Charcoal HQ

Fastnlight

20:02

This user has two identical answers, both of which advertise their own product (disclosed). The two answers are on different sites: stackoverflow.com/users/18231860/max-travo

Jesse

@Fastnlight Yeah I'm not sure those quite classify as spam, but it is definitely a link-only answer, so I'm just going to flag it as VLQ on both sites.

Fastnlight

VLQ, or naa?

Jesse

Either one would work. VLQ is just generally recommended for link-only answers because the flag gets marked helpful if the answer gets edited, but if you don't want that to happen then NAA is probably fine.

Fastnlight

👍🏻

Mast

747

Q: Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

I think we can all agree, this sucks: If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as "The Answer" by well-meaning1 forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-observ...

CC @Jesse

dan1st is crying

20:12

sdc report stackoverflow.com/a/77628917/10871900 "undisclosed affiliation, user is core contributor of GitHub repository linked on site, github.com/leo-hydraulic, github.com/hydraulic-software/conveyor/…;

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (93): How to deliver a desktop app of Kotlin multiplatform project?‭ by Leonardo Mesquita‭ on stackoverflow.com

dan1st is crying

sdc report stackoverflow.com/a/75537960/10871900 "undisclosed affiliation, user is core contributor of GitHub repository linked on site, github.com/leo-hydraulic, github.com/hydraulic-software/conveyor/…;

Fastnlight

Dang, you beat me to it (I was about to report it)

dan1st is crying

:)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (71): Package java desktop app (gradle)‭ by Leonardo Mesquita‭ on stackoverflow.com

dan1st is crying

20:14

I even joined their Discord to check it xd

Jesse

@Mast Yeah I've seen that before. The advanced flagging script raises a VLQ flag for link-only answers, which is what I was going off of, however according to that post it would be NAA. The analogy makes sense, but in practice there appears to be an overlap from what I've gathered.

metasmoke

tpu- feedback received on [MS] How to deliver a desktop app of Kotlin multiplatform project?‭

tpu- feedback received on [MS] Package java desktop app (gradle)‭

Jesse

!!/watch- conveyor\.hydraulic\.dev

Fastnlight

@Jesse Have mods handled your vlq flags as helpful?

metasmoke

PR#9214 ("Jesse: Watch conveyor\.hydraulic\.dev") opened by SmokeDetector

Mast

20:15

@Jesse The flags don't end up in the same queue, they are not equal.

dan1st is crying

@Fastnlight I typically use VLQ (on SO) and it worked out for me quite well until now

Fastnlight

Until now?

Jesse

@Fastnlight I cant tell the difference between a mod and a LQA queue review, but yes they generally are marked helpful.

dan1st is crying

@Fastnlight Can't say anything about the future

@Jesse and that

Fastnlight

Ah, but you haven't had any issues so far?

dan1st is crying

20:17

yes

Fastnlight

👍🏻

Jesse

@Mast I didn't say they were equal, I'm just saying there's an overlap from what I've seen. However I wasn't aware they go to different queues, I thought they both went to the LQA queue.

Mast

@Jesse No. And that's the problem with people repeating the information you just did.

They don't know.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body (94): Book about Tantric Sex Written by an Australian Couple that uses the terms 'Lingam' and 'Yoni'‭ by John‭ on literature.SE (@Mithical)

Mast

108

Q: How do I properly use the "Not an Answer" flag?

What is the "Not an Answer" flag and what is its purpose? When should I use this flag? When should I not use this flag? But I'm still not sure if I'm using the flag correctly... An answer is "Not an Answer", but the flag was declined or disputed! The flag was marked helpful, but the answer wasn'...

support faq flags answers not-an-answer

dan1st is crying

20:19

965 post flags, mostly VLQ (I think) and the cases that were declined were mostly me being stupid/for other reasons

Mast

VLQ is for non-salvageable posts, gibberish.

dan1st is crying

@Mast well link-only is salvageable by the poster

Mast

NAA is for people posting things that may be sensible, but don't constitute an answer. It should've been a question, a comment or fleshed out into a real answer.

Vickel

@Mast and non-English post

Mast

@dan1stiscrying And thus not VLQ. They are NAA.

