Problem  (The question will be found at the end, Question.)  As a user of any Stack Exchange's community, you most likely stumbled through a post where for you that would be considered spam, but you're not quite sure how to proceed, because different communities / users have different expectations to what spam really is.  Let's take as example / inspiration two situations I've encountered recently (this doesn't mean the answer to this question is solely based in them).    Situation 1  On , when reading a user's answer, I found another answer that has a "See Also"  section at the end, including many links to other answers from the same user inside of the community, without disclosing the affiliation.  I created a , explained the situation and still don't know how to proceed. From 's comment, I've noticed a specific approach to spam (which I didn't read anywhere in the documentation):     Links within the same site are IMHO unproblematic. Trying to drive   traffic to an external site is what the disclosure requirement is   supposed to discourage.     Situation 2  On Stack Overflow, when reading about converting  to SQL, I found a post from a user mentioning a specific tool and linking to an external site. There was no doubt the user was the creator of the tool.  After analyzing the Q&amp;As where the tool was mentioned, noticed five (out of 25) was from the same user (creator of the tool) and at least two from team member(s). From all the seven answers, only one of the team member(s)'s posts disclosed the affiliation.  I flagged as spam (all but one), explaining in the comments why I've done that. The flag was accepted for the user creator of the tool, which then edited the answers to include     (Disclaimer: I help run the tool)   (I am not sure how acceptable such edits are though, but this would be a different question.)  The other still .    Question  I would like to understand when we should flag a post as spam and when not, considering what was mentioned by :     lack of disclosure where disclosure is required VS voluntary   disclosure where none is strictly required.   Note: I know of two good questions including similar information, namely:
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It's    that posting links to your own website is ok, but should there be a line drawn? There were several spam flags today for 's recent posts, presumably because they all link to his website. Initially I disagreed because his answers seem for the most part relevant to the question, but then I looked into it more and realized there's three things that set this apart from most of the related cases that have come up:   This isn't an occasional thing -- he's posted  in the last year This isn't a random blog he writes for a fun, it's a for-profit company he  and makes money promoting I'm not willing to go through all 412, but from the sample I checked, he generally doesn't mention that the products he's recommending are his own. The site is linked from his profile, but most people aren't going to check that   Is all this considered acceptable use, or are the spam flags accurate?
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This  (and connected links) give good advice on the sorts of things to do.  But they do not say what the criteria for lifting of an answer ban is.  I'm assuming there is some algorithm involving rep, time maybe, maybe certain activities?   It also doesn't say whether one is notified or one just has to use trial and error.  I have no idea of the effort involved in getting ban lifted and whether it is worth while or not.
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This is related to  question. I think we should discourage "Belongs on S[OFU]" type comments. I think they encourage the OP to go to the indicated site and re-ask the question. Flagging/voting to move on the question should be sufficient. Assuming this is the case, would it be proper to flag those comments for mod removal to hopefully get them removed before a new user sees them and duplicates the question?  Or, another example:    Or, even worse, but this new (!) user probably just doesn't know better:
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I am new to Stack Exchange.  Math and physics newsletters get to my inbox every Thursday, and every Thursday there are 5-day-old answers to questions as I read them for the first time.  Too often a question of interest  has already been closed because of the low quality of recent answers and comments.  I have no reputation, and to do almost anything requires more reputation than I have.  Nothing I have found in Help helps (however I noted one user submitted an "answer" because he said he did not have the reputation to comment.  I have started wondering if Joseph Heller is looking over my shoulder.  Any help, please?  Thank you to those who made useful suggestions.  The question, "How does a new user begin using Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange?," clearly expressed my difficulties.  I would close the question if I knew how.  Good night.
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I have been an active user lately on Stack Exchange Mathematics. If anyone can checkout my profile, I have posted my answers along with questions that I asked just to know if I attempted them correctly or not. I've never spammed nor abused anyone. Still I am getting this message.     You can only post 1 time each day due to the volume of spam and abuse   originating from your network.   Is there anything that can be done about this? Can I get help from any moderator?
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It came up in chat that a spammer's account needed destroyed; their posts had been deleted but their name (which was offensive) still showed up on the front page as updates to posts and their user account hadn't been deleted.   Someone in chat wanted this fixed but there "wasn't anything to flag" so they complained in chat rather than flagging, which would have directly notified moderators. For future reference how should I tell users to handle a situation like this? Just flag a related post with the "Other" flag reason and explain the situation? What if there's no "related" post?
