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I've run into some audit decisions I've questioned before, but here's one I simply do NOT understand:

https://stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/10784002

The reason given for removing this is "It is abusive nonsense, noise, spam, blatantly off-topic or otherwise irredeemable – readers will find it offensive or repulsive rather than helpful."

I see absolutely nothing of the sort. It's an answer, it's polite. Or am I off-base?

  • 5
    Probably a spammer spamming links to that tool. – Servy Jan 5 '16 at 17:02
  • 2
    How these people spam SO is the subject of Brad's answer here. You pass these kind of audits by paying attention and note that the post is not actually present in the Q+A. Product recommendations are your first cue that there is something fishy going on. – Hans Passant Jan 5 '16 at 17:09
  • @HansPassant Yes, I did notice it was not in the "full page" - but that didn't ring the alarm bells soon enough that I was dealing with an audit. And I'm actually still not clear that this was recognizable as "spam". The information preceding the link seemed quite reasonable. – Cindy Meister Jan 5 '16 at 17:15
  • @CindyMeister that's the point. Spammers have gotten more sophisticated. You should follow Hans' advice and be extra careful on recommendation questions. For example, you should view the question in a new tab and close it. If the answer doesn't appear, then it's an audit that expects a delete vote. – ryanyuyu Jan 5 '16 at 17:20
  • 1
    @ryanyuyu Yes, I did do that. But in my book that's "cheating" as far as the point of the audit goes. The point of the audit would be that I recognize this as spam WITHOUT the clue - it could be real, not an audit. The link target, itself, does not seem harmful. From that I conclude that this tool and those who promote it are "known" to a certain circle of reviewers (I'm familiar with a few of those, myself, from "my" MSDN forums). I'm not sure it's reasonable, however, to assume that everyone working the queues can be expected to recognize this. – Cindy Meister Jan 5 '16 at 17:26
  • 2
    @CindyMeister it's not "cheating" because due diligence for recommendation questions (even just for answers in the VLQ reviews) is to try to close the off-topic question. You're already there on the Q&A, so you might as well check the status of the answer too. The only clue you need is that it's a recommendation (or otherwise off-topic/broad) question. – ryanyuyu Jan 5 '16 at 17:28
  • 1
    Why are link shorteners useful for spammers? explicitly mentions SPAM by those ... people pointing to their site. – Deduplicator Jan 5 '16 at 17:58
  • Yeah, my brain is starting to sort it out... Thanks to all for their informative links and patience! – Cindy Meister Jan 5 '16 at 18:03
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