I happened to see this (10k+ only) - now deleted - answer today. It was posted by a 1-rep-user, member since today, no other contributions. It contained a line or so of text, a link to a microsoft page (with useful & detailed information about the topic that the OP was asking about), and a signature with a rather fishy website ("Username, sharepoint admin at fishy website").

The problem with this is that - usually - those answers are just ripped from an existing one, with the signature added, and that's it. This, however, was not the case. Neither the text nor the link were mentioned anywhere, neither in the other answer nor in any related Q&A-threads.

Which leads me to following question: Do we spam-flag in a situation like this, where it's basically a 50/50 chance of nuking a spammer, or a misguided but well-meaning new user? Or should we edit out the fishy link?

Note: I do not really care whether or not that particular post was spam, I'm asking for a generic answer applicable to these fishy answers.

  • 1
    "neither in the other answer nor in any related Q&A-threads." - those aren't the only places content could be stolen from – John Dvorak Oct 31 '16 at 12:53
  • @JanDvorak I agree, but that is the case in roughly 95% of those cases. Most spammers do not care enough to actually research the problem themselves, and just rip some answer right there in the same thread, as it requires the least amount of effort. – Seth Oct 31 '16 at 12:55
  • FWIW, it looked a lot like a 'thanks' spam. Sometimes spammers thank the author of the post and insert their spam link. There isn't a need to plagiarize anything when you type only two lines of text. The 'plagiarism' kind, which is usually much harder to detect, is usually long enough to look like a legitimate answer. – M.A.R. Oct 31 '16 at 13:22
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    So I did a quick search for that URL, and found another live post that had it at the end: stackoverflow.com/questions/29721247/… . That entire answer was plagiarized word-for-word from another site (first clue was "As Gene has posted above", with no user named Gene involved in the question) and their URL was planted at the bottom of that. 5 other answers by as many users posted that link in garbage answers that were destroyed as spam. This sure looks like spam to me, and I've destroyed the other post. – Brad Larson Oct 31 '16 at 14:29
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    Beyond this case, new users posting unsolicited links to "online training" sites in their first posts almost always are spammers. For example, we've destroyed five posts like this in the last two days alone: i.stack.imgur.com/foPEQ.png – Brad Larson Oct 31 '16 at 14:37
  • @BradLarson Thanks alot for clearing that up! I'm still wondering though, what should we do in general with answers that contain fishy signature or something like that. Is nuking those preferred? – Seth Oct 31 '16 at 14:39
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    @Seth - The first step is to be wary of new users whose first or only posts link to some commercial service or an ad-plastered blog, particularly if these come as late answers to old questions. In general, I recommend against editing out spammy links at the end of posts, because it can lead to problems with audits and can hinder moderators looking for spam patterns. On a garbage post like this, at worst I'd clear the spam flag (not decline it) if it somehow turned out to not be spam. – Brad Larson Oct 31 '16 at 14:54
  • @BradLarson Got it, thanks alot! – Seth Oct 31 '16 at 14:55

If the fishy link was edited out, you'd have been left with a link-only answer.
That link-only answer linked to the first search result, if you'd search for the question's title.

That, in combination with the generic text used to link to the "answer" / article and the fact the user registered to post that answer, would be reason enough for me to flag it as spam.

Keep in mind that "Share the first google result for the question's title" is extremely easy to automate. Just because it's disguised as an answer, doesn't mean it's not spam.

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    Spammers automatically answering questions? We're one step closer to xkcd.com/810 .... :-D – S.L. Barth Oct 31 '16 at 13:02
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    @S.L.Barth: I wouldn't exactly call it "answering", but if I were to write a spambot for specifically for SO, that's what I'd do. – Cerbrus Oct 31 '16 at 13:04
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    You could further improve the spambot by posting the scraped content, instead of just the link. It might even earn some rep before it got caught! – S.L. Barth Oct 31 '16 at 13:07
  • Maybe it could even learn form looking through the review queue's results. – Cerbrus Oct 31 '16 at 13:08

That was clearly spam and was caught as such by Smokey (the Charcoal HQ spam bot) and deleted within 3 minutes of posting.

Don't worry about getting an occasional spam flag declined (if the mods disagree).

Please don't edit potential spam. Removing spam/abusive text before a question/answer is deleted can affect the automated spam/abuse detection (users will not flag it as spam/abusive).

See Should Spam posts be edited?.


I would say no.

Lets review the possbilities here:

  • The user is a spammer and copied this post from somewhere non-obvious. It's still technically an answer (may or may not be link only), only with an offending signature.

In this case, I think we should treat it like we do any other plagiarism / any other link only answers. Usually the spammers who add signatures with links to copied content are manual operators and post multiple times. In that case, I'd let a moderator know on the second offense (mod flag) and have them deal with it. If the answer stands on its own in some way without the signature, I'd suggest to simply remove it.

  • The user is a new user who was trying to help but did not know about Stack Overflow's propensity to hate signatures (especially with links in them). Maybe they came from one of the thousands of programmer forums where signatures are commonplace and accepted.

In that case, using a spam flag would be absolutely disastrous for the new user experience. Imagine, you take the time to answer something, only to have your post deleted and be banned indefinitely because you misjudged the appropiateness of a signature. That is such a disastrous outcome that I think we need to assume "innocent until proven guilty" in these cases and defer to editing/modflagging.

  • You're forgetting an option: • The user is a spammer that generated this post automatically. – Cerbrus Oct 31 '16 at 13:03
  • @Cerbrus That wouldn't make that much sense given that the first link is actually helpful (and directly related to the questions topic). If bots are that far... Welp. – Seth Oct 31 '16 at 13:04
  • @Cerbrus In that case, editing it out means you still only have a subpar answer (which the site agrees to deal with after thorough review) left and a moderator can still sort these out. You know as well as I do, these don't happen that often that sorting these out by hand would be an undue burden. – Magisch Oct 31 '16 at 13:04
  • @Seth: that link is the first result if you google the question's title. That's easy to automate. – Cerbrus Oct 31 '16 at 13:05
  • The "signature" was an invalid email address with the domain iam aspammer.com/ clearly spam – DavidPostill Oct 31 '16 at 13:05
  • @DavidPostill hey, don't post spammer's signatures in plain, please. – John Dvorak Oct 31 '16 at 13:06
  • @Magisch: It's even less of a burden if we outright delete it. – Cerbrus Oct 31 '16 at 13:06
  • @DavidPostill That was no email I think, that was a "Sharepoint admin @ (at) ...". – Seth Oct 31 '16 at 13:06
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    @Cerbrus And in the case that it wasn't a spammer, but someone used to forums. People use "Role @ company" all the time as shorthand for "I'm $role at $company" in signatures. There's a real possibility that the guy wasn't just a spammer, methinks. – Magisch Oct 31 '16 at 13:10
  • @Seth He tried to disguise the spam site as a (clickable) email address. – DavidPostill Oct 31 '16 at 13:18
  • @DavidPostill No, he didn't. He inlined the link behind the @, like you'd do in a forum signature. See the record – Magisch Oct 31 '16 at 13:20
  • I've seen the record. I doubt whether his role is "sharepoint adminstrator" @ spammysharepointtrainingcompany.com. This was spam and I stand by my opinion :) – DavidPostill Oct 31 '16 at 13:24

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