Charcoal HQ

7:04 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] All-caps answer: 1991 Chevrolet S10 - Sputtering, hiccups, stalling, bad acceleration by DAVE on mechanics.stackexchange.com

Gothdo

@SmokeDetector n

Jan Dvorak

@Gothdo it may have been meant as an abuse...

undo

It's definitely NAA, though.

Jan Dvorak

at best

Ferrybig

I voted as naa

Gothdo

7:06 PM

@JanDvorak I don't see anything abusive about it, besides being all-caps.

Jan Dvorak

I think it was meant to annoy the asker. But yes, I can see your point.

undo

@ArtOfCode I can rollback if you need time.

Completely forgot that you were disappearing for a few days

SmokeDetector

7:24 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user: Handling Single Sign On with Selenium WebDriver and TestNG by FayazMd on stackoverflow.com

DEAD

Wasn't this a spammer Undo?

undo

Yeah, trying to figure out what's going on

!!/rbmlu stackoverflow.com/u/6765457

Oldskool

Looks OK now.

SmokeDetector

7:42 PM

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/560748;560746;560327;560759;560711;560762;560731;560762;560762;560739‌?site=ru

Byte Commander

Those backoffs seem to happen often recently...

undo

yeah, feels like something changes in the API

Gothdo

@SmokeDetector f

DEAD

Wasn't he unblacklisted?

Daniel Fischer

8:01 PM

A heads-up: If a post links to papers by Thierno M. Sow, they can almost certainly be considered as spam [theoretically, it is possible that someone would have a real enquiry about them, but I haven't seen anybody but TMS link to them so far].

DEAD

O.O

We can blacklist a keyword.

Daniel Fischer

Thierno M. Sow is a crank+troll spamming links to his nonsensical papers on every math site he can reach.

3

DEAD

"Thierno" maybe

SmokeDetector

Restart: API quota is 3949.

Daniel Fischer

@DEAD That would probably work, although he doesn't always mention the name.

DEAD

8:03 PM

So how can we catch him?

undo

@DEAD We already are, to some extent. The goal here is to get the word out that these are tps

metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/…

DEAD

@DanielFischer What's your deal with tetramethyl silane?

It's such a good NMR base.

@undo Oh.

ArtOfCode

@undo nah, no worries. I've got a mostly-working updated version, it just needs final testing and rollout.

undo

kk

ArtOfCode

In short: @Yvette @Byte @DEAD userscript broken because authentication; will (try to) fix tomorrow.

Btw @undo did you do an API key for tripleee? If not, don't worry, I'll do one tomorrow. The auth docs need rewriting, so I should do that before giving new keys out.

Byte Commander

8:16 PM

Yeah, undo informed me already. But thanks for mentioning it again.

ArtOfCode

Ah, cool. I just pinged people I got notifications from

undo

@ArtOfCode Nope

ArtOfCode

kk, I'll get to it tomorrow

Gothdo

8:57 PM

@SmokeDetector f

Gothdo

9:16 PM

@SmokeDetector f

Oldskool

:31988557 why

SmokeDetector

@Oldskool Post - Scam aimed at microsoft customers. Keywords: service, support

Gothdo

@SmokeDetector f

ArtOfCode

10:00 PM

-1

Q: For spam posts, should we **disable** links?

Inspired by Magisch's recent post. If a post is spam, in addition to flagging it, should we edit the links so that they are not clickable? I know that the policy is not to delete links unless they link to known malware or adult site, but should we take care to disable them by making them no lon...

discussion

@Mag ^

Feeds

ArtOfCode has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

ArtOfCode

^ test, we'll see how it goes

If it gets noisy we can get rid of it

Processed Meat

16

Q: Blacklist the link-shortener bit.do

Recently, there has been a spam attempt using the link shortener bit.do to route to a link in the other, already blacklisted link shortener tiny.cc. This was used as part of a spam tactic that involved plagiarising and linking to another SO post at first to prevent the spam from getting easily de...

discussion feature-request status-completed spam hyperlinks

13

Q: Importance of flagging spam instead of editing it out or voting to close

The Workplace gets a fair amount of spam every day. According to this listing there are at least 2-3 spam posts on here every day. In general, the way to deal with spammers is to flag and destroy their posts as spam - this imposes automatic IP blocks as well as large heuristic biases for the ba...

discussion spam

-15

Q: Can a comment be considered spam?