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This is that type of question, but it's fundamental.  Information on Meta Stack Exchange states I can ask anything related to the Stack Exchange websites, its communities and some other stuff, but I have questions such as this about just asking questions which is not directly connected to Stack Exchange.  The FAQ doesn't satisfy me completely. Where were the FAQ asked? Was it here?  If this question is legitimate (Not the greatest questions you've seen... I know) in the Meta Stack Exchange community then I can be more specific. I'm new to this and just trying to get to know how and what I ask in here.
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I've had a few concerns over a new form of &quot;spam&quot; - that is, through voting. A while back, I had seen some wild reputation increases to my account, amongst others, that seemingly felt weird - as I've barely participated in asking questions or providing answers. Earlier today, this sentiment was echoed by another user in chat:  and like 250 this month? it seems like someone is spam upvoting  This was another user that saw a 250 rep increase, but has been inactive for quite a while. For a site that hasn't seen more than 5 questions a day, that was really weird. To put things even more out of hand, it seems like each vote has been placed on a question.  I did some investigation of my own, and it seems like I've found a badge hunter. More of a... gold badge hunter. This user is among the top 3 voters of the site. Looking into this user's profile, this user only has under 200 rep, and has posted a single question, which was received differently. One thing caught my eye:  Votes all time              by type 581   up              535    question 1     down            47     answer   Each vote is an up vote (with the exception of one), and there are 535 up votes on questions. There are 535 questions in the entire site. Using reputation stats from user profiles, I came with the conclusion that these votes are...  Done within a short period of time. 5 question votes within a couple of minutes Done in [near] perfect chronological order: The earlier the vote, the earlier the question was asked. As if the user had gone through the list of questions in order, and placed an up vote on each one.   I see this as incredibly problematic. First:  It dangerously inflates reputation. Votes are not done based on their content, but simply for voting. Therefore, reputation loses it value as a way to measure expertise.  It's like serial up voting. Generally, when we hear the term &quot;serial up voting&quot;, we think of a voting ring, where one user continuously up votes another. This is negative for the targeted user. Well, here, we've got a voting ring with the site and this user. A user continuously up votes the site, causing negative damage for the site.  We mix good and bad content. Since low quality questions are a victim of the voting spree, many get meddled with the rest of &quot;good quality&quot; questions, despite being closed as off-topic, too broad, or whatever the reason. We can no longer reliably sort questions by quality with the very system that was designed to help us.   ... And the rest of voting fraud issues outlined in .  I've got a couple questions on this:  Is this comparable to serial voting? Should such votes be reversed? How should we determine whether or not to reverse them?  Should we stop this? Let it be? Is this really that big of a problem for sites? (I would argue that it's less of an issue for graduated sites that receive large amounts of content, but what about beta sites that rarely see more than a few questions a day)
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Today I've helped flag a lot of spam for this: .  When I've visited my profile on WebApps to see my flag history of flag, the information about my flagging history was missing.  Note that these spam flags were my only flags on this site.    Normally, I should have more information like when I'm looking at my Stack Overflow account.    Is this a bug?
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I was reading a question and found myself very confused. I saw that it had been edited recently by a 10k rep user and looked at the edit chain.    It seemed to me that the clarity and intent of the question was made substantially worse by the most recent edit. I don't know if this was just a one-off mistake by the high rep user. I could roll back his change to the previous version, or improve on it, but it seems like there might be a need for some kind of flag / reporting option as well - if this user has a history of misinterpreting questions and editing them for the worse, (and these hypothetical flags accumulate) should something change about their ability to edit with out review? Should I comment on the post with a request for the user to undo or fix their own change?  Not sure what my best option is.  I had initially left the post out of the question as I didn't want it to be a "I'm calling you out bro!" or a shaming kind of thing, but since it was requested and upvoted :    I think that the changes he made to the first paragraph (particularly adding the B[i] = j line) are enough of a departure from the intent of the question that it makes it more confusing.
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Of course spam posts should be flagged, and if they come up in review, rejected.  Over on Mi Yodeya during the past 24 hours I’ve helped delete and reject four spam posts through the review queue, and I can only imagine that others were posted over the course of the night. To clarify, I’m referring to edits and answers that were about 99.274% words that I don’t think any decent person would use in everyday discussions, even if someone got them really angry.   Thing is, if the only thing we can do as a community is delete his posts/reject his edits, and as moderators to ban his account, can’t he just create a new account? Further, some of these posts . Maybe the mods can ban his IP address? I’m not one, so I have no idea what kind of power they wield in that respect. But he can always just get a new computer.   I don’t have the numbers to see what this is like on other sites, but I know this doesn’t happen often on Mi Yodeya. I wonder, then, whether this is the optimal solution, or whether an automatic spam filter be put into place - say, a new review queue that automatically deletes posts or rejects edits that can then be voted on whether to be reposted if it’s a false alarm. Perhaps it can be automatically triggered by certain keywords (like ****, %$#^, or @$+^).   Now, all of these posts that I voted to delete/reject came up in Suggested Edits and First Posts. Maybe such edits would show up in Low Quality in general, and that just wasn’t the case here because of precedence rules. I don’t know. But perhaps the above would be a better solution, if this is even as big of a problem as I’m making it out to be.
