter a spam page, mark it with the "<nowiki>{{delete}}</nowiki>" or "<nowiki>{{deletion}}</nowiki>" tags so the admins ([[User:Wikifag|Wikifag]] and [[User:AssistantWikifag|AssistantWikifag]]) know to delete them.

All spam pages are different, but they tend to exhibit most of the following symptoms:
# Containing a link to a dodgy-looking external site, usually one advertising a product or service.
# Being the first (and often only) edit of a new user.
# Being written in broken English or in a non-English language (for some reason, we get a fair amount of Polish and Russian spam).
# Containing a generic, bland greeting ("Happy to be a member of 1d4chan.org, hope I can contribute to this nice site, see my web page: [spam link]").

We admins try to check a page's history before deleting it and blocking the creator, but we're not perfect, especially if there's a lot of spam to be deleted; if you think you have been blocked erroneously, either contact one of the admins by email or their talk pages (obviously as an IP address, if your account got blocked).