Обсуждение: Consent to translate your web page at http://wiki.postgresql.org/
Hi, My name is Maria Ramos and I'm seeking the approval to translate your page about porting from FileMaker Pro to PostgreSQL into Spanish language. I'm part of Education Channels and Community Support Team at WebHostingHub.com. We strive to help website owners and micro businesses to get online in trouble-free way and succeed on the web. Myself and my team of three computer science students are constantly looking for useful relevant materials to share with our Spanish speaking visitors and customers (we get more than 60,000 visitors per month to our Support Center http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/). I would notify you as soon as the translation is ready to be shared, so you could review it and let us know if any changes are required. Your page will be cited as the original source and I will follow any copyright instructions you might give me. Once again, here is the exact address of your page: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Porting_from_FileMaker_Pro_to_PostgreSQL Please let me know if I can proceed with the translation. Best Regards, Maria Ramos mariar@webhostinghub.com http://webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/
Maria Ramos wrote: > Hi, > > My name is Maria Ramos and I'm seeking the approval to translate > your page about porting from FileMaker Pro to PostgreSQL into > Spanish language. > > I'm part of Education Channels and Community Support Team at > WebHostingHub. I couldn't decide whether this is spam or not, so I let it through. My apologies to everyone if this turns out to be the wrong thing to have done. -- Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services
On 5/16/13 5:46 AM, Maria Ramos wrote: > My name is Maria Ramos and I'm seeking the approval to translate your > page about porting from FileMaker Pro to PostgreSQL into Spanish language. > Maria Ramos > mariar@webhostinghub.com > http://webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/ Let me put a full debunking into the record since this isn't easy to figure out. I had to see a few examples from "Maria" to notice the pattern, so I can't blame anyone else who wasn't sure if this was legit after seeing one. This is fairly subtle bit of SEO someone is doing on the edge of some more legitimate business. There is a "Education Channel" site at http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/edu that includes information about open-source programs. And they will translate materials (I can't say to what quality level) and publish things there. Here are two examples listed as being translated by this Maria Ramos: http://epe.si/about-epesi -> http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/acerca-de-epesi http://www.bitrot.de/macswitch.html -> http://www.webhostinghub.com/support/es/misc/compra-un And those examples suggest what is coming next. After the translation, they ask for a link back from your site. From the invitations I've gotten to translate things on my own sites--I've gotten two of these now--it's clear to me that the targets of this "service" are pages with good Google rankings. That sure looks like the standard link exchange spam approach, except with this translation twist that preys on authors of content. There's an article about that here: http://dmitrybrant.com/2013/05/06/a-new-low-in-seo-scams And sure enough, the site that one is talking about--"Web Hosting Geeks"--is filled with links promoting WebHostingHub material. Some other open source communities have gone through this same exercise and also concluded this is a link exchange spam setup: http://kde.6490.n7.nabble.com/Consent-to-translate-your-web-page-at-http-kopete-kde-org-td1526474.html It doesn't help that I also found an article about Twitter spamming work related to this company too: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/webhostinghub-com-spamming-like-its-going-out-of-style-a-case-study/4731 There might be a legitimate arm of Web Hosting Hub that interacts with open-source projects. That doesn't seem to be end that is contacting people about Spanish translations though. -- Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg@2ndQuadrant.com Baltimore, MD PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com
On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 02:28:19PM +0200, Maria Ramos wrote: > My name is Maria Ramos and I have contacted you on two occasions already > but haven’t received any responses from you yet. I was looking at your web > page and found it suitable to translate it into Spanish language. My > purpose is to help people of Hispanic descent better understand some very > useful information about computing. The translation is intended only for > web, no print copies planned. Once again, I hope that we can work together > to better spread a word about your work. I am looking forward to hearing > from you. No permission is granted to translate pages to host in other sites. If you really want to contribute a translation we're happy to host it in http://wiki.postgresql.org, per http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_wiki:Language_policy -- Álvaro Herrera