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As a user who takes it upon himself to moderate and improve my active communities, I have a situation where I need advice. Let's say that the problematic user is example123. Now, let's say example123 is unregistered.

Any question they post is under a new account, but the account name is the same. (I have verified this)

They answer questions fast. Like, bursts of answers each posted once per 10 minutes every day. The answers also seem to be mainly on older questions (a lot of which have been accepted already)

The answers tend to be very quick, somewhat poorly written, and 2-4 sentences long. They're not bad enough to flag, but definitely questionable/poor. (downvoting is also pointless - it takes away 1 of my reputation and does nothing to example123, they don't seem to care about rep.)

I feel like example123 is gaming the system. Avoiding downvotes, avoiding upvotes*, messing up the first post review system, etc.

Example123 is writing bleh answers, and avoiding any credibility to them.

Example123 has already lost my respect, after calling moderators "fascist" and "people who live in their parent's basement" and people that "don't have a life". (I have flagged these offending comments already.)**

I am literally just watching in horror as this user mass-produces terrible attempts at answers. But if I am right, since they would still be considered 'attempts', they are not flaggable.

Considering all of the above bad practices I have seen example123 do, what should my response be?

  • Flag example123?
  • Tell him to make a registered account (again)?
  • Take other action?

(This situation can be applied to various users that I am aware of across the network. Usually, leaving a comment telling them to improve their posts works, but not this time.)

*and to clarify for a comment, yes they do seem to not care about rep. This is one of example123's comments:

"I was registered once long ago. Then I realized I was getting sucked into chasing 'points' to help some company make money. Well okay , for a while, but then not okay after getting into the thousands a few times and some fascist moderator blocks me because they are afraid I may become competition to them. Now I just try to help some noobie on occasion."

**another one of their rude comments being:

I am civil, but I call a shovel a shovel. Some of them are fascist and way too full of themselves and the power they earned with all their points. I wonder why they did not use all that time for something more productive unless they live in their parents basements and dont have a life.

Update:

Example123 has been temporarily suspended.

Second update:

Example123 is back, seems to have slowed down in answering questions. His answers have made some increase in quality so I will call this a success! Thank you Journeyman Geek for the good answer.

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    There is nothing productive you can do except flag for a moderator with all the information you've got and let them handle it. Comments are pointless, this user obviously knows they are posting junk, and that's either their purpose or is irrelevant to them.
    – Nij
    Jan 29, 2021 at 2:04
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    Why do you say they are avoiding upvotes. I would assume they were doing the least amount of work possible to get as many upvotes as they can. If they are not trying to get upvotes, what do you think their motivation is?
    – Cave Johnson
    Jan 29, 2021 at 3:56
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    @KodosJohnson edited it into question
    – user11111111111
    Jan 29, 2021 at 4:10
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    "it takes away 1 of my reputation and does nothing to example123, they don't seem to care about rep.)" - It's not pointless. If you downvote their poor unsalvageable answers, the answers will appear in a queue to be deleted, and once they are deleted your reputation is restored. Obviously you should also flag the content where appropriate. Unhelpful sparse answers are a reason to issue a downvote. You can also answer those same questions with a high quality answer, even if you did this 10% of the same, you would gain more reputation than you lost.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 29, 2021 at 14:28
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    @Ramhound as far as I understand the question here, the issue is those answers aren't poor enough to be deleted.
    – Shadow The Spring Wizard
    Jan 29, 2021 at 17:56
  • @JourneymanGeek Oh yeah! Sorry. I just took it out of the question.
    – user11111111111
    Jan 30, 2021 at 23:15

2 Answers 2

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Just flag appropriately.

Where there’s a pattern of poor quality answers, you might want to custom flag to point that out so mods know what to look for. While typically I would suggest downvoting too, I feel like

“as this user mass-produces terrible attempts at answers.’ needs a look.

Well okay , for a while, but then not okay after getting into the thousands a few times and some fascist moderator blocks me because they are afraid I may become competition to them.

As a mod. Eh, we get that, and it’s definitely not okay. Needs flagging and on my sites, there’s a definite consideration of suspension.

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I am unclear about the rules of moderation, but I have an idea.

You could try locking down old posts where there is an accepted solution already and only allow adding comments to previous solutions already present.

Would this help reduce the low effort nature of your problem user's posts?

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    1) We encourage people to answer questions that have already been answered IF they have another solution. 2) This won't help as the user could still answer questions where there is no accepted answer.
    – Infinity Milestone
    Jan 29, 2021 at 4:49

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