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Somebody asked the following :    Clearly this is just a troll post so I (and other users) flagged it as spam. The spam flag was subsequently disputed (which I think simply means that a moderator rejected it):    Huh? Puzzled, I took another look at the list of possible flagging reasons:     I am flagging this question because         it is spam   This question is effectively an advertisement with no disclosure. It is not useful or relevant, but promotional.   it is offensive, abusive, or hate speech   This question contains content that a reasonable person would deem inappropriate for   respectful discourse.   it is a duplicate...   This question has been asked before and already has an answer.   it should be closed for another reason...   This question does not meet this site's standards and should be closed.   it is very low quality   This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.   other (needs ♦ moderator attention)   This question needs a moderator's attention. Please describe exactly what's wrong.      Of these, only a few are applicable at all: “spam”, “should be closed for another reason”, “low quality” and “requires moderator attention”.  But:   it shouldn’t be closed (it has no value – it should be deleted), it’s not “low quality” (the description seems to fit actual, albeit bad, questions), and it doesn’t require moderator attention (I certainly didn’t want to bother a mod with this worthless post).   So I still think “spam” is the most fitting reason. Maybe it would help to have a more apt reason “troll post”, or maybe we could explicitly subsume this under one of the other points?
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Every once in a while I take a look at the tools page and see a high number of flags - like right now.  And there is indeed some pretty spammy stuff in there.  It's fairly self-evident what to do with flagged questions, I think - just vote to close/delete if the flags are in fact accurate.  But what about flagged answers?  It doesn't really seem like there's much we can do about those.  Should we:   Flag them again, hoping to bump the answer down and/or get it auto-deleted? Flag for (real) moderator attention, i.e. to confirm "yes this is really spam"? Just leave them alone (assuming that a proper mod will find it soon)?   Also - is there any particular action we should be taking if a post is erroneously flagged - i.e. somebody got annoyed that a question wasn't marked CW?  Some guidelines on how best to use this feature would be appreciated.
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Currently, when users are putting a custom flag on a post, there is a chance that this flag will be dismissed before a moderator could see it.  For example, if it was a close flag, and the question got closed, all flags about the question are getting removed. Including custom ones. This was , from what I see in similar questions.  The same happens when someone wants to report a spam user, and writes a comment in the flag, about it. If enough people are flagging the post as the basic "it is spam", the answer will get auto-deleted, as well as the flag. This means that it's possible that the moderator will not even see such report of a spammer account, and it makes it harder to actually find them, after, and prevent them from posting new advertisements.  So the request is: is it possible to make it so that custom flags can only be dismissed by moderators?  This would prevent the loss of information that would be given by a user.
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I've recently had one member in particular who wastes hours of my time asking/commenting about my posts without contributing anything productive towards answering them. I don't want to appear rude to other members (who obviously wouldn't be aware of the history), so I feel obligated to respond to each comment.   In addition, I've noticed that once this member starts participating I am significantly less likely to get input from other members (probably because they either assume that he's solving the problem, or because they get as big a headache as I do trying to read through the comments), and I'm therefore not getting questions answered if this member responds to them.  I don't believe that it would be appropriate and/or helpful to flag the comments  because there's nothing grossly wrong with a comment when viewed individually, and as far as I understand flags don't affect an individuals privileges.  Is there anything that I can currently do to limit and/or block this member from commenting/answering my posts, and if not, is this something that would be worthwhile considering in the future?
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I suspect a user is cheating. He's cheated in the past but I don't want to get into it here. Instead I want to contact a moderator about this. What is the best way to go about this? Should I send an email to the SO team or flag a post in question? Though it isn't about any one post but instead a pattern of behavior. I want to provide some fairly detailed findings, at least the best findings a regular user can provide. Also, do moderators have the ability to look into who is casting votes?
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A user may not post a  link if the user doesn't also post some code with it.  I recently learned that .  Why isn't this ban in place with all the other sites similar to JS/PHPFiddle, like , , , ,  etc.?