Why is this not spam?

Question

I saw this answer on the low quality posts queue. I thought it was spam, and was going to recommend deletion (as 4 out of the 5 reviewers did), but then I noticed it was recently edited by a moderator. Another user had replaced the contents with [content spam deleted pending moderator review], and George Stocker rolled it back. The same is true for the other answer by the same user – who only wrote those two answers, and disappeared 18 months ago; both answers are basically the same.

Why weren't those answers considered spam, and deleted? They definitely look like spam.

Answer 1

There are two issues here, and while others have written eloquently on the subject, I'll tell you why I did what I did, so you can have it from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Even if an answer is outright spam, please do not edit the content out. That's vandalism, and is even worse than letting the spam remain.

If the content gets edited out, all I see in the moderator tools menu is a post that says,

[content spam deleted pending moderator review]

Along with the custom flag under it. If the spam is left in, the decision is easier to make, and I don't have to spend too much time handling that flag. To give you an idea, I handled hundreds of flags yesterday, and this particular one took longer partially because of the vandalism.

Secondly, the answer was no better and no worse than the othe answers in that post. The issue was that the post itself attracted bad answers because of the type of question it was.

This is true for both posts. The user asked for a list of tools, this user provided a link to a tool.

Unless I intended to delete both questions unilaterally, it did not make sense to treat this particular user any differently than anyone else who posted an answer. Thankfully, the community decided to delete the questions, rendering this issue moot.

Spam generally has nothing to do with the question posed, and the definition is very strict for a good reason: spam flags do bad things to users who receive them. These answers, however poor, were not spam.

Answer 2

I see two completely separate issues here. The first is the issue of spam, and the second is the issue of the moderator's edit.

Looks like Spam to me

If a user posts the same answers to different questions, and both are links to a product, there's a good chance it's spam. What's more, the user's website in his/her profile just happens to also be "mafiree.com". Coincidence? I think not.

Okay, so why did the moderator roll back the edit

...but then I noticed it was recently edited by a moderator. Another user had replaced the contents with [content spam deleted pending moderator review], and George Stocker rolled it back.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that George Stocker's edit wasn't intended to say he disagreed with the post being spam. Instead, he was rolling back what is essentially vandalism by the user who edited it with the "[content spam deleted pending moderator review]" message. He can still disagree that it's spam, but regardless, editing a post to destroy it isn't how we make it easier for people to review it, and George was merely fixing that particular issue.

In short, this isn't how we handle spam, editing it and replacing it with a meta-message. This is what flags and comments are for. If enough users agree the content is spam, then it will be auto-removed, without any sort of vandalism or making it harder for people using the review queue to actually review the content as spam.

We actually have to open up the post in a separate tab and look at the revision history to see why it's marked as spam. Which isn't helpful. This makes it harder for regular users to participate in the community process, and means the moderator is most likely going to need to intervene in something that most likely won't require moderator intervention.

With that said, George may not have deleted the post because he wanted to let the community decide. Moderators will do that sometimes if they aren't sure themselves, and that's okay. His decision to not take action doesn't mean he disagrees with any flags.

You didn't indicate if you flagged, and if your flag was declined. If the flag was declined, then a moderator definitely disagreed, but if it's in the review queue, then it's possible George was acting on some other flag or just happened to visit the question from the main page.

In short, don't take the rollback to the edit to mean it's not spam, just that editing out content isn't the way to handle spam.

Answer 3

I honestly don't believe this case is spam at all, just a user posting a couple of links to two questions which were almost exactly the same. They probably didn't even realize that their answers could be viewed as spam, especially so far into the future. How long it's been since they visited the site and the fact that they posted nothing else aside from those two answers really doesn't matter.

Handling duplicated answers

Most often a user's ability to post exact duplicate answers on multiple questions (and have them answer the questions) means that the questions are actually duplicates of each other and should be closed as such. In normal situations of duplicated content, one of the answers gets deleted (usually the one on the closed question) and the other remains.

This case shouldn't have been any different. Both of the questions had already been closed as not constructive. Just deleting one of the answers would have been the proper way to go here. Or even better, deleting both of the questions (which the community got around to doing). This is exactly what would have happened if a slightly more active 500-reputation user had posted both of those answers - not their account being nuked from orbit.

