1

While patrolling recent changes, I noticed that there are anonymous users who post comments on discussion and talk pages which seem like a bunch of random letter and signs and a link to an error page. These are some of the users which I have seen doing this: http://www.wikihow.com/Special:Contributions/116.123.216.90 http://www.wikihow.com/Special:Contributions/88.208.220.69 http://www.wikihow.com/Special:Contributions/134.214.83.210 Are they bots? or a group of vandals? or what? I am rather confused!

2

Wannabe spambots or something. No idea. Anyway, I reverted their edits.

3

Thanks. Maybe if they continue to make edits like that, they should be blocked?

4

Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it:slight_smile:

5

Is that a saying? or did you make it up?

6

They’re anons… and we really don’t like to block IP addresses because many Internet Service Providers hand out IP addresses randomly. You might have one today, and tomorrow your neighbor down the street might have it. wikiHow doesn’t want to block a potential good faith editor before they even have a chance to get on the site.

7

That’s kinda what I wanted to say, but it came out like this:

8

That’ s a saying. It means “don’ t worry about it until it happens”… like “Don’t worry about crossing the bridge now, we will when we get there.”

9

These are, in fact spambots, and the policy has been, as long as I remember, to block them first offense for three months. I know most of the links they post are nonsense or broken links, and why they operate like this is anyone’s guess, but unless the policy has changed, the response to edits like these has been the same for as long as I remember.