5

Suppose a user has no bad posts, perhaps no posts at all, but their user page consists solely to promote a product or is otherwise problematic. How would I flag or report this user page?

This situation is not covered by Flag abusive users, where the accepted answer recommends to flag the user's content and not the user; in some cases the user has no content. And I do want to flag content, just the content happens to be on the user page.

Improve this question
6
  • 1
    I think promoting oneself and/or products is borderline acceptable if it is limited to the profile page and does not include spammy=malicious links
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Jul 25, 2019 at 7:55
  • 1
    This feature request (from 2011) seems somewhat related: Feature Request: Flagging Profiles. I have added the (profile-page) tag - which seems to me suitable for this question. I was also considering the (spam) tag, but I am less sure about that one.
    – Martin
    Jul 25, 2019 at 7:59
  • Note that SE did allow to flag profiles for a short while, as experiment. It was utter failure, since people flagged users they thought downvoted their posts, e.g. after "What have you tried?" comments.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jul 25, 2019 at 8:03
  • 1
    It's a bit ugly but worth checking on local meta to see what works for mods. There's one user on MSE who flags their own posts to report certain classes of profile spammers
    – Journeyman Geek
    Jul 25, 2019 at 8:14
  • 2
    Not 100% sure, but I think this is covered by How should I flag a user account if it has no posts to flag? It took me surprisingly long to find...
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Jul 25, 2019 at 8:32
  • 1
    (probably because I was limiting my search to profile-page)
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Jul 25, 2019 at 9:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

Common practice is to flag one of your own posts, clearly indicating that you couldn't flag anything related to the user in case.

I've done so in the past with success, but I can't find any general reference for this best(?) practice. Here is a comment with 10 upvotes but by no means that constitutes a rule.

On most sites, ♦ moderators are quicker to respond than a request via the Contact Us form, and they have the ability to reset profile pages and/or usernames. They might choose not to bother (a single spam profile which isn't linked to doesn't cause much harm, it seems) or if appropriate (e.g. in case of a spam profile wave) escalate to the Community Team.

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .