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55

I was essentially thinking the game thing, like just bumping editing profile information to 5 reputation or something.
– animuson StaffMod
Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 15:43
29

@animuson I thing that would give the person responsible for the new user engagement a heart attack. I suspect you don't want to put any barriers towards new users adding more information about themselves ;-).
– Mad Scientist
Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 15:45
30

I doubt many new users would even notice a 5 rep limitation. They should really be posting a question or answer first, getting an upvote or two, noticing their profile and then telling us about themselves. Any user that has gained 5 rep on any site gains the ability to copy their profile across the network so thats not really a limitation for them either. It feels like this would be a good way to go to me.
– Mokubai
Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 15:49
9

+1. 5 rep is one question upvote. This should be no challenge for any real user.
– AAM111
Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 19:27
7

Honestly it's probably enough to just remove them from robots.txt so that Google doesn't index them. You don't even need to go so far as preventing anyone from ever seeing the profiles (not that I'd have a problem with that either).
– Servy
Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 22:23
2

Both those solutions are pretty clever. Also, easier than what I suggested. Possibly not the answer I asked for, but potentially the answer I need ;p
– Journeyman Geek
Commented Nov 27, 2017 at 23:33
9

@Servy: No need to mess with robots.txt. A noindex meta tag on low-rep user profiles should do the trick, without harming user experience in any way.
– Ilmari Karonen
Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 4:08
2

I'm completely biased towards the nuclear option here :(. But yeah, that would probably take away the incentive to do so. And alternate ideas are totally why something like this is best asked on meta. Top minds and all that :)
– Journeyman Geek
Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 4:34
25

Similarly, such users shouldn't gain any publicity (e.g. listing in badges page) when they earn badges like Autobiographer.
– Nate Eldredge
Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 7:09
16

@MadScientist except for moderators. Moderators should always be able to see profiles, because sometimes information there is needed for things like investigating fraud.
– Monica Cellio
Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 15:45
1

@Servy: It wouldn't, but it would be maintenance nightmare. Unless you mean just categorically disallowing indexing of all user profiles, which would be easy enough to implement but would seem like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
– Ilmari Karonen
Commented Nov 28, 2017 at 16:35
5

@Servy - Some users (like me) actually prefer having their profiles indexed for various reasons. Plus with SE Careers, people's profiles are the sort of thing SE would want showing up in search results. I would definitely lean towards dealing with this situation with 'surgical precision' not 'nuclear bomb'.
– Robotnik
Commented Nov 29, 2017 at 2:54
4

@Robotnik Does your account actually have activity, or is the profile that you want indexed a user that hasn't actually interacted with the site in any way? I feel like having a single post is a low enough bar for having your profile indexed.
– Servy
Commented Nov 29, 2017 at 14:13
2

@MadScientist I really, really like this solution. However, I'd bet that to get around this, spammers will post utter garbage as questions and have another spammer upvote it (maybe the same spammer under a different account). Now, that's a lot more work, so there'd definitely be less spam, but it would come at the expense of more trash in questions. Is this a better outcome (genuinely asking)? Is it potentially easier to deal with?
– Lord Farquaad
Commented Dec 1, 2017 at 18:57
1

If they post, we can nuke em. I suspect its cause SE anti spam measures - both official and non official are pretty effective that these folks are being forced to adapt.
– Journeyman Geek
Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 8:00

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