34 votes

What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?

This is an answer as a private member of MO, without my moderator hat on. I'll admit I've never understood the argument that there could be something wrong with linking; the internet is a big scary ...
Scott Morrison's user avatar
25 votes

What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?

The OCILLA (part of DMCA) already specifies a process (notice and takedown) that takes care of these issues. This process also removes from us the burden of determining whether a particular link is ...
Dmitri Pavlov's user avatar
18 votes

Flagging spam user

There are now lots of similarly named accounts (having to do with car insurance) showing up in Recent Badges. I think they are effectively spamming in the Recent Badges space. Going back further, ...
Nate Eldredge's user avatar
16 votes

What should I do when I see a spam post on MO?

Any user with at least 15 reputation points should flag the post as spam. After 6 spam flags, the post is deleted. In addition to being deleted, even for users who can see the deleted posts, the ...
15 votes
Accepted

Flagging spam user

I'm happy to hear what the community thinks, but my instinctual reaction would be to destroy it. The account has no business here and the page is meanwhile free billboard space: not something I think ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
15 votes
Accepted

Should we flag suspected ChatGPT posts?

The question was answered in the comments, but just to underscore: the answer is yes. If you see a post you suspect is AI-written nonsense, flag it and describe your suspicion in the flag comment.
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.5k
14 votes
Accepted

Why was my spam flag declined on an answer that does nothing but promote the answerer's book?

The answer under consideration is not spam, because it is a valid answer to the question that was asked (and the question was more or less on-topic for this site). Ideally, we would like some kind of ...
S. Carnahan's user avatar
  • 45k
13 votes
Accepted

On flagging: what is "research level" *or* does it make sense to flag a question with positive vote ratings?

Just relax. There are so many people who are able (and often very eager) to vote for closure, deletion, reopening, etc. directly that adding new "active flaggers" to them will do more harm than good, ...
fedja's user avatar
  • 59.5k
11 votes

Flagging Low Quality Questions

Speaking as a pretty active moderator: the amount of this type of flag raising that I see hasn't been a problem, not for me. In some ways I think it helps, to see how others are gauging the quality of ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
11 votes
Accepted

Why did flagging a comment for deletion made it disappear immediately?

The related question on Meta.SE popped up today and I looked into this to see if I could figure it out. Looks like the misspelling of "Lipschitz" lead to a word that triggers single-flag ...
Catija's user avatar
  • 101
11 votes
Accepted

Can I see my flaggings?

You can simply go to your profile, go to the activity tab and click on "n helpful flags". (On the right side, grouped together with the stats such as "people reached", "votes ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
8 votes
Accepted

Ability to flag user accounts as spam

I brought this up in the Charcoal HQ chat (about Charcoal). They pointed out a few technical hurdles, and also pointed me to evidence that SE has simply decided this issue is not important enough to ...
Tim Campion's user avatar
  • 60.5k
8 votes
Accepted

To contact moderator who responded for flag

As pointed out in comments, one can always write [email protected]. From my own point of view, that would be the preferred option. If it's something quick, a user can raise a second flag. ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
8 votes

Mixed reviews - can I have a decision reversed?

The post was flagged as 'spam'. I did not think it rose to the level of spam as I understand that word, and so I declined the flag. (If a vendor creates a link to his or her site for a commercial ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
6 votes

Flagging Low Quality Questions

It seems that we are mostly talking here about close flags and very low quality flags - since these are the two types of flags which seem reasonable in the case of low quality questions (whichever ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
5 votes

Why was my spam flag declined on an answer that does nothing but promote the answerer's book?

I did not process that flag, but I agree with whoever did. I think "spamming" is often construed overly broadly anyway. In my mind, the first criterion for judgment should be relevancy, with ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
4 votes
Accepted

Stack Overflow Reference in Out of topic flag

Each Stack Exchange site has a limited number of "default" migration paths (those sites that show up when you vote/flag to close as Off Topic > Belongs on another site). These paths should be reserved ...
user642796's user avatar
4 votes

Why did flagging a comment for deletion made it disappear immediately?

I don't have a full understanding of the specific process which was at work here, but the action was performed by the Community User which runs automatically in the background. When it saw your flag ...
Todd Trimble's user avatar
  • 52.3k
4 votes
Accepted

How to report intrisically spammy user accounts?

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 ...
S. Carnahan's user avatar
  • 45k
3 votes
Accepted

Question visibility and reputation

It depends on where you're looking, but in general, the visibility is only determined by the timestamp (either of the last activity, or of the moment the question was created). However, on the ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,743
3 votes

Problem with posts and comments relying on macros defined elsewhere

This is a community wiki answer intended as a place to collect examples of posts and comments which are examples of the described problem. Feel free to add further examples if you find some more. (But ...
2 votes

Flagging spam user

There is no clearly defined networkwide policy on this topic, because the rules on self-promotion only apply to posts, not user profiles. Your ‘About me’ is your own space, and as long as it’s not ...
Glorfindel's user avatar
  • 2,743
2 votes

Flagging old questions for closure

First, let me stress that I am not trying to suggest any specific course of action here, just argue why those flags make some sense. The whole point of this answer is trying to explain a phenomenon, ...
Joonas Ilmavirta's user avatar
2 votes

What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?

It seems that the answer can be found on the legal page of MO; for your convenience, let me quote the relevant paragraph concerning copyrighted material: "Using copyrighted material does not ...
Alex M.'s user avatar
  • 5,197
1 vote

What to do when a post contains a "suspicious" link (possibly with copyrighted material)?

I believe there is conflicting desire in the community (and to me, no surprise if mirrored in the moderation team) as to the degree of availability of mathematical content on the Internet. I imagine ...
Gerhard Paseman's user avatar

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible