@Buffy Congratulations on reaching 100K.

@Shree @Makyen: Can you please elaborate your most recent spam flag? If you desire secrecy, raise a custom flag on the post or ask me to open a private chat room.

@Wrzlprmft Non english question with link. Thats a normal pattern we catch as a spam on charcoal-hqand , generally they are tp. So why I cast spam flag , on that particular question. But this time I am wrong. Thanks for honest investigation on question. 1st flag declined on academia.

@Shree Right. I immediately forgot that it was in German since I am a native speaker (I probably wouldn’t have noticed if Scaaahu hadn’t said it). I probably should have translated the question and then closed it for still being unclear.

:)

@skullpetrol Thanks.

@Wrzlprmft It was a question posted in German on an English language site, which says (paraphrased), "Does anyone in Germany, or other developed country, use [link to illegal service]". The linked page is in Russian (i.e. neither German nor English). The linked page proudly proclaims that it's an illegal service that has "pirated" (their word), over 74M scientific articles, explicitly stating the site's entire goal is to violate the copyright rights on scientific articles.

The actual question being asked could be legitimate. However, the effect/intent of the question, based on the wording, etc., appeared to be more to promote the illegal site, rather than to ask a question of academics about using a service that's illegal in most jurisdictions. The wording was similar to what's used in spam to promote other types of illegal/copyright violating services (e.g. "Does anyone use [link to repository of pirated movies]").

Basically, the question seems written more with the intent to get people to click-through to the linked site, even just to figure out what the question is asking about, rather than ask the opinion of academics about using such a site, or their opinion of in mass violations the copyright on academic articles in the name of free information.

A custom mod-flag would have been more appropriate in this instance. At the time, I felt moving towards having the content removed rapidly was more urgent. However, looking back on it, I was a biased by the service being one which was violating copyrights on academic articles, which I strongly disagree with doing, particularly on such a scale. Overall, the question felt significantly more like spam than it did like a real question.

Note: I do feel that scientific articles should be more easily available, but that should be the choice of the copyright holder, not as a specific, intentional violation of those copyrights in mass. Fortunately, academic publishing is moving more in that direction (e.g. arXiv, etc.).

I also feel a question could be asked on Academia about using a service such as the one that was linked. However, the question would need to be much more carefully asked, such that it was clear the question was actually trying to explore the viewpoint of academics on the use of such a site/service, rather than a quick blurb that appears primarily intended to get people to click through to the site, if for no reason other than to figure out what the question is asking about.

So, overall, perhaps the spam penalties shouldn't be imposed by having the question deleted as spam. However, I do feel it should be deleted. As it currently stands, the question really doesn't have any effect other than to promote the linked site. If the user really wants to ask the underlying question, then they can substantially edit the question into a form that doesn't primarily get people to click-through to the site, then flag to ask for the question to be undeleted.

However, that's really just my opinion.

@Makyen Thanks for your detailed reply. A few notes: 1) Being a native speaker of German, it doesn’t feel like explicit advertisement to me. 2) The linked site is in German for me, though it’s only a bit of interface. 3) We already have several questions about the site in question, and the site is widely known in the academic world anyway in my experience. 4) In its current state, the question will be auto-deleted in a week anyway and is mostly invisible already.

@Wrzlprmft Thanks for the reply. 1) My German is...poor, so I certainly don't make a claim to understanding the nuances. 2) The first time I went to the linked site, I was a bit surprised to see it in Russian, as the subdomain implies it should be in German. I'm not sure why it's in Russian for me. The IP address I use for the VM in which I test unknown links is based in the US, so if they are switching based on the requesting IP address, then I'd expect it to be in English.

Are you using Chrome? I ask because Chrome has a tendency to automatically translate sites.

3) I'm not surprised to hear there are other questions about the site. I thought I'd remembered previously reading at least one, but I didn't go looking for others. However, that raises the question as to why the user would ask a survey style question when a simple search would have provided multiple opinions. I know there are lots of people who never bother searching, but... sigh.

4) Yeah, I can understand the POV of leaving the question up and letting the Roomba delete it. If it is a naive user, then that will prpbably feel better than having the question deleted. I'm probably a bit biased towards quick removal of content such as this, where it appears to serve primarily to provide a link to a site. However, that bias is based on seeing the same thing happen to obvious spam, rather than questions like this one where its intent isn't as clear.

Thanks for asking about the reason for the flag and listening.