It came up in chat that a spammer's account needed destroyed; their posts had been deleted but their name (which was offensive) still showed up on the front page as updates to posts and their user account hadn't been deleted.

Someone in chat wanted this fixed but there "wasn't anything to flag" so they complained in chat rather than flagging, which would have directly notified moderators. For future reference how should I tell users to handle a situation like this? Just flag a related post with the "Other" flag reason and explain the situation? What if there's no "related" post?

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You could also just flag one of your own posts. –  Lix Apr 8 '12 at 14:52
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As a side note, this is why you use the Other flag reason and tell a mod that a post is from a spammer or that their name is offensive, just deleting the post doesn't fix the problem. Spammer accounts can be destroyed wholesale and offensive names can be corrected. –  Ben Brocka Apr 8 '12 at 14:52
 
Related: meta.stackoverflow.com/q/101538/137484 –  razlebe Apr 8 '12 at 16:48
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2 Answers

up vote 17 down vote accepted

If you're a 10k user, or if you still have the post open somewhere (say you opened the question before the post was destroyed), you can still flag it for moderator attention, even if it's deleted.

Otherwise, you can flag a semi-related post (the question that had the now-deleted answer), or a completely unrelated one (such as one of your own posts).

Flagging anything works to get a moderator's attention really, as long as you clearly state why you're doing it and provide a link to the offending user account so there's no confusion.

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If there's nothing left to flag, post here with a link. It's a rare occasion, so that doesn't cause too much noise here, if it becomes more frequent, there will probably be found another way.

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