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Not long ago I noticed a blessed change that is obfuscating question title and body when it's deleted after getting valid spam flags.

Question title becomes:

This question was marked as spam or offensive and is therefore not shown

And body:

This question was marked as spam or offensive and is therefore not shown - you can see the revision history for details.

Great, however I saw now that the page title itself still showing the nasty spam:

Can my innocent soul be saved from seeing such horrible things, please?

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3 Answers 3

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Since there's already a process in place to replace the question title and body with an appropriate text when deleted for being spam or rude, changing the page title as well should be a five minute fix. Ten minutes perhaps, to figure out a suitable replacement text, but here's my suggestion "Post Removed".

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I am worried that changing the title in the browser will actually obfuscate the title that much, we can't make sense of the actually question opened any more. If you have opened a few tabs, which is that 1-800 SPAM post?

I don't think the obfuscation of the question itself is useful, since that is only visible to 10K users anyway that willingly open that specific question though a link.

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    The page title should reflect the question title, simple as that. If someone opens several spam questions, it's his/her problem. :) May 20, 2015 at 14:06
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Unlike with a deleted answer, people aren't actually going to be seeing the deleted content except when explicitly going out of their way to visit the deleted spam post, so I don't see how this is at all necessary. With a deleted answer people are still going to be going to the question to see the non-spam content, and seeing the spam answer on that page (if they're 10k+) so removing the post itself has merit.

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    So why hide the question body itself in the first place? It feels to me like a job half done, that's all. May 20, 2015 at 14:04
  • @Sha indeed, but a useless job done. Revert? May 20, 2015 at 14:08
  • @ShadowWizard Presumably there's logic to replace the body of all posts when deleted as spam, and it wasn't worth the effort to go out of their way to not remove it. But either way, "Do this thing because, even though it wouldn't be helpful, you did this other thing that wasn't helpful either" isn't good justification for a feature request. This should only be done if it would add value to go in and spend the time to do it.
    – Servy
    May 20, 2015 at 14:08
  • @Pat no, I rather like not seeing the spam itself. May 20, 2015 at 14:08
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    On a deleted post? Why would you open the spam page then? To see the spam banner? May 20, 2015 at 14:09
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    @Servy I don't think it's actually replaced in the database, it's an extra layer of code that change the contents after reading from database. May 20, 2015 at 14:09
  • @ShadowWizard Agreed. I'd assume that that code was created for the sake of spam answers, and they didn't go out of their way to prevent it from applying to questions too, because why not. The actually effort for the feature was added for the sake of answers, where it's useful.
    – Servy
    May 20, 2015 at 14:11
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    @Pat many times I keep an open eye on spam questions to see when they're deleted, and many times I leave a tab open and spam appears in the "(x) new questions" when I click it. Of course it's minor, but still... :) May 20, 2015 at 14:11
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    @Servy the obfuscation of questions is much newer than answers, I'm 99% sure of that. So it wasn't all done in the same time. May 20, 2015 at 14:12
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    @ShadowWizard So when you go out of your way to click on a post you know is entirely spam, and will never have any content of value, there's nothing to gain from trying to obfuscate it. It's not like you're seeing spam without knowing it was spam.
    – Servy
    May 20, 2015 at 14:13
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    @ShadowWizard So then you're saying that because they wasted their time making a change that doesn't add value, they should make another change that also doesn't add any value? Also, again, since all of that work was already done for answers, one would assume that it would be extraordinarily little additional work to do it for questions. The point remains, this change wouldn't be adding value. Whether another feature was done or not doesn't change that.
    – Servy
    May 20, 2015 at 14:15
  • spam/offensive titles leak into flag summary page
    – gnat
    May 20, 2015 at 16:24
  • @gnat Okay. What benefit is there in obfuscating this information on that page? I can see benefits in not obfuscating it, and I can't see any particular reasons why it would be beneficial to obfuscate it.
    – Servy
    May 20, 2015 at 16:26
  • I only point that statement "people aren't actually going to be seeing" looks mistaken
    – gnat
    May 20, 2015 at 16:44
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    ...on a futher thought, yeah, there seem to be harm - many spam titles are NSFW. I guess not everyone is comfortable if colleague passing by sees at their monitor "for escort girls, call <blah blah>" or something like that. "No, that's not what you thought, that's my flags page and red backgound means deleted spam, I am not really looking for escort girls..." yeah sure
    – gnat
    May 20, 2015 at 16:52

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