Can a comment be considered spam? If so, what makes a comments spam? I'm not serious, but technically speaking, shouldn't comments such as "Google it first" be seen as comment spam? :)

discussion comments spam google

4

Q: Should we vote to delete spam posts?

If a post accumulates six spam flags, it will be automatically deleted, and its content hidden even from users with the “see deleted posts” privilege (10k+ on regular sites, 2k+ on beta sites). In addition, this will provide helpful data for the network’s spam-detection filters. On the other ha...

discussion spam vote-to-delete spam-prevention

11

Q: Do spammers actually increase their Google "page-rank" from posting links on SE?

I've spent some time in the review queue lately, and I've noticed that quite a few bots/spammers try and sneakily hide links in answers/questions. Presumably they do this to boost the Google score of their website. However, assuming they succeed (i.e. the community doesn't spot their spam, and i...

support review hyperlinks spam

ArtOfCode

10:19 PM

...yeah, thanks Feeds.

hichris123

10:31 PM

Can we not do that? Not too many are applicable to us and if something needs our attention, people will find us.

ArtOfCode

11:09 PM

@hichris123 shrug it's an experiment. If we don't like it, it can be removed easily, but I'd suggest we give it a try rather than shooting it on sight.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword with email in body, email in body: Do you need a financial Solution by Peter Singerland on money.stackexchange.com

ArtOfCode

sd k

hichris123

@ArtOfCode Well, I'd really like to avoid having 10+ people in this room take part in a meta discussion on say Android.SE. mSE/mSO are fine, but when you get to those per-site metas, only people active on the site should really be active in the meta discussion.

ArtOfCode

11:38 PM

@hichris123 that's... subjective. There are cases, and spam is often one of the big ones IME, where network policy is clear, doesn't change per-site, and having network experience can enable you to answer anywhere.

I'm not saying we should all go take over Android meta every time they post anything remotely related to spam - but if someone comes along and says "should I close vote spam", then it's perfectly reasonable for someone from here - with the relevant experience - to go over and say "actually, no, you should do these things instead to help get rid of it".

hichris123

But it's their Meta site. Generally advisable to let their moderators deal with it (or high rep users). Otherwise, sometimes you get a frown or two and it generally looks bad because you have no experience with their site and you're telling them what to do.

ArtOfCode

We are dealing with a room full of adults here, rather than the children in, say, Lounge. We're capable of judging when it's appropriate to step in, and if someone isn't there are enough of us who are that we can guide.

@hichris123 my point is that you don't need experience on the site to be able to say "don't CV spam"

hichris123

Well, that discussion is a waste of time anyway, but if some 101 rep user posts that, do you really think people will listen?

People listen to people they trust. Not some person who might have network rep.

undo

Sure, but I'd like to know when some network site is going off the rails about, say, abusive flag procedures.

Anyway, I vote to keep it, at least for now.

hichris123

I'd suggest whittling it down to just mSO and mSE but we'll see how it goes.

undo

11:48 PM

Anyway, I have no issues telling network sites what to do on things where we have network policy. Maybe that's just me.

hichris123

Dammit, @Richard. Get rid of this idea that the purpose of Meta is to police and slap down everyone possible at every turn. Every site is going to have some of the same discussions at one point or another, and that's OK! Without this "repetition", folks will never internalize the reasoning behind things - and without that, we're doomed. Look at MSE as an archive of information useful when conducting these discussions, not as an excuse to shut them down! — Shog9 ♦ Apr 17 '14 at 16:18

I think the second part is important there. Also that they're leading from within and not some outsider is just saying "Do this because everyone else is."

undo

Especially around spam, there's some fairly clear things where stuff breaks if some site decides on a wacky way to handle stuff.

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