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Should Spam posts be edited?

Few days back there was a spam question, for advertising and I removed the content of the question and wrote SPAM SPAM SPAM, later a moderator explained me that we should not edit the questions body even if it's a SPAM or LOW QUALITY POST because it makes difficult for them to review the posts(Agreed) and so am not doing it any more...

Again 3-4 days back someone posted a 18+(Por_Website) link and it took around 2 mins to close the question and was later locked by community/moderator(Not sure), so should we atleast remove the content of such posts or flags are enough?

Today was the same senario...


So should there be some rule that not to change the body of posts but to flag instead?

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marked as duplicate by Flexo, jonsca, hims056, gnat, random Dec 23 '12 at 6:50


3 Answers

up vote 14 down vote accepted

There is a rule - don't make radical changes to the body. It's a rejection reason.

In terms of spam: Many people will make a spam link non-linkified by removing the http part or something minor, but editing out the actual spam just makes it more difficult for others to flag and/or act on the flag appropriately, causing it to remain visible on the site longer than it should (or would if it hadn't been changed). Not to mention that the actual spam is still completely visible in the revision history anyways. However, aside from actually @-notifying the user who edited it, there's no way to pass along the message to those who appear to be doing it.

In any other terms: This is even more unacceptable. I can understand people wanting to remove spam from posts, but removing an actual question is crossing the line. We do not ever replace someone's question with "this was a bad question" ever ever ever, no matter how bad it might be. They are still completely capable of editing and fixing it to a state where it could be salvageable.

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So we should NOT spam out the questions but to make minor changes and flag, that's it... –  Mr. Alien Dec 22 '12 at 21:26
@Mr.Alien Yes, I agree with the comments you and tvanfosson left for H2CO3, and animuson's answer above. Editing out content just makes it more difficult for us to process close votes and flags, so only do that for obvious spam and egregiously offensive content. Low quality posts definitely shouldn't be censored this way. –  Bill the Lizard Dec 22 '12 at 21:35
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Spam is way different than Low Quality. If a post is just low quality and someone can edit it into shape, then they should. It's absolutely wrong to edit out a question completely, just because you don't like such a low quality post on the site (as in your example). Spam doesn't need to be edited, just voted-to-close and flagged. The exception for this would be if it has offensive content.

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Most of the time I remove the spam content with:

Spam content removed, waiting for deletion.

And I flag it.

Never had any problem with that.

I need to add that this is only done by obvious spam.

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