wow that was fun. I got to downvote, flag as spam, and then vote to delete.

@YeZ I think I just looked at the same post, right?

....I flagged as "rude/offensive," though

@Shokhet Yep. I put it as spam because it wasn't a real answer with rudeness/offensiveness in it. It was just ... spam.

@YeZ A blatant non-answer could be classified as spam? .....learn new things every day.

....I thought spam was for sleazy advertisement type posts, and other similar stuff

@Shokhet I'm not such an authority on these things. But I've seen non-advertisements flagged as spam.

@YeZ Hm. I'm hoping one of the more long term users of the site will speak up and clear up this issue for us (cough @IsaacMoses cough)

....I know spam flags are important....

@Shokhet let me know how it goes. Leaving now.

@YeZ Aight. TZT!

....I'm gonna have to leave soon, also....

.... ^^^^ most relevant conversation I could find on the topic

@YeZ @Shokhet I believe "offensive" was the correct flag there. Sometimes spammers post nonsense -- stuff that may not include an actual spam link but is clearly up to something -- random sequences of words, sometimes cut/paste from other posts, that sort of thing. That's a spammer tactic (I guess they're testing for vulnerabilities or something, though I don't understand it myself), so sometimes people flag those as spam. This one, though, was just trolling IMO.

Anyway, spam and offensive flags both provide feedback to SE. The precise details are kept under wraps. Thanks for catching this one promptly.

Huh -- though it's a spammer tactic, an MSE post with recent updates (though not to this specific part) says don't do that -- spam is for promotion but not other spammer tactics:

Note that on this site there is precedent for treating proselytizing from other religions as spam. Their product might not be behind a URL, but it's still unwelcome solicitation and I spam-flag those when I see them. (Otherwise they'd be offensive, but I consider 'em spam.)

Thanks for the feedback, @MonicaCellio.

Reading that MSE post, now

Thanks for the info, @MonicaCellio

@MonicaCellio ....I'm not sure I'd agree with this particular definition of spam vis a vis spam-flagging, I understand the sentiment.

@Shokhet you're welcome! I learned something too; I thought spam-flagging spammer probes (that aren't actually spam yet) was ok, but it seems not.

@Shokhet I can understand that. In particular, so far as I know SpamRam operates globally, so maybe individual sites shouldn't vary the definition of spam. OTOH, it does seem like product advertising and should be as inappropriate as, say, somebody advertising Windows over on Ask Ubuntu.

@MonicaCellio Hm. I wonder why?

@MonicaCellio hm....

@Shokhet maybe because it's more of a judgement call? Or it runs into the low-quality flag?

@MonicaCellio Could be. Maybe the filter is trying to learn what kind of links it should automatically block from new users?

@MonicaCellio btw, the purpose of those probes (perhaps specific to SE) might be gaining rep....though I'm no expert on spam-bots

....I agree that this one was likely trolling....couldn't even be bothered to figure out which religious site he was on :P

@Shokhet hmm, that could be. (The MSE post doesn't seem to specifically require links, but most spam will contain one.)

@MonicaCellio True....either that, an email, or a phone number (I think)

@Shokhet this one looked like a double-troll: clearly offensive to Jews, and while purporting to bring an Islamic perspective also called for eating pork (which they don't do), so designed to make them look bad too?

@Shokhet true, there's one that's been going around lately with just a phone number.

(Hasn't hit us AFAIK, but it's been on a bunch of other sites.)

@MonicaCellio Maybe.

Yeah, I think I saw that one on MSE last night

@Shokhet some probers pretend to be regular (new) users giving low-quality answers, maybe in hopes of farming some rep. The ones I was thinking of are clearly non-answers. But eh, that's why we have VLQ and NAA flags. Any that are actually offensive (like the one earlier tonight) should get offensive-flagged, and for the rest, if they don't fit the SE definition of spam, flag 'em as something else.

@MonicaCellio Makes sense.

@Shokhet It's not unique to SE.

I think it's "testing the waters" to see how the community responds. How quickly it gets cleaned up, what kind of restrictions there are, etc.

Who is Dori that merged judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/10653/…?

@Scimonster Former SE employee

:D

..... :(

@Scimonster Have you been using the script with that code change?

