I didn't either...which might have made the check faster. I googled for parts of the answer. And found them that way. Then realised it's the link that was shared...
@JeffSchaller It seems like a good idea to watch it. I think all the posts should be deleted as spam tho. You don't need a link to be spamming a product. Until 4 hours ago nobody ever mentioned this product and now there are some users who've mentioned it in all their answers
My first thought is a custom flag. My first ideas aren't always the best. How about a comment in each, asking about affiliation and/or applicability to the question? I haven't read the posts in detail to see, myself.
@Laurel despite dealing with a lot of SO posts, and being a moderator elsewhere, I don't have a lot of opinions (particularly up-to-date ones) on handling spammy SO posts like that. Maybe Meta.SO? Or if you feel strongly enough that they're spam, simply spam-flag? (These opinions do not represent the CHQ project) :)
@AdrianMole ahhhh, I thought there was a room for things like that, but couldn't remember it.
@JeffSchaller That pattern looks like it's already caught by Potentially bad keyword in body and Potentially bad keyword in answer Append -force to the command word(s) if you really want to add the pattern you provided.
@Jesse I'm conflicted on PR 9145; the matching posts are FP in my opinion. I'm going to bypass it for now (leaving it open for someone else to decide on).
!!/close 9145 "I agree with Jeff here, these posts all have disclosure (one of them is a bit dubious but this user has a bunch of posts and with only 4 of them having such a link, I think this is fine) thus there's no need for this watch IMO"
@Jesse The pattern starts with whitespace. In order for a "number" to make an exact match, the pattern must begin with a digit or up to two of +,(,[, or { immediately followed by a digit. Append -force to the command word(s) if you really want to add the pattern you provided.
@Jesse That pattern looks like it's already caught by Blacklisted username Append -force to the command word(s) if you really want to add the pattern you provided.
@Jesse That pattern looks like it's already caught by Bad keyword in answer and Bad keyword in body Append -force to the command word(s) if you really want to add the pattern you provided.
@Jesse Matched by muyern[\W_]*+trust\w*(?:[\W_]*+hack\w*)?(?:[\W_]*+(?:at[\W_]*+)?(?:mail-me|gmail)(?:[\W_]*+(?:dot[\W_]*+)?com)?)? on line 2902 of bad_keywords.txt
I think another "watch" doesn't do a whole lot -- since they're already getting caught. More useful (IMHO) is waiting for or finding a pattern that gets enough hits for blacklisting; then there's more weight and potentially autoflags.
Yeah true. I was just thinking we might want to promote the domain to the blacklist without promoting the pattern currently catching the domain, but I don't think that applies in this case.
@SmokeDetector What do you guys think of this one? It does disclose affiliation, but it still feels really spammy to me, maybe because of the "contact us" part.
@cocomac From my understanding, it's completely fine for regular users to discuss suspensions, and I don't think Charcoal HQ has a standing policy against it. I think the common-sense addendum to that is "Don't be a jerk about it", as in, don't go wild making fun of the suspended person (not something I'd expect you to do, just mentioning).
@Fastnlight Probably not. I think it just needs a quote block. Plagiarism is when you take something someone else wrote and try to pass it off as your own. Considering they included the link, I don't think that's their intention here.
Currently, we can flag discussions, which (I assume) brings it up to the moderators. However, with other posts, we can spam and r/a flag posts to automatically bring them down. Why can't we do that with discussions. Now, spammers are realizing that discussions is a way to keep spam up for longer ...
@Fastnlight This comment isn't exactly incorrect in that SD monitors posts, but we also don't need to advertise the existence of the bot, especially if that user isn't posting in good faith.
@Fastnlight Moderating those is in the hands of the CMs. I don't know if CMs are notified of the flags in some manner or if it's entirely polled (i.e., that they have to go to each discussion to check). Flags on them are not handled very quickly. It's not possible for more than one flag to be raised on a discussion and they can't be deleted via flags, so telling other users about their existence isn't effective. Feel free to use the Contact Us link to report them (personal opinion, not policy).
Moderators can delete them, but we don't know about those flags unless we go to each discussion. Given the current state of the system (i.e., that SE chose to design it as obviously broken from a moderation standpoint, leaving an very clear path for spam and R/A content, without the system-normal methods for basic user-level moderation), I am not enthusiastic about having users telling moderators about cases where there is spam or R/A content there.
I would much rather that you create a ticket for each such post in discussions via "Contact Us", so there's a record in SE's tracking system showing how much work is having to be done due to their choice to not minimally flesh out the moderation of that feature.
In other words, reporting them here is near-useless, because only SO moderators and CMs can do anything about those discussions. You're welcome to create watches for SD for the contents of such discussions, in case the spammer posts something similar in a post on SE.
Is there an outstanding request for an API endpoint (and websocket?) for Collectives Articles & Discussions? I know the old Articles endpoint doesn't work anymore by design. If not, I'll post one later today, either on MSE, MSO, or StackApps
@Makyen Given the fact that there are SO moderators in this chat room (you for example), I don't see it hurting to post in in here. In addition, it allows members to blacklist the user, and extract content to watch/blacklist
@Makyen I realize posting them in hopes of deletion is questionable, and I won't if you don't want me too. Still, when I blacklist someone for posting Discussions spam, I have been leaving a chat message here noting that my rationale for the blacklist is the spam post, and that typically includes a link to said Discussions post. Is that OK, or would you rather we not do that too? I lean toward doing it, but I don't have a strong opinion either way.
@cocomac That's fine, although I'd prefer if you also reported each via the "Contact Us" link, given that flagging a discussion really isn't effective.
Ok, I'd still like to flag regardless, but I can blacklist them, note the post leading to the blacklist, raise a flag, and then use Contact Us so staff can remove it.
If someone (preferably a SO mod) wants to post it on my meta post, we can make sure others know how to report those in the current condition of discussions
@cocomac Yes, please flag, but don't ask others to do so, because they can't, as only one flag on each discussion is permitted (in total across all users, or at least at a time).
@cocomac On, wait. I'm wrong. It looks like they fixed that issue last month: "Some discussions don't have a flag link". So, other users can flag, but it doesn't actually do anything.
