Questions tagged [spam]
This tag is for questions about suspected user spam, the spam flag or combating spam as a community.
298
questions
313
votes
2
answers
32k
views
What are the “spam” and “rude or abusive” (offensive) flags, and how do they work?
When flagging, there are two special case options: spam and rude or abusive.
What is spam, and when should I flag content as such?
What is considered offensive, rude or abusive content?
How does the ...
149
votes
14
answers
15k
views
Limits for self-promotion in answers
It's been covered before that posting links to your own website is ok, but should there be a line drawn? There were several spam flags today for Ira Baxter's recent posts, presumably because they all ...
433
votes
9
answers
19k
views
Can a machine be taught to flag spam automatically?
TL;DR: We did it, so... yes.
What is this?
Charcoal is the organization behind the SmokeDetector bot and other nice things. This bot scans new posts across the entire network for spam posts and ...
- 21.1k
155
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Should spam posts be edited?
I noticed that the posts of the recent spam surge on Ask Ubuntu were all edited by community members into something like
EDITED - REMOVED SPAM ANSWER
or similar.
While I understand why the users ...
- 185k
2813
votes
9
answers
321k
views
A Terms of Service update restricting companies that scrape your profile information without your permission
Update (April 19, 2016): This change is now live. You can view the updated Terms of Service here, or read about them below.
tl;dr:
We’re planning to make some changes to our Terms of Service to stop ...
- 52.7k
180
votes
6
answers
4k
views
Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
Super User got hit by another batch of spammers creating profiles. They've got accounts on other sites from what I've heard from other mods and from the comments here.
Last time it was streaming. Now ...
- 170k
77
votes
4
answers
4k
views
Why don't we treat rubbish the same as spam?
Spam gets fairly heavily punished - 100 reputation penalty, if I recall correctly, and the content itself gets hidden in the revision history.
Now if we just have some rubbish:
...
- 13.7k
84
votes
2
answers
7k
views
How can I report a specific bad user?
Every once in a while we get a question about how to report a bad user to the admins. Sometimes it's a spammer, sometimes it's a troll, sometimes it's just someone who had a momentary blip in the "...
49
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Is spam in the "about me" field a reason to worry? [duplicate]
There are many inactive user profiles on SO that were clearly registered by spammers. The spam posts (if there were any) are already removed but the profiles remain. Some of them put their spam text ...
128
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Recent Mass Football Spam
Is something wrong with StackOverflow's spam filter? Recently there have been huge numbers of spam topics related to football streaming. They have all been spam flagged and deleted but there are more ...
- 2,690
121
votes
5
answers
7k
views
Ban ImageShack images because they are reusing old URLs for advertising
There's a very popular topic on Stack Overflow's Meta asking to Ban ImageShack Images. This was created because ImageShack deletes old images to free up server space, making images within older posts ...
- 6,691
81
votes
8
answers
4k
views
Has Stack Overflow been haiku-hacked?
When for the first time
A new question I answer
This haiku appears:
Little slab of meat
In a wash of clear jelly
Now I heat the pan
Such a message is
Very strange; is anyone
Seeing the same ...
- 939
32
votes
1
answer
930
views
Unable to post Chinese characters due to validation filter
This issue occurs when I attempt to post the Chinese characters for the novel "Water Margin" 《水浒传》 as a quote on Mythology SE. The error occurs even if a single character 水 is posted. The question ...
- 542
42
votes
4
answers
926
views
Remove links when a post is deleted by Community from spam/offensive flags
Recently a user had completely lost it after getting question banned and he posted 3 spam answers:
10k only - No mods were on at the time to process our flags, but we mob-deleted them from the Lounge&...
- 19.2k
143
votes
4
answers
842
views
Suggested edits that change links should jump out and punch reviewers in the face
This request is motivated by a sneaky sneaky spammer who replaced a useful link with a link to some youtube video. It fooled several reviewers, and if I hadn't noticed that the link text was the same, ...
- 14.3k
75
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Why shouldn't I downvote spam that I've already flagged?
One of the responses to the question about the mass of football spam said:
The proper course of action is to flag the post as spam. Three spam flags will remove it from the front page, six will ...
