Possible Duplicate:
How does the spam flag work?
The title says it all, really; there's a "spam" criterion for flagging both questions and answers. What is it that makes something "spam"? Is it irrelevance, or is it asking a question (or providing an answer) that serves as little more than an advertisement for the respondent's product / service / whatever of choice? Or something in between? Or something completely different?
SOME criteria for spam:
Duplicates from people who should know better
This occurs when someone posts a question, and then it gets closed, so they post it again. Willfully clogging up the site is spam.
Blatant advertising or hate-mongering
This occurs when someone writes:
Has anyone else had an incredible experience with product X? Because I TOTALLY have! It's only 9.99 from website XYZ(.com)
Alternately, users write:
Product Y is the worst thing ever!
Those would usually be closed as subjective and argumentative, but if a user has done it more than once, it is also spam.
Not at all related to the site
I really like ponies. Discuss
I'm looking at YOU TheTXI. (I'm just kidding, he's never done that. TheTXI: I was asking "As a programmer, what is your favorite type of pony").
Anything that is unrelated to the site should be closed as such. However, if it is BLATANTLY unrelated to the site, then it can be flagged as spam.
Gibberish/Garbage
HKALKJF akjdslfkjasd laksjd flakf lkjadsl jlkasd lfdkj ajlksj lduejaf laoifwjoe alsdj alfiwejl sdjlakfj jfiajds eje afjldk foiuf lksj elwkjelr djlfiajfkr r.
Agree?
...asking a question (or providing an answer) that serves as little more than an advertisement for the respondent's product / service / whatever of choice?
That's definitely spam, and you should almost always flag it. The only time I would say not to flag a blatant advertisement as spam is if the product/service directly answers the question (spam should never be in the form of a question). If it's a borderline case, go ahead and flag it and let a moderator decide. Sometimes we see patterns of advertising that we like to keep track of.
If a question or answer just seems off-topic or irrelevant to the forum, I don't think it necessarily needs moderator intervention. People can vote to close those in the normal fashion. If it's a blatant "How is babby formed?" type of question, you can go ahead and flag it, but those normally get closed in minutes by the community anyway.
Spam tends to be a catch-all term for anything that reeks of garbage and does not belong on this site in any way, shape, or form.
Much like the US Supreme Court handles defining obscenitiy: You'll know it when you see it
