What happened to Wikialpha? They have been down for 3 days.

[tylero]

Did anyone else notice this? They have been consistently been favored by Google Search ranking algo but all of sudden they turned off their website. Users can't access it anymore.

 

[IM Dude]

Its giving ssl error. They were swinging wild in terms of traffic, probably google hit them with algo penalty or they got hacked.
Could be their server went down, hardware issue.
I saw people selling backlinks to it all over the place on freelance site like seoclerks, baiting newbies as links to Wikipedia with all sort of bait and switch techniques.

 

[tylero]

Its giving ssl error. They were swinging wild in terms of traffic, probably google hit them with algo penalty or they got hacked.
Could be their server went down, hardware issue.
I saw people selling backlinks to it all over the place on freelance site like seoclerks, baiting newbies as links to Wikipedia with all sort of bait and switch techniques.

That makes sense. The concept of open wiki is good but as they're not making money, I don't know if they're going to be fervent with the maintenance. So far, somehow people have been behaving themselves and not posting rubbish, apart from the links of course but they're nofollow i think.

 

[eyecandy2]

According to a friend:
some guy who kept posting gambling-related pages got pissed off about his pages getting deleted
WikiAlpha does delete - but it's only for really crappy pages like mass gambling spam
so the guy reported Wikialpha to Cloudflare (their host) and said that it was a phishing site
now it's shut down for good
Cloudfare doesn't review complaints properly
they just want to avoid liabilities
because the Wikialpha community portal was spammed by that guy
he kept threatening to report Wikialpha if they keep deleting his gambling pages
he said he potentially lost thousands because of that
and he said he's going to report them for phishing
no one thought he was serious
but he actually did that
a few days before it shut down, there was a "phishing site" warning by Cloudfare

 

[tylero]

According to a friend:
some guy who kept posting gambling-related pages got pissed off about his pages getting deleted
WikiAlpha does delete - but it's only for really crappy pages like mass gambling spam
so the guy reported Wikialpha to Cloudflare (their host) and said that it was a phishing site
now it's shut down for good
Cloudfare doesn't review complaints properly
they just want to avoid liabilities
because the Wikialpha community portal was spammed by that guy
he kept threatening to report Wikialpha if they keep deleting his gambling pages
he said he potentially lost thousands because of that
and he said he's going to report them for phishing
no one thought he was serious
but he actually did that
a few days before it shut down, there was a "phishing site" warning by Cloudfare

WTF This is insane. Cloudflare is a joke if this continues to happen. Someone also a big forum in my country and they took ot down, no questions asked. Thanks for the backstory though.

 

[alainwebcreator]

According to a friend:
some guy who kept posting gambling-related pages got pissed off about his pages getting deleted
WikiAlpha does delete - but it's only for really crappy pages like mass gambling spam
so the guy reported Wikialpha to Cloudflare (their host) and said that it was a phishing site
now it's shut down for good
Cloudfare doesn't review complaints properly
they just want to avoid liabilities
because the Wikialpha community portal was spammed by that guy
he kept threatening to report Wikialpha if they keep deleting his gambling pages
he said he potentially lost thousands because of that
and he said he's going to report them for phishing
no one thought he was serious
but he actually did that
a few days before it shut down, there was a "phishing site" warning by Cloudfare

In my opinion, it's completely unfair to attack such a platform without proof. Every website is governed by rules and has its own editorial line.
The CEO of Wikipedia was within his rights.
Who knows, maybe Cloudfare quickly suspended the site just to appease Wikipedia, which could one day be dethroned ?