In the last weeks I've noticed loads of spam messages here on Bitcoin SE.
Is this happening on other stacks too?
Are we planning something about it?
We've been banning the offending URLs as they appear. Needless to say, Bitcoin-related spammers have scripts and TOR so account and IP bans are useless, but we can blacklist the sites they're linking to. It takes a minute to get a new URL ban in place but it's pretty effective once we do.
Consider it a badge of honor that someone thinks our site is worth spamming on :)
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Does the reporting the post as spam actually hide the post after a few reports, or it waits for moderator action anyway? – o0'. Feb 19 '13 at 16:47
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I believe it waits for moderator action. The reason for this is that spam is taken somewhat more seriously than most offenses on StackExchange and comes with long-term bans and permanent blacklist entries based on your content, which is not something we trust an automated system with. Keep up the good flagging, though! We're pretty good at catching obvious spam questions but we've got a lot on our plate and can't always catch every spammy answer or comment without the community's help. – David Perry Feb 19 '13 at 16:50
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It would be a nice feature to hide those posts after a few reports, without applying the bans before moderator action. Not that I expect them to code such a thing... – o0'. Feb 19 '13 at 17:00
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2I'm being informed that 6 spam flags will auto-delete a post. Not sure if that means we have less than 6 avid users who are flagging things as spam or if there just isn't a collection of 6 users that are collectively faster than the mods. – David Perry Feb 19 '13 at 19:17
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David, it looks spammers have two counter messages - typing like "g o o g l e . c o m", and URL shorteners. I don't think we can do much about the first one, but for getting rid of url shorteners, you could take the first 20 entries of this list and ban them. – Nick ODell Feb 20 '13 at 4:45
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2Is there a way to require moderator approval before new questions are seen publicly? This is getting out of hand. – Stephen Gornick Mar 11 '13 at 10:19
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Requiring mod approval before allowing questions to go public would break both the site and the mods, we're just quietly deleting them as they come up. I'm also discussing the URL shortener issue with SE staff but maintaining such a list can get unwieldy, especially when it's easy to register a domain or twenty and install your own url shortening software. – David Perry Mar 11 '13 at 15:47
Any user who finds spam should flag the post as such:
- Click the flag link under the post
- Choose “it is spam”
- Validate.
That's it.
After 6 spam flags the post will be taken care of by the system, without moderator intervention being required.
Do not edit the title or the body of the post. It actually makes the task of other users and moderators more difficult, since they would have to check that the post is originally spam.
