### I doubt treating similar titles differently will be effective

> How are questions with titles that differ only in minor words to rude and abusive questions treated?

I'm fairly sure the answer to this is: (a) they're not automatically treated in any way, and (b) the community is to self-moderate.

Similarity detection will just lead to workarounds, similar to other cases:

1. ["Problem" in titles][1].  When I encountered it, I'd replace the Latin o with the visually identical Greek [omicron][2] ο as a workaround.  Other people find their own workarounds.

2. CAPTCHA is blocked in China, so I have to find workarounds when it arises.  Nowadays, I self-butcher my posts, then after the butchered post is posted, I edit back in the original content.

The trolls will likewise just make the minimum changes to pass the filters, and post anyway.

### But what can we do?

> PS: Stack Exchange, Inc., stop the ongoing Nazi Holocaust denial trolling on Skeptics.SE!

This is 100% awful.  Moreover, generic Holocaust denial is not on topic at Skeptics.SE.  The most effective action I've found against this kind of nonsense:

1. flag as "rude and offensive"; and
2. leave a comment like the following (edit to suit the situation [e.g. maybe add a brief explanation that it's a Holocaust denial post] and your writing style):

   > **Please join me in flagging this as "rude or abusive" to trigger automatic deletion.  ([*The system will automatically delete any post flagged six times as offensive or spam*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that).)**

I've used this technique at Islam.SE, and often found I could enlist 5 members of the community to jointly delete a flatly offensive post before a diamond moderator had even seen it.  Moreover, it seemed to foster a community spirit: ***the community fixed the problem as a team!***  E.g. Shia users take real action against anti-Sunni posts, and vice versa.

I feel it works because:

1. **low-rep users don't realize they have the power to act**: [it only requires 15 rep to flag][3] (i.e., ordinarily two upvotes);
2. **low-rep users don't know about *automatic deletion***, and think they need to wait for a diamond moderator (the comment highlights how Stack Exchange has been *designed* to empower them); and
3. **new users are hesitant to flag** due to unfamiliarity ("what if I'm doing the wrong thing?").

In short, it's leadership: showing the community they have a simple way of remedying the problem.

---

Copy/paste-able version:

`Please join me in flagging this as "rude or abusive" to trigger automatic deletion.  ([*The system will automatically delete any post flagged six times as offensive or spam*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that).)`


  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/107989/why-cant-we-use-the-word-problem-in-titles
  [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omicron
  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/flag-posts