@HodofHod Yeah. It's been working fine.

@Scimonster Ok, then I think I'll push it.

@MonicaCellio @DoubleAA do one of you want to fix the unfortunate typo in this comment? I feel like Dog listening to our prayers is an accidentally somewhat inappropriate mistake.

@Scimonster That's probably the real reason. The reputation, though, is something that most other sites don't have.

....like I said, I'm no expert on spam ;)

@YeZ ok, given the typo, fixed. I also fixed some missing apostrophes while I was in there anyway -- consider it a bonus. :-)

@MonicaCellio Uh-oh. Community Building has the second-to-lowest "Questions per Day" stat right now, with 0.4, and the lowest traffic with 46 visits per day. That community needs some building!

I see this hasn't escaped your notice.

@IsaacMoses yeah. Part of the rocky start is that it started out as Moderators.SE, which turned out to be too narrow, so it was re-branded as Community Building a couple months ago. But visits had already dropped off, plus the end-of-year holidays produced an SE-wide slump, so rebuilding the community has been a little challenging. Any thoughts you have on this would be most welcome!

See also: communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/q/950/83

@MonicaCellio I guess that part of the problem is that community-builders are naturally diffuse, since you only have a few of them per community.

@IsaacMoses only a few with formal responsibilities; more who contribute as users. But yeah, it's a hard community to build, which seems ironic.

Also related: meta.communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/177/83

@IsaacMoses It's like a meta-community in a sense. I mean, it is a meta-community, but in terms of the reasonable scope and population it will be limited like a meta-community.

@YeZ I am hoping that we can draw in some sociologists -- people who study how groups of people behave, even if they don't necessarily have groups they themselves are building. There's a chicken-and-egg problem there; we need more content to attract them but we need them to build the content.

This was one attempt to fish for actual research. It's a real question; a colleague wants to build badges into a developer community for our product and I'd like to be able to provide some data on that. Plus, if I could show her a well-answered question on a topic she cares about, that might draw her in.

I've noticed that the longer the window is open before I actually post a post, the more likely I am to get captcha tested.

@YeZ Interesting.

@Scimonster But I've passed every time!

Go me!

I can click that box with the best of 'em

@YeZ You're a lot more technically savvy than you sometimes claim.

@IsaacMoses I actually designed a program to click the box for me!

@YeZ If you can do that, you're a step ahead of Google.

@IsaacMoses I know :)

@YeZ Share with me? :)

@Scimonster I think you need to save a screenshot of your cnsersmoit discussion with AAAA in case that question gets deleted.

@YeZ How close is it?

@Scimonster only has 1 vote right now. (Which is mine)

But AA's is another.

@YeZ I think the community basically agrees that it should go, and i got my screenshot reference, so if @DoubleAA wants to delete it now, that should be fine.

@Scimonster There's now a fifth ridiculous vote so you may want to take another screenshot. Also you should update the link in your about me.

@YeZ It also recently garnered a NAA flag. Now I'm comfortable deleting it.

anyone know where I can get text of Beis Yosef online? not a photocopy, a typed up version

@YeZ @Scimonster and it just got a second delete vote apparently.

@DoubleAA Chat effect, I can state with certainty

This one (10K view only) sure got trashed quickly. Its author unfortunately may think that it's an instance of The Man censoring his point of view. Oh well.

@IsaacMoses I can't upvote comments on deleted posts!

@IsaacMoses Nice work @Community!

@YeZ No need

And it's gone.

@IsaacMoses wait, are you saying that I finished off Mi Yodeya's very first community close? Wow.

TZT ppl

When it's tomorrow, i shouldn't still be here. ;)

@Scimonster TZT!

@MonicaCellio I guess so. I'm trying to verify using SEDE, but I must be missing something, because it's not working right.

... there's non-obvious stuff about what's preserved in the Votes table.

The entries on that table for that post include a bunch called "Downmod," a couple called "Upmod," a couple called "Deletion," and none called "Close."

@IsaacMoses I see 5 Close and an UpMod (whatever that is).

Err, remind me -- what's an inner join as opposed to a just plain join?

Oh, never mind.

Huh. Still can't see what's wrong with your query. :-(