Sometimes, I notice that some very odd username is listed on Home as having earned the "Autobiographer" badge, where by "odd" I mean something very much non-mathematical and intrinsically spammy, such as this account. Invariably, the "About me" section turns out to be spam, actually. Is there any way to report such accounts? I can't see a "flag this user" button on the user page.
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3$\begingroup$ If there are any posts of that user still up, use a custom moderator flag. If there are no posts, nobody will be looking at the profile anyway. If it's a network-wide spammer, unofficial policy is to notify JNat in The Tavern and roughly a day later the account ceases to be. I do not know the perfect answer to your question, but these are the options I'm aware of. $\endgroup$– MastAug 26, 2020 at 17:38
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2$\begingroup$ That particular spam account has been destroyed. $\endgroup$– Todd Trimble ModAug 26, 2020 at 20:30
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1$\begingroup$ Related older posts: Flagging spam user. Related post on Mathematics Meta: How to flag names? And on Meta Stack Exchange: How should I flag a user account if it has no posts to flag? and How do I flag a user with no posts left? $\endgroup$– Martin SleziakAug 27, 2020 at 4:23
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2$\begingroup$ There's indeed a real flood of spam accounts: Autobiographer $\endgroup$– YCorAug 29, 2020 at 7:58
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1$\begingroup$ @YCor here's a more precise list: data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/edit/1288838 limiting to those with more than 5 links in their profile, and have shown no activity for a certain period of time. $\endgroup$– David Roberts ModSep 1, 2020 at 6:24
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$\begingroup$ Here is a direct link to the query from David Robert's comment: data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/1288838 (The link posted above will send you to editing the query.) $\endgroup$– Martin SleziakSep 9, 2020 at 5:09
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$\begingroup$ Does this answer your question? Flagging spam user $\endgroup$– Alex M.Mar 8, 2021 at 15:47
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1 Answer
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I've tried destroying a few accounts with spammy profiles, and it takes less than 30 seconds to do each one. However, looking through the list of "autobiographer" badge recipients, I would guess we have over 5000 such accounts, and I'm not particularly inclined to repeat this process 5000 times.
Based on this discussion at Meta.SE, it seems the official policy is to do nothing until they post actual spam beyond their profiles.
answered Aug 31, 2020 at 8:46
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3$\begingroup$ The suggestion which was mentioned in the previous discussion: Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam? That seems like a reasonable things to me - why should moderators have to do manually some stuff which can be automated. Of course, it's up to Stack Exchange to actually implement this. $\endgroup$ Aug 31, 2020 at 9:04
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5$\begingroup$ What about allowing to write in your profile only when you have at least 150 or 200 points? $\endgroup$– MareSep 1, 2020 at 12:13
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2$\begingroup$ @Mare That sounds like a good idea. It seems most unsatisfactory that spammers are effectively getting free advertising through having their names appear among the recent badges. $\endgroup$ Sep 22, 2020 at 17:20