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COIBot is a bot that tries to track edits that are made by users who may have a conflict of interest ('COI', see Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, m:Terms of use, Wikipedia:Spam and Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with close associations).
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 (~830 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.