This question deals with denied spam flags.

The following example of a low-quality answer with a link to an external site is given in the question:

We can find the permutation of a string by using recursion.

  • Take the first character of the input string.

  • Permute all the characters in the remainder of the string recursively and create a new array with them.

  • Add the first character into each possible position of the new array and return.

For example and code http //www.algoqueue.com/algoqueue/default/view/6684672/print-permutation-of-a-string

This is I think the currently accepted definition for spam:

What makes something spam and when should I flag it?

A post should be marked as spam ONLY when it contains an unsolicited advertisement.

It should NOT be marked as spam when:

The answer contains no useful information, such as an answer that says "I don't care about your problem". Flag an answer as 'not an answer' instead; if you find a weird non-question, then flag it 'for moderator attention' with a custom explanation.

How is the shown example, which is a very low-quality answer with a link to another site, not considered spam? (Particularly since this is a recurring theme for the poster.) To me that's clearly "unsolicited advertisement" just with a little spin to make it less obvious and obnoxious.

As Cupcake emphasizes: The problem isn't so much a user doing this once or twice, but this being a recurring theme for an user. Taking the behavior of the user into account I really think this should be considered spam, flagged and treated as such with the negative consequences for the user.

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I think taking a look at that particular user's broader behavior is even more telling. 22 really crappy answers posted between June 5th to June 13th, all containing a link back to AlgoQueue.com. I'd call that a mass spam campaign. –  Cupcake Jun 16 at 1:29
    
@Cupcake Agreed, very good comment. I did mention it on the side, but I should make it more prominent. Clearly someone once posting a link to a site is different (I don't really have a problem with that) than someone doing so repeatedly always for the same site. –  Voo Jun 16 at 2:03
    
flag one of his/her answers as a custom flag and inform the moderator that this user has been doing this all the time... etc –  Vote to Close Jun 16 at 2:26
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@Cupcake I normally use my personal website for PHP/HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc experiments and some times reference a particular experiment for showing the problem (when porting it to jsfiddle would be too costly or not possible), so careful with this one. –  Francisco Presencia Jun 17 at 9:33
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2 Answers 2

up vote 38 down vote accepted

What is Spam?

Spam is an unsolicited commercial advertisement. We've all seen it, and we all know what it looks like. It looks like the same stuff you see in your spam folder when you look at your email.

Example of Spam

From: Ms. Carman L. Lapointe.
UNITED NATIONS OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL OVERSIGHT SERVICES
Internal Audit,Monitoring,Consulting And Investigations Division.

My name is Ms. Carman L. Lapointe, from the United Nations. It is a distinct pleasure to write you again and as you are well aware many foreigners have invested thousands of United States Dollars into Nigeria transactions in Hopeless Dreams to have none of them become a reality.

Right now, as directed by our secretary general Mr.Ban Ki-Moon, We have agreed with the Nigeria Government that US$100,000.00 (One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only) would be paid to you through the Western Union Money Transfer Via special arrangement as first installment.

This is to enable you have enough funds to pay for the Tax Clearance and bank charges before you will receive the balance of US$4.1M (Four Million One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only). Please take note that you will pay US$185 only, being Notarization fee and this is the only financial obligation that you will undertake to receive the US$100,000.00 (One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only) through the Western Union Money Transfer.

Lastly,i will like you to reconfirm your information to me such as your full name, address and telephone number so that I will proceed with your Western Union Money Transfer within the next 24 hrs and the transaction information will be released to you.

I await your response for further proceedings.

Sincerely yours,
Ms. Carman L. Lapointe
{Under-Secretary-General}
United Nations

What is Excessive/Improper Promotion?

Excessive promotion is a bit different than spam. Excessive promotion occurs when a user answers the question, but then puts a link to their blog or website in their answer without disclosing that they are linking to their own website. They may do this for many answers.

Example of Excessive/Improper Promotion

  • Take an empty integer array of 256 elements to hold the frequency of character of the string.
  • Iterate through the string and construct the frequency array.
  • Increment the current value of the frequency array by 1 at the location of the corresponding ASCII value of the character.
  • Iterate through the string and check the frequency array.
  • Return the first element whose frequency is 1.

For explanation and code http://www.algoqueue.com/algoqueue/default/view/6881280/first-non-repeating-character-in-a-string

This answer is improper, because the author did not disclose his affiliation with the website to which he linked, and the code is at the link, instead of posted here.

Are users allowed to promote their website in an answer?

In general, if links are included in an answer to a question, they must meet all of the following guidelines (with thanks to Kate Gregory):

  • you paraphrase the content of the linked item (possibly omitting details or examples)
  • you identify the author (yourself, MSDN, etc)
  • someone could benefit from the answer without reading the linked item at all
  • you include information to let the reader decide if clicking the link is worthwhile

For example:

You can use the CircularLabelsStyle custom property for this, for example:

  chart1.Series["Series1"]["CircularLabelsStyle"] = "Circular";

I blogged about this last year, with some sample code.

How do I report excessive or improper promotion?

To have a user reviewed for excessive promotion, flag one of their answers using a custom moderator flag, and explain the problem.

The message that a user receives when a mod message is sent or a suspension is imposed for excessive promotion is this:

We noticed that a substantial proportion of your posts seem to exist only to promote your product or website. Per the help center:

Be careful, because the community frowns on overt self-promotion and tends to vote it down and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers. Also, if a huge percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details.

Any type of "astroturfing" promotion is not acceptable. It brings down the overall value of genuine recommendations for everyone on the site.

If you can stay within the above guidelines, and offer questions and answers of genuine benefit to the community which happen to mention your affiliation or product in context -- and with full disclosure -- then your future contributions are welcome.

Spam is treated differently

If an account is identified as a spammer account, and one of their spam posts is deleted via six community spam flags, a 100 reputation penalty is imposed. This will earn a spammer account a question ban fairly quickly.

The accounts of drive-by spammers are summarily deleted, and their account information is placed into the Stack Exchange Spammer Detector to help identify them if they come back.

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Related post from a user who was asking about how to go about linking to his own blog: What is the policy for linking to your own blog in your answers?. –  Cupcake Jun 16 at 2:45
    
Thanks. The answer posted there is very similar to the one Kate Gregory gave on the Stack Exchange question I linked. –  Robert Harvey Jun 16 at 2:52
    
When I'm in a [java] mood, a significant fraction of my answers contain links to docs.oracle.com. See the next to last paragraph of stackoverflow.com/a/24225388/1798593 for an example. Do I need to put in more explanation of the links, such as identifying the author, as recommended in the second bullet point, or is just mentioning the JLS good enough in context? –  Patricia Shanahan Jun 16 at 2:56
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@PatriciaShanahan: The answer you linked can stand on its own without the supporting links to the Oracle website. That's how you can tell that the answer is not primarily promotional. It's very clear that you're linking to the documentation for Java to supplement an already good answer. –  Robert Harvey Jun 16 at 2:58
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This answer just goes to show (one of the reasons) why I shouldn't be a moderator :/. –  Cupcake Jun 16 at 3:03
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@Cupcake: Really, it's not all that difficult to figure out. Y'all do the same thing with the Not an Answer flag; you overthink it. If it looks like one and smells like one, it probably is. –  Robert Harvey Jun 16 at 3:04
    
I am questioning the effectiveness of the Kate Gregory guidelines, included in this article, for distinguishing legitimate use of links. If you look at the totality of the answer I referenced above, it is a non-promotional answer supported by references to the relevant standard. If you mechanically apply the guideline tests, I neither stated the author nor paraphrased the content of the links. I think doing either would have reduced the quality of the answer. –  Patricia Shanahan Jun 16 at 13:28
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@PatriciaShanahan: We are humans here, not computers. Moderators especially (and any member doing anything) are required to exercise their common sense when applying any guideline. Remember the golden rule: Whatever makes the site better is the proper action, even if it goes against some guideline. –  Deduplicator Jun 16 at 17:35
    
Plz PM the email so I can transfer the money </sarcasm> –  Francisco Presencia Jun 17 at 9:36
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That's definitely an excellent FAQ post. I would also point out that meta.SO should also make it more clear that "spam" flags also shouldn't be used for people posting just complete "I'm clearly bored" gibberish, either. Because flagging for "spam" does often extend to including things like "LOLLOLLOLASDF!!!asouidhfasuiohrre" in many other web communities. Should be made clear that that crap should just get "not an answer" flagged. –  neminem Jun 17 at 17:18
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What is spam in general?