Fastnlight

20:21

@Mast Aren't gibberish posts r/a

Mast

@Fastnlight There's levels of gibberish.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad asn for hostname in body (1): Arrow in dropdown menu toggle not appearing right away but instead shows later when page is refreshed‭ by Nino Sun‭ on stackoverflow.com

dan1st is crying

@Mast are the VLQ and NAA flags really handled differently (except wrt editing) on SO?

metasmoke

fp- feedback received on [MS] Arrow in dropdown menu toggle not appearing right away but instead shows later when page is refreshed‭

Vickel

VLQ as by Advanced Flagging, see https://charcoal-se.org/scripts
- Link Only
- Library
- Non English

dan1st is crying

20:26

I typically use VLQ if I think the author could improve it - if they edit it and it doesn't get any better, I still have NAA as an option

Vickel

@dan1stiscrying VLQ gets automatically marked helpful, once the post was edited

dan1st is crying

@Vickel the issue isn't it being marked as helpful, it is the post being out of the review queue (I think)

Mast

@dan1stiscrying I can't speak for SO, but I am a moderator on a different SE site and thus happen to know a thing or two about flags. Unfortunately how flags work exactly has changed a bit over the past decade and the changes haven't been very well documented. Moderators were more or less forced into actions depending on what kind of flag was raised but the current problems are less severe than they were in '16 when I roasted about it. When in doubt, VLQ is safer than NAA.

Vickel

@dan1stiscrying best i found is this: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/314679/…

Mast

Recommending either works is an oversimplification and puts people on the wrong path though. I'm looking for up-to-date properly sourced material, but search tends to fail me when I need it most.

Makyen

20:34

@Fastnlight R/A is a reasonable flag on actual gibberish when posted by a user that doesn't have other constructive contributions. In other cases, please raise an NAA or VLQ flag. If it's a question, then vote/flag for closure instead of VLQ. Please see: answer to: "Is a post like 'assdddsssafffwq' spam?"

dan1st is crying

@Mast yeah that's why I use VLQ in most cases

Mast

The system prescribes that when in doubt, you should be using the 'in need of moderator attention' option. But that's theory. In practice not many people take the effort to explain what is wrong with a post.

And on SO we're talking about so many flags, they got just about a flag culture of their own.

dan1st is crying

yeah and I'm mainly flagging stuff on SO

Mast

There's this from Cerbrus (note they're explaining why the flags don't apply to the post mentioned, not indicators on when to flag it but that's easy to extract).

9

A: Is this answer NAA or VLQ worthy?

NAA: It is an answer. A wrong answer is still an answer. VLQ: It is not gibberish, or another language. Neither of those flags apply. If the answer is incorrect (wrong language), downvote and move on. You could also comment on it if you feel adventurous.

Which basically boils down to what I wrote earlier.

SmokeDetector

20:59

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad asn for hostname in body (1): Wordpress : My HTML seems to load before my css ✏️‭ by Chakir‭ on stackoverflow.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in body (1): Trouble Integrating Search Endpoint with Flight-Radar1 API in Vite React Redux Toolkit Project‭ by Birçe Yakut‭ on stackoverflow.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword with email in body, blacklisted website in body, potentially bad keyword in body (249): Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Tracing and Recovery‭ by Commander James‭ on stackoverflow.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Misleading link (24): Solving a steady-state PDE‭ by blov‭ on scicomp.SE

metasmoke

tpu- feedback received on [MS] Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Tracing and Recovery‭

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (185): Why can a long jumper jump further by flipping?‭ by Maurice Derek‭ on physics.SE

Makyen/EC2-linux: Executing automatic scheduled reboot.

[ SmokeDetector ] SmokeDetector started in standby mode at rev f948d7ca2d (SmokeDetector: Merge pull request #9100 from Charcoal-SE/auto-blacklist-1701772705) (running on Makyen/EC2-linux)

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer (1): Cant see the (Chainlink)requested data in my smartcontract‭ by Derek‭ on stackoverflow.com

metasmoke

21:30

fp- feedback received on [MS] Book about Tantric Sex Written by an Australian Couple that uses the terms 'Lingam' and 'Yoni'‭

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad asn for hostname in answer (1): Did the US government claim that it has the right to control "cognitive infrastructure", i.e. thoughts?‭ by P.R.‭ on skeptics.SE

teward/Thoth: Executing automatic scheduled reboot.

[ SmokeDetector ] SmokeDetector started at rev 89028d7c9c (SmokeDetector: Merge pull request #9211 from Charcoal-SE/auto-blacklist-1702050091) (running on teward/Thoth, Python 3.10.12)

Restart: API quota is 65645.

metasmoke

21:49

tp feedback received on [MS] Why can a long jumper jump further by flipping?‭

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad asn for hostname in answer (1): Did the US government claim that it has the right to control "cognitive infrastructure", i.e. thoughts? ✏️‭ by P.R.‭ on skeptics.SE

Fastnlight

Undisclosed affiliation: stackoverflow.com/a/77629336/20153035

Proof: bloguplift.com/about

SmokeDetector

22:06

API quota rolled over with 65376 requests remaining. Current quota: 79999.