- 1,670
320
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Add optional box for spam flags letting you say why you think it's spam
This came up recently, where a user had taken the time to look at the link on a post and realized that the post wasn't just off-topic, it was actually half-decently-disguised spam. So he flagged it as ...
- 23k
47
votes
3
answers
460
views
Implement cross-site posting rate limits to slow down spammers
In the morning of March 19th, a newly-registered user posted 11 spam questions in as many minutes:
While asking questions is rate-limited, these rate limits are not applied across sites, allowing ...
- 1,556
35
votes
2
answers
815
views
Let's re-evaluate the Question Timer
I know this seems like a good idea, but this far into the game you should be able to tell from network behavior that I'm not a spammer…
I had a compound question. I broke it up because breaking it up ...
21
votes
2
answers
870
views
Are research survey questions expected to be handled with close votes?
This question (probably soon to be deleted) made me wonder what would be the right way to handle surveys like that:
I'm doing a worker interview for High School and I want to be a computer ...
- 10.9k
3
votes
1
answer
1k
views
"This looks like spam" error message when attempting to ask a non-spam question
I realize that similar questions have been asked, but through all of the ones I've seen, the answers seem to be specific, normally asking the author about the specific question.
I'm trying to ask in ...
- 171
9
votes
4
answers
311
views
Is it possible to flag a user rather than just individual posts?
Came across an answer by this user on on one of my favourites, the answer was clearly spam so I flagged it, but then so are all their other answers. Is it possible to flag the user as spam rather ...
- 312
172
votes
14
answers
9k
views
A machine can flag spam automatically. Can it do better?
Since this has been posted, we've done a few things:
We now cast four flags on posts that pass an accuracy threshold (current 99.9% historical confidence)
SmokeDetector now casts the first ...
- 21.1k
115
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Auto-delete/destroy 1 rep user when their post is deleted as spam
My common workflow when I see a blatant spam post by a 1 rep user is:
flag as spam (when I'm a mod this auto-deletes)
go to user profile
As a mod, I destroy the user. As a regular user I spam flag ...
- 185k
46
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Please provide a flag option clearly designed for gibberish, contentless posts [duplicate]
MERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR <3
doingdoingdoingdoingdoingdoingdoingdoingdoing.
9.... YEAH baby.
Shash. BOSH. :))
What this post would normally receive on its own is 8 "not an answer" flags,...
- 33.6k
31
votes
1
answer
383
views
Obscure the title and text when question is deleted by Community from spam/offensive flags
This is sort of a follow-up to a feature request that resulted in obscuring spam / offensive content from 10K-visible answers:
Remove links when a post is deleted by Community from spam/offensive ...
- 10.9k
17
votes
4
answers
746
views
Are people abusing spam flagging as a cheap way to gain flag weight? [closed]
I just took a look at the list of flags and saw a bunch of spam flags against some user. As it turns out, looking at his profile, pretty much all of his 111 answers that I have peeked at propose ...
- 7,844
12
votes
2
answers
481
views
How do I deal with spam users?
See also: How to deal with persistent Spam-Users?
I know of a similar question here, but it does not really answer my question:
How do I deal with users which have just one purpose: Spam?
On Super ...
- 27.2k
29
votes
3
answers
628
views
Advertising users on the trilogy - Outlook plugin case
I noticed this answer on Super User this morning, obvious advertisement for some commercial plugin. Quite usual situation, happening frequently.
What is more surprising, though, is the amount of ...
- 11.4k
27
votes
1
answer
246
views
Cannot unfollow locked post from Following tab
Initially I was unable to unfollow deleted posts from the Following tab in my profile.
That seemed to been fixed recently so I was cleaning out the deleted posts when I encountered one that would not ...
- 501
23
votes
7
answers
1k
views
Usernames as Advertising or Spam?
While doing some flagging (yes, I'm a little bit addicted) I stumbled upon the user StarWind Software. At first the case seemed clear, Spammer, but...and that's a big one, he seems to be a productive ...
- 27.2k
9
votes
1
answer
861
views
Has there been an uptick in spam votes against established questions? [closed]
The last few days seem to have seen the resurgence of some old conflicts on Stack Overflow. In particular there have been attempts to delete some old and popular but non-technical questions(*) and a ...
