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I'm not an active SE user any more, so apologies if this is the wrong place for this. I couldn't think of anywhere more appropriate to post it though.

SE user MediaGirl is promoting the ExpressionEngine proposal on Area 51 via Twitter spam to SE users. Screenshot below:

I assume this is against the rules for Area51? Messaging me about it was random, as I've barely used a SE site in months, and have never mentioned this EE CMS that it's for. I can't speak for balpha and samthebrand, but it seems to me that Joel wouldn't be interested in discussing a commercial PHP CMS either, so that message also appears to be spamming for support.

The site is currently second in Area51's hot ranking, and it seems a significant portion of it is down to this user's referrals, as she is topping the list with 64k total rep and 24 referrals.

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    Perhaps annoying, but I'm not sure that much can be done about it. (Besides asking the user directly to stop) Nor that something should be done about it. You can always block the user on Twitter.
    – Bart
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:10
  • Can;t you just not follow her?
    – jmort253
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:17
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    @jmort253 I don't follow her. She sent me an @ reply out of the blue, which shows up in my inbox. I thought that was a bit random so I checked her profile to see if she spammed anyone else.
    – Macha
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:18
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    If she's spamming balpha and spolsky she's not a very sneaky spammer at any rate.
    – TCPMAN.EXE
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:20
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    @mootinator samthebrand is also a SE employee.
    – yannis
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:21
  • Warn her. @reply her back and tell her you don't appreciate the solicitation. If she continues, report her. She's not sending out Nigerian scam letters, so I wouldn't throw the book at her just yet. Or just block her. Twitter is, after all, a social network. ;)
    – jmort253
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:31

1 Answer 1

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Area51 encourages people to advertise proposals, and although @mediagirl seems to be advocating the proposal a bit aggressively for my taste I don't think there's anything Stack Exchange can or should do.

She doesn't seem to be associated with EllisLabs (the company behind ExpressionEngine) and, well, if she was purposefully spamming she'd probably avoid contacting SE's CEO (@spolsky), a SE developer (@balpha) and a SE evangelist/CHAOS member (@samthebrand).

You could block her, or even report her for spam and let Twitter decide if she's abusing their platform or not.

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    I should add that there's one type of Area 51 proposal spam I've seen more of lately, and that's comment spam on Stack Overflow. People will go search for anyone asking or answering in a particular tag related to the proposal, then leave random comments pushing this proposal. If you see this, flag us about it and we'll clean these up.
    – Brad Larson
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:43
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    @BradLarson That's a very good point. You might also be interested in following the Atheism/Agnosticism proposal ;P
    – yannis
    Oct 29, 2012 at 22:52
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    @YannisRizos I sooo want to flag that... but I suppose it's educational ;)
    – Andrew Barber
    Oct 30, 2012 at 9:36

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