Definitions

According to the spam flag usage guide:

A post should be marked as spam ONLY when it contains an unsolicited advertisement.

and according to the flagging dialog itself:

This question is effectively an advertisement with no disclosure. It is not useful or relevant, but promotional.

I consider the 2nd definition above to be much more useful and accurate. Spammers will often go to great lengths to make it non-obvious that what they're doing is advertising. Only the most foolish of spammers will post something obvious along the lines of

Go to my website www.example.com that is covered in ads that make me money! It has lots of awesome things that you will surely like!

Concealment

In order to succeed, spammers must trick users into believing that spam content is not, in fact, just advertising. Spammers will attempt to make their advertising appear contextual and relevant. Wordpress blogs get hosed with really subtle spam all the time. Spammers will post a comment that doesn't appear to contain any links, except that a commenter's username in Wordpress will often contain a link back to the spammer's blog:

Spam screenshot

That is an example Wordpress comment spam that someone left on a blog once (the date and profile image are not originals). The username "clash of clans gem hack" will often contain a link to a shady URL.

Notice that there is no disclosure whatsoever that this is an advertisement. However, it is effectively an advertisement. The comment is just plain meaningless gibberish. The whole point of posting it was to get a link back to the poster's blog onto my site.

Verdict: undisclosed, unsolicited advertisement.

This particular user's links back to AlgoQueue.com

Bluefeet gave this reason for why she didn't consider this user's post to be spam:

In my opinion, the user was attempting to answer the questions and instead of including the code they included a link to the code - which was wrong, but not spam.

I respect Bluefeet's opinion, and I greatly appreciate her efforts to moderate Stack Overflow fairly. However, I disagree with her assessment. Given the fact that this particular user posted 22 low-quality answers in a period of 8 days, that all linked back to AlgoQueue.com, I would definitely consider this to be a slightly subtle mass spam campaign.

I pointed out strong evidence that this was the case:

I want to point out that this user has been posting links to algoqueue.com since the start of June. According to AlgoQueue's About page, they launched May of this year. It appears to be a Q&A site like Stack Overflow, but tailored to algorithms. They also run ads on the site. Most of the linked posts I've seen are by REDACTED, who according to LinkedIn, is a technical writer there. She also may be based out of New York, where this "Neel" user says he's from in his profile.

I could be wrong, but all of this strongly suggests undisclosed spam advertising to me.

Note that a day after I had pointed out that the linked posts were by REDACTED, someone who works at AlgoQueue, the linked posts suddenly had their author information removed. Someone at AlgoQueue is aware of this comment on Meta, and has taken steps to remove some of the incriminating evidence.

I would be willing to let this particular user off the hook if this really was just a single uninformed incident...but this was definitely not a single, one-off incident. Again, this user posted 22 low-quality answers with links to AlgoQueue in the span of a week. This is a pattern of behavior that strongly suggests that this was a mass-spam attempt.

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For reference, the user in question was identified by moderators as an astroturfer, and was treated accordingly. I concur with that assessment. The user was answering questions; they were just putting the code of the answer on another site, presumably to get credit/mojo there, or whatever. Almost certainly not a commercial advertisement. You were right the first time; A post should be marked as spam ONLY when it contains an unsolicited commercial advertisement. –  Robert Harvey Jun 16 at 2:30
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Also, FWIW, we sometimes "remove the incriminating evidence" here, by deleting accounts (and thereby disassociating the author from their posts). –  Robert Harvey Jun 16 at 3:01
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@RobertHarvey Just curious, in cases like this do the linked domains get blacklisted from the site or wider network? –  indivisible Jun 16 at 8:57
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