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I'm asking this because I came across the a user. If there is a function to report this kind of abuse, I haven't found it in the user's profile.

Please take this as an official complaint about the user name of user AdolfHitler.

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  • I should point out that SE employees and devs are already aware of these users, and are working to limit their abilities to use certain names and images, even if they won't tell us specifically what's going on with this.
    – Thomas Ward Mod
    Jan 28, 2014 at 22:21

4 Answers 4

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By experience, there is no such way of reporting a user.

The way to do it is by flagging on of their post if possible. But I know, it's not always possible. The Meta question : Flag abusive users explains the situation.

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You're supposed to flag what the user has done rather than the actual user. So if they've done a lot, flag it all. Not only will the system kick in (auto-bans, etc) but the moderators tend to notice.

If you want to get creative with your flagging, you can leave a custom message about the user in the Other flag type but don't use that if they're being offensive or spammy. The Spam and Offensive flags have special meaning in the system for preventing further incidents.

If you need something dealing with quicker or with an element of privacy, there are ways of talking to the moderators or SE directly:

  • Most of us are in Chat at some point over the day. Use the @name trigger to ping one of us and we can either talk in that room or start a private room.
  • Most of us can be contacted directly through our profiles or websites shown on our profiles.
  • You could even start a meta thread requesting that one of us contact you directly. We can either do this directly through email or through the moderator messages if you want the whole team involved (SE too).
  • There's a contact link in the footer of every page that you can use to contact SE. These emails bypass the moderators completely.

Just remember that like you, we're just volunteers.

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Flagging should be done based on dubious questions and answers. If these are out of order a lot it will lead to a ban of the user.

OK that name would not be MY choice as a name but the user, regardless of his personal opinion, should be considered a valid user until proven otherwise.

And now for the biggest problem: how far do you want this to go? Adofl Hitlar is a user too. Do you suggest to ban any combination of the letters that make up that name? Then what about Himmler? Or Stalin. Both where by far worse than that other idiot ;)

All what some people want to do is annoy, insult etc you. If you do not act they will not get their satisfaction.

So I guess: let them choose whatever name they want. Knowing their attitude they will get banned soon enough based on their posts (the 1st almost always gets followed by the 2nd).

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  • Re. " Do you suggest to ban any combination of the letters that make up that name?" I think this a type of "grains of sand" argument. Or the famous "what constitutes porn" question. Also, any action can be ridiculed by resorting to extremes. I don't think anyone is suggesting "to ban any combination". I'm sorry but I disagree with most of this answer.
    – user25656
    Jan 29, 2014 at 2:39
  • @vasa1 but if that user changed his name to A.H. we -all- still know what he means by it? Does that make things better? Don't think so.
    – Rinzwind
    Jan 29, 2014 at 7:40
  • This is what I meant by resorting to extremes.
    – user25656
    Jan 29, 2014 at 7:56
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Use a custom flag on any question he's answered or asked stating why.

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