I fear we are being taken advantage of, primarily by two or three publishers of commercial password recovery software. While taken alone, any given article may appear to provide plausible content and superficially satisfy the brand name guidelines, but when viewing the overall pattern, it becomes apparent that this is the result of an organized campaign to promote certain products and to do so at the expense of wikiHow’s integrity. In many cases, URLs and brand names have been removed, but too often that leaves a content duplicate, with a poor title, in mechanically translated English, that may be unclear, incomplete, or inaccurate. Specifically, I’m seeking additional input on questions such as: 1. Of the various methods described, which ones work and are recommendable? 2. For methods which depend on operating system or other factors, are they correctly classified? 3. What are the best titles for the content that should be retained? 4. Which titles should be deleted outright, without merging content or leaving a redirect? I found 67 articles that might be affected. Most have current or recent problems with spam, but some are included for completeness and as possible merge targets. To avoid clogging up the forum and to allow others to add anything I’ve missed, I’ve made a project page
in my sandbox to list them. Interested editors are invited to comment here or edit the project page directly.
system
2
Have you noticed any patterns in terms of a specific software company publishing aggressively here? Also - maybe someone with more technical knowledge can answer this: Is the specificity of the Windows version you are using significant enough to warrant separate articles?
system
3
P.S. - Thanks for putting together this list Peter!
It’s hard to tell, considering the names they give their products. I think the makers of Windows Password Rescuer
, Windows Password Reset
, Windows Password Recovery
, and Windows Password Unlocker
are all distinct entities who have independently made their appearances in many of the listed articles and probably some deleted ones as well. Here’s an example
where they sparred with each other, undeterred by the fact that none of them could make a proper link to their official homepage, presumably due to each having already made the spam blacklist.
I’ve had the chance to review these articles and do a little independent research on the subject and I’m looking to wrap this project up soon. The plan is outlined on the project page and tonight I’ll start merging and renaming the best explanations of the 10 or so methods I’d like to keep and nfd’ing the rest.
Ttrimm
6
Awesome!!! That is an incredible piece of work.
Looks like you put a lot of time into examining this. Thanks for help clean up wikiHow
This article: - http://www.wikihow.com/Reset-a-Windows-Password-With-TRK
Is legit. TRK is the Trinity Resource Kit which is a specialized Linux based toolkit that runs on a lightweight LiveCD. It’s 100% free and it’s the tool I use myself as an IT professional. There is also an official Microsoft tool for Windows Vista and newer as part of their recovery tools (must be prepared ahead of time so doesn’t work if you’re already locked out). Beyond TRK and the official MS tool there is really no reason to ever pay for a tool like the other ones listed there.