stackoverflow: 5721
math: 1593
electronics: 376
ru.stackoverflow: 351
physics: 330
superuser: 306
askubuntu: 268
mathoverflow.net: 259
tex: 244
unix: 209
serverfault: 200
gis: 191
stats: 183
blender: 164
salesforce: 142
ell: 129
philosophy: 127
mathematica: 123
es.stackoverflow: 120
diy: 119
scifi: 110
rpg: 110
academia: 108
codegolf: 106
dba: 88
bitcoin: 73
codereview: 72
worldbuilding: 71
apple: 70
pt.stackoverflow: 66
ethereum: 65
music: 64
hermeneutics: 63
judaism: 61
softwareengineering: 60

Jeff Schaller

!!/approve 9214

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklists reloaded at rev bbfb4b384f (SmokeDetector: Merge pull request #9214 from Charcoal-SE/auto-blacklist-1702066508) (running on teward/Thoth)

Jeff Schaller

!!/approve 9213

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklists reloaded at rev 961e5cc047 (SmokeDetector: Merge pull request #9213 from Charcoal-SE/auto-blacklist-1702058059) (running on teward/Thoth)

Jeff Schaller

!!/approve 9212

SmokeDetector

22:14

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklists reloaded at rev dda9f96c54 (SmokeDetector: Merge pull request #9212 from Charcoal-SE/auto-blacklist-1702050916) (running on teward/Thoth)

Laurel

Could someone help me with this? I think the domain should be watched and the answers deleted as spam (actually, the search was returning 2 more results by the same user earlier so I guess a mod already took action on it). chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/64829977#64829977

Jesse

22:36

!!/report networkengineering.stackexchange.com/q/84380/89782 stats.stackexchange.com/a/633109/379786 stats.stackexchange.com/a/633380/379786 stats.stackexchange.com/a/633432/379786 gis.stackexchange.com/a/471570/219622

SmokeDetector

@Jesse To avoid SmokeDetector reporting posts too slowly, you can report at most 5 posts at a time. This is to avoid SmokeDetector's chat messages getting rate-limited too much, which would slow down reports.

Jesse

But that is 5...

!!/report networkengineering.stackexchange.com/q/84380/89782 stats.stackexchange.com/a/633109/379786 stats.stackexchange.com/a/633380/379786 stats.stackexchange.com/a/633432/379786

!!/report gis.stackexchange.com/a/471570/219622

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of body (43): Is the results produced by this VLSM (CIDR) Subnet Calculator reliable?‭ by M.K.Dan‭ on networkengineering.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (batch report: post 2 out of 4) (93): Calculating standard deviation after log transformation‭ by M.K.Dan‭ on stats.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (batch report: post 3 out of 4) (93): Deriving the conditional distributions of a multivariate normal distribution‭ by M.K.Dan‭ on stats.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (batch report: post 4 out of 4) (93): How to deal with Z-score greater than 3? ✏️‭ by M.K.Dan‭ on stats.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer (93): Finding centroid of cluster of points using R‭ by M.K.Dan‭ on gis.SE

Jesse

@Laurel I reported and spam flagged them all.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title (2): Have item status changes trigger the automatic creation of a new Monday.com group ✏️‭ by user23010408‭ on webapps.SE

Laurel

22:44

Thanks

metasmoke

fp- feedback received on [MS] Have item status changes trigger the automatic creation of a new Monday.com group‭

Jesse

!!/addblu stackoverflow.com/users/22771062/samsamgary

SmokeDetector

@Jesse User blacklisted (22771062 on stackoverflow.com).

metasmoke

23:06

Makyen/MS-Relay: Executing automatic scheduled reboot.

[ SmokeDetector ] SmokeDetector started at rev ee0f84fecd (Makyen: Log as debug MS WebSocket messages) (running on Makyen/MS-Relay, Python 3.11.3)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in body (1): USB A 3.2 generation 2 and USB C 3.2 generation 2 ports show as 2.0 ✏️‭ by Silent Throb‭ on superuser.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in body (95): Top Notch Hacker‭ by Kassandra sonneman‭ on security.SE

metasmoke

23:23

fp- feedback received on [MS] USB A 3.2 generation 2 and USB C 3.2 generation 2 ports show as 2.0‭

tpu- feedback received on [MS] Top Notch Hacker‭

Jesse

!!/watch- digital[\W_]*+pro[\W_]*+hackz

metasmoke

PR#9215 ("Jesse: Watch digital[\W_]*+pro[\W_]*+hackz") opened by SmokeDetector

Jesse

@metasmoke Digital as opposed physical hacks?

Life hacks, perhaps?

Transcript for