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To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptionsany subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
Source Link

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflowdeleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam postspam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

replaced http://superuser.com/ with https://superuser.com/
Source Link

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam postspam post, but also a nice non-spam answera nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

To avoid confusion: please only upvote if you think automatic deletion of associated accounts is helpful, and downvote if you think it's making things worse... I know how voting works here.


Yesterday I was about to post the following as a question, but while typing I realized that automatic removal of associated accounts might also delete valuable content or might be problematic for hacked accounts, and hence be a bad idea. Or is it?

A spam account was deleted from Stack Overflow (at least 5 spam posts from May 8th to May 16th), while its associated account on Super User was involved in the same spamming too (at least one spam post, but also a nice non-spam answer).

Some time later, the Super User moderators also deleted the spam, and warned:

If you spam this product again, you will be suspended.

That's fine with me, but still just curious: would it make life easier for moderators to automatically delete associated accounts (and their content), if an account is deleted for spamming on one site?

(That would also remove any subscriptions such spammer might have configured to find future spammable posts, but I guess such subscriptions could also be maintained using a puppet, so not a lot we can do there. Also note that this specific user has associated a new SE account to their remaining other accounts. But I don't think that having a few "old" associated accounts would fool other users into giving a spammer the benefit of the doubt if spamming again.)

replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/
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Note about the voting
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Arjan
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Added timeframe; this spammer was around for a week before I noticed the Super User post that made me look into other posts.
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Arjan
  • 28.2k
  • 18
  • 112
  • 176
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Source Link
Arjan
  • 28.2k
  • 18
  • 112
  • 176
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