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Either someone is creating a bunch of accounts and asking very similar questions, or a bunch of people from the same math class all decided to use SO to do their homework. A search for mcnuggets is a good example; can a moderator check to make sure this isn't the same person over and over again?

EDIT:

This guy is out of control. In the last ten minutes, this and this. Maybe he should be banned?

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    He's at it again... I can't imagine that that many different people in one class would have exactly the same idea to post pretty much the exact same question (unless it's a "how to abuse SO" class). It seems like one person to me, just repeatedly creating accounts to get around any bans that may be in place.
    – David Z
    Commented Jun 17, 2010 at 3:14

1 Answer 1

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OK, I deleted all these duplicates. How convenient for us they all used unique words; "Diophantine" is also good.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3050882/diophantine-equation-closed
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3050475/solving-diophantine-equations-using-python
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3046564/problem-solving-in-python-program-closed

I guess we can thank their teacher for that courtesy!

Edit: wow, this is a much more serious problem than I realized. I count DOZENS (literally, dozens!) of accounts spamming us with the same bad python assignment questions. Two IP ranges, both map to Universities in India.

Laying down wide IP bans:

# incredibly abusive indian university homework, dozens of accounts
# spamming the same gratuituous homework questions
-A INPUT -s 210.212.0.0/16 -j DROP
-A INPUT -s 218.248.0.0/16 -j DROP

(specifically 218.248.5.222 and 210.212.222.90)

Also destroying many, many accounts.

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    My lecturers have recommended me to tell my friends about Stack Overflow... I'm having second thoughts after what just happened. Commented Jun 16, 2010 at 6:31
  • He's still at it (I edited the question to include a couple new links). EDIT: Oh, that was fast :) Commented Jun 16, 2010 at 6:49
  • @Bolt - so you prefer having lots of questions/answers about the same problem (duplicates) instead of having only one thread to look for? Duplicates are noisy and confusing, why should they not be closed?
    – user141148
    Commented Jun 16, 2010 at 6:51
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    @Carlos I think he means he doesn't trust classmates not to abuse it like this if he tells them about it -- he was one of the people telling the spammer to knock it off Commented Jun 16, 2010 at 6:52
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    @Bolt, @Michael - ups, sorry, i got it the other way.
    – user141148
    Commented Jun 18, 2010 at 8:47

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