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Scenario:

  • There's a spam post that's lingering on a site.
  • Someone links to the post in a chatroom, to attract more spam flags.
  • The post gets hammered off.
  • But the onebox of the post remains in the chatroom. Possibly including a link included in the spam.

A moderator can delete the chat message, of course. But it's annoying to have to do that manually. Furthermore, this carries a risk:

  • Someone flags the chat message linking to the spam.
  • A moderator validates the flag, causing the poster of the chat message to be temporarily banned from chat.

It would be nice if messages containing a oneboxed post were deleted from chat, or refreshed to remove the onebox, when the post is deleted.

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  • I actually did get banned for posting spam to be flagged in the chat room once...
    – ɥʇǝS
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:32
  • I'd prefer to leave it as is. In the rooms I'm in, we find a lot of entertaining value in posting spam/offensive/extremely low quality posts.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:37
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    @Mysticial The issue is that, depending on what's in the onebox, it may actually convey the same information the spammer wanted to convey. Oneboxes that contain the same off-site spam links that a spammer wanted people to see shouldn't stick around...at least not in their original form.
    – Eliah Kagan
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:38
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    @Mysticial That was my first reaction too, but the link in the onebox is a problem.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:39
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    @Seth Though not a solution to the overall issue, there is a workaround (for flaggers) for the problem of users being wrongly banned from chat: Never use a spam flag on a well-intended post that contains an external spam link in a onebox; use a custom chat flag instead. (For a onebox that doesn't contain an external spam link, it's unlikely any flagging is called for.) This isn't something you can do as the flagee, but rather something your flagger ought to have done differently. While I believe custom chat flags always require moderators (of some site) to respond, that's not necessarily bad.
    – Eliah Kagan
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:40
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    Good point about the links. I can't say it's ever been a problem in our rooms though... But I'd hate to see all deleted one-boxes go completely without a trace... At most delinkify or un-onebox them.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:43
  • @Mysticial How about giving users late-edit or a toggle feature on link-only chat lines beyond the timer?
    – user98085
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:55
  • @FEichinger That can be easily abused. Right now, on SO we just resort to binning. (which gets rid of it completely) And on SE, we have one of our pet mods do all the editing... (for other reasons unrelated to spam)
    – Mysticial
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 2:57
  • @Mysticial Completely? You aren't just talking about moving it to a trash room then?
    – ɥʇǝS
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 3:23
  • @Seth Well, it removes it from the source room, thereby breaking the conversation. Which is bad enough already.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Mar 30, 2013 at 3:24
  • @Mysticial. It means spam is still present for search engines to see.
    – TRiG
    Commented Jan 16, 2014 at 0:30

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