Blocking "Babaji" and similar repeated Spam Attacks

Question

I'm sure most of you have seen these "Babaji" posts around AU or the internet. My question is:

Why is there no filter to autodelete Babaji?

Pros:

• Moderators won't spend so much time/effort on combating this
• Users use less flags
• Nobody ever sees spam, increasing overall quality of site
• Links to them never exist

Cons:

• Users who mention "babaji" for any reason in the post can't post (username/hostname?)
• Spammers might find a way around it (maybe add intelligence to the blocker?)
• Lots of work to implement (but lots of reward, too)

So, the pros obviously outweigh the cons, so WHY NOT?

Answer 1

For what it's worth, I've asked SE staff to blacklist the phone number and name about five times now. It would be a short term solution; spammers find a way.

I think SE is more interested in teaching the automated spam filter what spam is. Message contents, formats, flocking patterns, etc. This is why it's so critical that people flag spam. It all feeds into a system that stops spam before we even see it.

I wouldn't mind if they could find a way to hook the blacklist into the spam system so we didn't have to spend so much time feeding it ourselves.

And in related news: Mods should be getting statistical access to the spam system soon, so we'll be able to see whether or not all this hard work is actually worth it. Hopefully it's handling hundreds of posts a day. That would more than make up for a couple of spammy days.