55
votes
2
answers
1k
views
SPAM deluge over at WebApps (and pretty much all over SE)
Related: Recent Mass Football Spam
Web Applications's newest questions page is currently football-SPAM ridden to a surprising degree.
Anything ordinary community members can/should do when something ...
- 19.4k
48
votes
4
answers
3k
views
Who wants to go spam hunting?
Achtung! Read this first:
Please use spam flags responsibly. Spam flags can have severe consequences on a user without any moderator action. Don't just spam spam flags, look at the user's activity. If ...
- 9,231
32
votes
1
answer
301
views
Auto rollback any edits made by a spammer when his account get nuked
Many times spammers don't just post new answers (or questions) with their spam but also edit existing posts to insert their spam. Usually two high rep members will notice the spam and reject the ...
18
votes
3
answers
555
views
Problem User Spamming Personal Library
I've flagged one of the posts of the following user as needing moderator attention, but I'm expanding here to explain the reason for my flag a little more in depth.
User:
https://stackoverflow.com/...
- 2,399
11
votes
5
answers
805
views
What Constitutes Spam?
Over the course of the past several months, there have been one or more users who have been spamming about an XML parsing alternative named "VTD-XML". I have occasionally assisted the ...
- 15.3k
-13
votes
4
answers
1k
views
When should we be enforcing the affiliation requirement?
The FAQ for this states:
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.
I'...
- 189k
30
votes
2
answers
3k
views
-13
votes
2
answers
362
views
Protect newbie questions from abuse and SO from spam
There has to be a balance between the ability of newbies to ask questions of gurus and the problem of newbie accounts being used to spaminate SO.
On one hand, we see that experienced users frequently ...
- 508
26
votes
2
answers
425
views
Defend against flag spam in chat
We have incidents where we get 10+ flags from the same room in rapid succession. This happens on multiple occasions and we have reason to believe it's a single user doing this.
I don't think it's of ...
- 717
85
votes
2
answers
714
views
Raise an automatic flag for spammers
When a post gets six spam flags, it is deleted. However, the user account remains in the system.
When this happens, an automatic flag should be raised to allow moderators to check the account to see ...
- 6,487
57
votes
1
answer
297
views
Include the option to flag posts as spam in the Low Quality queue
I guess this is an additional to previous requests like this and this.
But I just came across this review item, and was unable to flag it as spam.
edit: Since I posted this, the item has been ...
- 2,177
39
votes
5
answers
440
views
Increase the number of daily spam flags with reputation
As a +10k-rep user on SO, I use the various tools to identify a lot of spam. There are two lists (new posts by new users and new answers to old questions) which are especially useful for tracking down ...
- 26.4k
25
votes
2
answers
477
views
Why wasn't this question automatically protected after 7 deleted spam answers?
I just destroyed a spam user, and noticed that one of their posts, which is to this question:
Require anonymous user to register to add content-type
Is the seventh spam answer to be deleted. I ...
- 48.8k
21
votes
1
answer
554
views
What if six users conspire to nuke posts with spam flags?
From the guidance on spam and offensive flags:
Additionally, any answer that accumulates enough offensive or spam flags will be automatically deleted.
What if a bunch of lunatics simply cast ...
- 1,194
20
votes
3
answers
379
views
What should community ♦ mods do with spammers?
OK, so I deleted the spam post. What's next? Should I destroy the user? Put it in suspension? Ignore it? And what should I do if the spammer opens a new account from the same IP and spams again? Is ...
- 8,957
11
votes
1
answer
301
views
How to deal with persistent Spam-Users
See also: How to deal with Spam-Users?
I've been flagging this guy already four times (same username, same advertised website), everytime he gets deleted, but he keeps coming back.
Should I just ...
- 27.2k
6
votes
2
answers
236
views
Simple way to report spammy users?
I've noticed a handful of obviously spammy users (the most recent being https://stackoverflow.com/users/246855/best-penis-products) - there's no way to report the user, only their content.
Are there ...
- 275
4
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Can't post question on freelance. Says 'this looks like spam.'
The title pretty much tells you my problem, there is no other error message. It is a lengthy question, that's the only thing I can think of.
*I just posted the original since it doesn't seem to ...
- 109