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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
Community wiki
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 CampionMod
- 58.2k
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 TrimbleMod
- 51.9k
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, ...
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 ...
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 TrimbleMod
- 51.9k
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 ...
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 CampionMod
- 58.2k
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 TrimbleMod
- 51.9k
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 TrimbleMod
- 51.9k
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 ...
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 ...
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 TrimbleMod
- 51.9k
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. CarnahanMod
- 44.9k
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 ...
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 ...
Community wiki
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
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