Timeline for Spam Profiles are getting my goat. Could we have better tools for mods to deal with profile spam?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 26, 2019 at 9:57 | history | bounty ended | Martin | ||
| Nov 29, 2017 at 22:19 | history | edited | Monica Cellio | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 403 characters in body
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| Nov 29, 2017 at 17:40 | comment | added | user315433 | Inactive profiles are no longer deleted, this is a relatively recent change. (cc: @JourneymanGeek) | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 16:08 | comment | added | Mokubai | @MonicaCellio it might not be common, but it's how I personally noticed it and it was also noticed a day or so ago by other users on SU (meta.superuser.com/questions/12774/…). My concern is that even this "leak" would be enough for these spammers to get their verification and carry on doing it. It also feels a bit like we don't mind our site being polluted by garbage so long as we don't go poisoning Google. Sure we reduce the benefit to the spammers, but we are allowing the dilution of of our existing systems: specifically the value of the badge. | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 15:30 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | @Mokubai is the appearance of bogus accounts on the Autobiographer badge page important? (Do people look at that list?) That said, a more disruptive place where they show up is the new users page, which some people monitor so they can give (legitimate) new users a helping hand. It's a pity there's no way to flag users (with corresponding on-click destroy for the mods handling the flags). | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 11:19 | comment | added | Wrzlprmft | @Mokubai: I don’t know whether it’s technically feasible, but couldn’t we also remove these users from all lists (badges, new users). So the only way to get to the profile is typing a link with a matching user ID. This way, those users can show their profile to their employers, but it won’t disturb anybody else. | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 7:27 | comment | added | Mokubai | My only real problem here is that it doesn't really deal with the problem of seeing all these profiles being awarded a badge and showing up on the badge page. The profiles may not be visible but their existence can still be seen on the badges page even without being logged in: superuser.com/help/badges | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 2:18 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek | I wasn't aware. Seems a neat way to handle this if these profiles are inaccessible | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 2:17 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | @JourneymanGeek 1-rep accounts with 0 actions do get cleaned up, IIRC after 6 months, or at least used to. | |
| Nov 29, 2017 at 2:11 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek | Or just to hide them from anyone but the user themselves or mods until they've performed some postive action - an edit, or a post. That said the reason these things are so insidious is they're hard to find unless you're looking at the user page. Then maybe clean up accounts with 0 actions other than profiles every year or so. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 18:54 | comment | added | Mad Scientist | One idea behind my more radical approach was that it completely eliminates the need for any action on those profiles. If logged-in users can still see them, there is still a minor reason left to remove them. I wanted to also remove this time sink for mods that just can't let spam stand, even if it is hardly visible. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 15:56 | comment | added | Shadow Wizard | Great idea, I just explained why I downvoted Mad's answer, and this idea is even better. | |
| Nov 28, 2017 at 15:51 | history | answered | Monica Cellio | CC BY-SA 3.0 |