40
votes
Thank you to whoever removes spam from Ask Ubuntu
Not to put down Mithrandir's answer or Charcoal which indeed does a terrific job, but it's not only the awesome Charcoal folks and SmokeDetector who keep Ask Ubuntu clear of spam, it's also site ...
ZannaMod
- 66.5k
35
votes
Accepted
Obscure links to promote service
Good catch! You should flag this as spam since it is clearly spam. The OP is trying to hide their spam in a valid-sounding question.
Actually, for such hidden things, a custom mod flag might be a ...
- 92.7k
33
votes
Thank you to whoever removes spam from Ask Ubuntu
You're welcome! ;)
We're an organization known as Charcoal, or Charcoal-SE. Check out our website https://charcoal-se.org for some amazing spam detection!
But seriously.... yeah, we're Charcoal, ...
- 107
20
votes
Accepted
Should I keep an eye on spam-like answers about free software? Or why do people spam-promote free software?
I strongly suspect "Free PDF to JPG Converter 2015" of being malware.
There's no source code to download
Only 1 .exe file.
New project
Very keyword-heavy summary
It's Windows only and being spammed ...
OliMod
- 280k
16
votes
Accepted
Spam edit in already closed question
I see three possibilities as to how that question ended up edited into spam:
The account was compromised sometime between when the question was posted, 2018-11-23, and when it was edited into spam on ...
- 105
14
votes
Automatic flagging of "keto" users with Reputation == 1?
I'm a room owner of SOCVR and a regular in Charcoal-HQ and those rooms are involved in fighting spam posts across the SE network.
Thank you for noticing these spam posts and offering ideas to put a ...
- 113
13
votes
Accepted
Should a post be flagged as spam if an author is clearly *not affiliated* with the promotion?
OmgUbuntu is not Spam; it is a much frequented Ubuntu blog and links to it pop up occasionally, and I don't believe we want such posts being Spam-flagged when we use links to it in chat or on the site,...
- 32.1k
13
votes
Obscure links to promote service
This is one of those cases where I personally would flag for moderator's intervention because this is not so obvious of a case. Explain clearly that the post is spam and is disguised, point where the ...
- 98.3k
13
votes
Accepted
Dealing with this user
In my very annoyed opinion, ;-) product placement and spam are the same. Whether you just put a link to some product in the question (spam) or the answer (Product placement), the net result is the ...
- 33.6k
12
votes
Should I keep an eye on spam-like answers about free software? Or why do people spam-promote free software?
Yes, we should keep an eye on them
Spam is bad for the site, it does not help anybody and it clutters all those good questions and answers we have here.
No, we should not flag and delete them all
...
- 136k
11
votes
Spam edit in already closed question
If you suspect that something harmless-looking might be spam related, check whether it was plagiarized.
That question was copied from another question, and the user's profile text was copied from ...
- 1,687
10
votes
Why my spam flag has been declined?
The answer in question is not considered spam for several reasons. I will be quoting from Seth's answer on the related post about what constitutes spam to analyze this.
Advertisement
Is this an ...
- 98.3k
8
votes
Accepted
Are new users banned from answering "highly active questions"?
The question got a lot of views quickly and then was automatically protected after three none answers were posted by 1 rep users.
As this happened ages ago (Aug 5th), I have unprotected the question ...
- 17.7k
8
votes
How can I report user profile as inappropriate?
You just did it.
Nuked, from orbit. Thank you for pointing it out.
OliMod
- 280k
8
votes
Dealing with this user
In this case it is rather obvious. From what I could see on quickly checking their homepage their primary download directs to Windows and from my Windows office machine I could not find any downloads ...
- 136k
7
votes
Accepted
How can I report user profile as inappropriate?
To add to what Oli mentioned there is no direct way to report a profile. The feature was trialed for a bit, but removed. I don't remember why, but I believe there were too many reports for non ...
- 54.1k
5
votes
Are new users banned from answering "highly active questions"?
I have edited the answer from the new question into the stub answer posted by the OP and merged the new question into the old one which moved the answer there.
I should probably have noticed that the ...
ZannaMod
- 66.5k
5
votes
Should a post be flagged as spam if an author is clearly *not affiliated* with the promotion?
In addition to Videonauth's answer, which points out that the site mentioned is popular with Ubuntu users and linking to it is not normally considered spamming, I would suggest that we can't actually ...
ZannaMod
- 66.5k
5
votes
Accepted
We should have an anti-spam filter at the 'Ask a question' stage
We already have an unofficial spam detection system.
There's a bot called SmokeDetector which is maintained by some users that checks every new post on all sites using a great load of filters and if ...
- 100k
5
votes
Accepted
Filtering SPAM on AskUbuntu
If it's just one piece of spam, with very few few people on-line it can takes about 15 minutes before it's finally taken down, but on busy days, it takes about a minute and when we man the spam ...
- 33.6k
4
votes
Accepted
What exactly is considered "spam" in Ask Ubuntu?
Lets start with the definition of a spam flag:
This question is effectively an advertisement with no disclosure. It is not useful or relevant, but promotional.
That's a good start. Now we can ...
- 54.1k
4
votes
Accepted
Completely off-topic, promoting!
There's always spam around this time. Bots or people make new accounts and paste the stuff in. We have a bot in the AU chatroom that notifies us when something trips it.
If it's spam, we all flag it ...
- 19.1k
3
votes
Change in domain name
What to do with comments...
I don't know if there's a better approach available than just manually removing all the comments that link to the old domain (and have thus become spam) and replacing them,...
- 113k
3
votes
Suggested edits: is this spam?
Looks like vandalism to me. But as suggested it's an audit to determine if you are paying attention.
- 34.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Feels like a promotion attempt - is it spam?
Mitch already deleted the post as spam. I think it's safe to consider these types of things spam, because it's basically just advertising a site, and not adding to the answer at all.
Thomas WardMod
- 67k
2
votes
What exactly is considered "spam" in Ask Ubuntu?
Is promoting something considered spam?
IMHO:
Not if you disclose your relation to the product, and
Promoting that product is not the whole extent of the answer, and
Using the product in the manner ...
- 182k
1
vote
Dealing with this user
I also concur that this case clearly falls within the scope of marketing/product-placement.
The use of an advertised product (Astah) - might actually be an appropriate response to a given question ...
- 1,383
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible