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I usually see new posts for the first time as they're fed to chat. If it's spam, I can flag the feed message, but not the original post. I need to follow the link to the question to do that.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could flag from chat right away?

Also, I'd like to see spam eradicated so thoroughly that I don't want to see them in chat anymore.

Could spam flags for posts in the feed please be coupled more tightly, so that we can flag the posts on the stack as spam from chat and that when a post is deleted for being spam, the feed generated chat message is removed as well?

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    Seeing that the chat feed is a mere convenience feature in the first place I can't really see how a single click on the question link is that bothering. In fact you are supposed to read the whole question (and not just the 3 lines from the feed excerpt) before taking any action, including flagging. So I think making this possible is actually counterproductive for site quality and user responsibility. Likewise I thought the respective feed is already removed when the question gets deleted. Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 9:48
  • Currently all the new-question bot does is poll every few minutes for new questions via the SE API. To add functionality such that deleted or closed posts were retroactively cleared up would be a huge increase in the scope of the bot.
    – fredley
    Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 10:12

2 Answers 2

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Given that flagging something as spam is a serious action with serious consequences - potential loss of 100 rep, account suspension or deletion - I think it behoves you to make some effort before doing so.

Opening the question to take a proper look is not particularly onerous. Chat even opens links in a new tab/window so you don't lose your place in the chat room.

As for removing the linked question from chat once it's closed/deleted - I would doubt that's ever going to happen. The feed creates a new message in chat which is the question rendered as it was when the message was posted. Any changes (votes, title edits, etc.) to the question are not reflected in chat as this would be a) too expensive and b) not really worth the effort.

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  • Well, perhaps I'm a bit biased by the kinds of spam we've seen lately on scifi.SE. It's not much, but the ones we see are very obvious. Those are the ones I had in mind when writing this.
    – SQB
    Commented Sep 29, 2014 at 10:15
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Part of the reason we have post-feed bots in chat rooms is to alert regular and committed users to new content, so that they can help moderate (by voting to close, delete, edit, flag, etc.).

Moderation, at whatever level, is something that requires properly reading the content (although until you have a diamond there's not much real damage you can do if you're wrong). However, not everybody is interested in engaging with the site in this way. If you'd rather not participate in this way, the easiest thing to do is block the feeds user.

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