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I ran across a clear "spam" question in the low-quality posts review queue today. Link in case it works, but I hate promoting it by even linking it here :-/.

The correct response to spam is to flag it as such, but there's no option to flag in the low-quality review queue.

There's:

  • Looks OK: Nope!
  • Edit: Nope!
  • Close: Which requires a reason -- The "closest" close-reason would be "A community-specific reason" followed by a "Other - add comment". But again, that's not how spam would or should normally be handled.

With that in mind:

  • Are spam questions supposed to be the LQ review queue?
  • Doesn't this just put the spam post in front of more eyes?
  • What's the correct action when reviewing a clear-spam post in the low-quality review queue?

I feel like I'm failing this review-queue audit test :-/. Is it me, or is there a problem with this audit test?

Update: It definitely was an Audit question. I see it came back up for @Nmath, who passed it with a "Close" response.

However, another similar audit question has come up in the queue recently as well. This one, @BeastOfCaerbannog accidentally failed while looking for a way to "Flag" it.

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  • Interestingly enough this particular poster has been posting the same type of spam since January 2022 with a total of 5 posts. Community Bot deleted each one fairly quickly. I have removed the user now, not sure how this slipped through the net...
    – andrew.46 Mod
    Nov 23, 2022 at 0:22
  • @andrew.46 Thanks - So just for clarity, spam posts shouldn't get through to the low-quality review queue as audits, right?
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Nov 23, 2022 at 0:23
  • I just flag the question as "spam - Exists only to promote a product or service, does not disclose the author's affiliation". The posts generally get deleted immediately.
    – C.S.Cameron
    Nov 23, 2022 at 5:34
  • I think that downvoting the post also completes the review successfully.
    – BeastOfCaerbannog
    Nov 23, 2022 at 9:24
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    @C.S.Cameron Yes, that's what I do as well, but that's not an option when reviewing a post in the low-quality posts review queue, interestingly enough!
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Nov 23, 2022 at 11:25
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    @BeastOfCaerbannog And again, not in the low-quality posts review queue. In "First questions" and "First answers", for instance, yes, you can downvote, then click "Other action". That option isn't available in Low-Quality Posts RQ.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Nov 23, 2022 at 11:26
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    Someone must have flagged it as low quality by mistake and that put it in the LQ queue.
    – terdon
    Nov 25, 2022 at 16:41
  • @terdon You're probably right on that -- Bad flag! Bad! ;-) Still, it seemed to me to be an audit-test, since I seem to recall that the question had already been closed. Are audit-test questions curated manually or automatically? I had always assumed there was some manual work involved in coming up with the "dummy test" questions ;-).
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Nov 25, 2022 at 16:45
  • 1
    Unfortunately, they are automatic which is why we often get very bad audits. I don't think we have audits for the VLQ queue, but I am not sure, maybe we do.
    – terdon
    Nov 25, 2022 at 17:08
  • @terdon Fair enough - And it's always possible that my assumption that it was an audit test was just due to the (now explained) presence of a clear-spam question in the queue.
    – NotTheDr01ds
    Nov 25, 2022 at 17:13
  • "but I hate promoting it by even linking it here" Only the person who completed the audit or people who have more than 10k reputation can view thew the post
    – Ferrybig
    Dec 6, 2022 at 14:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The expected response is "Close", which is kind of counter-intuitive. Close reason could be "Not about Ubuntu" (which is entirely true).

This is of course because normally spam post should not be closed, but instead flagged as spam (it took me a while to learn this btw).

I believe this is an error in the audit system - in my opinion, spam posts should not come up in neither the "Close votes" or "Low quality" queues as audits, but I believe they do.

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