Judging the user's intent

The bottom line is you shouldn't do it. Unless you're talking with the user directly, you don't know what their actual intentions were. You don't know that this specific user intended to spam; he could have been legitimately attempting to answer two questions. If you never judge a user's intent, then you can never wrongfully accuse a user of posting spam when they didn't.

Considering that approved spam flags carry a hefty -100 reputation on a user, they should only be used when the spam is blatantly obvious. If it actually answers the question, leave it alone. We can't go off punishing users for their attempts at legitimate answers, just because the question was illegitimate and asks for answers that would otherwise be considered illegitimate on normal questions.

Targeting the real problem

The real problem behind all of this is the questions, plain and simple. If we leave non-constructive questions specifically asking for links in the first place, we're encouraging spam in the form of link-only answers. They answer the question because the question is terrible. We should be focusing on closing down and deleting these questions so we can prevent these link-only answers. Doing so would also prevent arguments over whether those link-only answers, which answer the question, should be considered spam or not (like this one).

This also brings up an issue with the review system pulling these crappy link-only answers from these types of questions. In these cases, the proper action is not to recommend deletion of the answer because it's link-only, but to recommend deletion of the question because it asks for link-only answers.

Where does he cross the line then?

So long as he's posting his answers to questions about MySQL server monitoring tools, he doesn't. The moment he cross that boundary into questions which aren't about that, he's now spamming. I'd like to thank this user for bringing up two questions which don't actually belong on this site, allowing us to delete them and clean up our site just a little bit more.

Answer 4

My question raised a lot of discussion, so this is what I think, after all the answers I got.

Strictly speaking, it's not spam

The FAQ defines spam as "Unsolicited Commercial Advertisement", and links to the Wikipedia definition which states:

Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages, especially advertising, indiscriminately.

According to a strict interpretation of that definition, the two answers I asked about are in fact not spam. Let's break it down:

1. Unsolicited – They're not unsolicited, since the question explicitly asked for links.

2. Bulk – Two posts hardly qualify as bulk. But how many would? Should we define a clear limit?

3. Advertising/Commercial – They're not the obvious "buy now" type of advertising, but really smell like advertising if we consider that

   • those answers were the user's only posts;
   • the link they contain was also listed on the user's profile;
   • the answers were posted within a 5 minute interval; and
   • that was a long time ago, and the user never came back. Additionally, the user's behavior goes against the Promotion section of the FAQ ("Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.").
     
     

4. Indiscriminately – The answers were on-topic on both cases, so "indiscriminately" does not apply. Also, they don't sound like they were posted by a bot.

So, the answers in question only qualify as one of the four conditions for beings spam.

But it still looks like spam!

Many users, including myself, still feel that answers like those should go away, and even that similar accounts should be deleted (like that particular account eventually was). Maybe the -100 rep penalty should not apply, but that wouldn't make much difference if the account is deleted too. Some moderators do act on similar answers as if they were spam (or, at least, delete-worthy). So some of us are making decisions based on a unofficial, loose definition of spam. Apparently, we have a double standard here, and that's a problem.

What should we do, then?

I see two options: stick with the current definition of spam, or change it into something less strict. Regardless of what we choose, it's essential that we all abide to the same definition of spam.

I didn't agree with animuson initially, but now I believe his proposed solution is very practical. If we get rid of most (all?) shopping list questions (which are prone to attract spam), similar link-only answers then become really "unsolicited", or "not an answer" – or both. Then we can stick to the strict definition of spam. Of course, questionable answers will still exist, but they should become less frequent, and can be discussed on Meta, chat, etc., on a case by case basis.

Answer 5

I had a similar experience at one point, and I think the reasoning may be the same. I think there have been efforts by mods to distinguish actual malicious spam from attempts at astroturfing. I think this was as a result of what animuson mentions, the penalties incurred are stiff for a user that may have only stepped over the line inadvertently.

That being said, I think that some of the answers kept and edited into submission despite astroturfing have stood alone without their links, though. This one seems pretty much "link only", but the nature of the question is really calling for such suggestions anyway.