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I have more than 45000 reputation on Stack Overflow because I'm always thinking about and doing programming. Also currently I'm #17 on the low quality review queue. I like finding and nuking spam and low quality posts.

I frequent several chatrooms that focus on spam cleanup and low quality post cleanup. The bots often report spam on lesser known sites like:

https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/162795/efficient-way-to-edit-wordpress-themes/239371#239371

It's spam, and nobody nukes it because noone has an account there. I want to nuke it, so I either have a choice of becoming a member of WordPress and all the thousands of other Stack Exchange sites and committing to gaining reputation there, or just ignoring it and hoping someone else takes care of it. I don't need to be an upvoted writer or an upvoted arcade user to know what spam on those sites are.

If I sign up, I'll get 100 reputation automatically, but that isn't enough to have the influence I have on Stack Overflow.

As a self selected member of the Stack Exchange spam cleanup squad, is there a way I can mark spam content on those other Stack Exchange sites without logging in and trying to get reputation there so I can have some some power to nuke spam?

The spammers are evolving to post to the lesser known Stack Exchange member sites that have weaker spam cleanup teams monitoring them, and if you don't have a plan for giving people like me power to nuke them, then you're going to have to be okay with lesser known Stack Exchange member sites filling up with viagra style spam because they are out of my reach.

The idea of only giving people who have high reputation mod powers over that subset of the site may be an error if certain subdivisions tend to be filled with high reputation users who don't have an interest in cleaning up spam.

The only solution I see that works for me is for me to let WordPress be eaten by the spammers. They're not strong enough to protect themselves from the spammers, then let them die out. My energies are better focused on Stack Overflow and Super User?

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    You don't need rep to flag something as spam, do you? IIRC, I flagged spam on a bunch of sites for a while when a certain spam detection bot was active.
    – user247702
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:38
  • 27
    You already have all of the tools necessary to deal with this. You're simply choosing not to use them because you don't want to. Nothing is stopping you from creating an account, and you wouldn't need to do anything on the site to flag spam. Your statements to the contrary are just not true. You need all of 15 rep to flag a post for spam; 100 is more than enough.
    – Servy
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:38
  • @Stijn You need 15 rep.
    – Servy
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:38
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    Yup @Stijn. He should have no problem flagging spam with the association bonus kicking in. I do so routinely based on SmokeDetector reports for sites where I specifically created a profile to flag for spam.
    – Bart
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:39
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    Isn't this question more appropriate on meta.stackexchange?
    – GʀᴜᴍᴘʏCᴀᴛ
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:43
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    I guess all the downvotes should be interpreted as: "Stop whining, everything is fine" ?
    – Eric Leschinski
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:50
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    voting on meta is hard to guess. I know I downvoted because the easy solution is "join the community, flag, done" so there is no need for a meta question, really. Can't speak for other votes
    – Patrice
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:51
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    @EricLeschinski You're asking for a feature that already exists, and that you already know exists, but that you just don't want to use. That people aren't supporting your proposal to add something that there is already support for shouldn't be all that surprising.
    – Servy
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:53
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    so.... I never thought I had to say this, but "BE NICE" applies everywhere on the site... even about other subsites. (that, plus a portion of downvotes might be from people involved in these subsites who don't like how you refer to them)
    – Patrice
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:04
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    I think the core problem is whether the amount of transferring reputation to a new site should be a constant 100 (like it is now) or a gradient based on how much trust stackexchange has for you. I'm hearing that constant transfers of trust, at exactly 100 rep, is set exactly right and I should be happy with that. If I want to have power there, I have to earn my rep there all over again. But I suppose that's a necessary evil, because what if someone gets a billion upvotes on beaniebabies.stackexchange.com and then suddenly gets mod powers over stackoverflow.
    – Eric Leschinski
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:21
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    You say you're active in spam-fighting chatrooms; so I suppose you know Smoke Detector. Is using Smoke Detectors !!/report command an option? It's not the same as flagging directly, but it will get other users to look at the spam - and some users have accounts on many SE sites explicitly to work with Smokey.
    – S.L. Barth is on codidact.com
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:24
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    @Eric why a gradient of anything? The level of knowledge of how StackOverflow works doesn't correlate to knowledge of how parenting.stackexchange works, or travel.stackexchange, or any other subsites. You wouldn't want someone on parenting.stackexchange.com to get 1 000 000 rep and transfer it to Stack... why do you want your rep to give you mod powers elsewhere? Not very coherent.
    – Patrice
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:41
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    It's not completely stupid to think that you should be able to spam flag and do some other janitor-y things on a SE site without having an account there, if you're a trusted user somewhere else. I'm just not sure how often this actually is a real-world issue.
    – Pekka
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:53
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    @EricLeschinski: "Just as long as there's a plan at the other end to clean up cesspool podunk_sub.stackexchange.com sites that fail to take off and the only ones there are spammers." A single piece of not-yet-deleted spam is not remotely equivalent to a "cesspool." Hyperbole is not helping your cause.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 16:10
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    This is a related discussion on Meta.SE: "How can we empower per-site mods to more efficiently dispose of network spammers?", coming at the problem from the moderator side of things. Spam signal generated from SO is already used to proactively block people from spamming on other sites, and ideas for automatic handling of cross-network spammers are being kicked around. For single-site spammers, well, I've got quite a few site accounts for a reason.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 16:49

3 Answers 3

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You can already flag spam with just 15 reputation. The 100 reputation association bonus exists precisely for this reason; you're an experienced Stack Exchange user and can assist the community in fixing things, but not fix things yourself as that is deemed too much of a responsibility and requires more experience with the site rules for that specific community.

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    So I have to flag it and then hope someone else with reputation comes around and does the cleanup. OK, but what if nobody is there to do the cleanup? Then what I'm hearing is: "let those guys sleep in their own beds".
    – Eric Leschinski
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:46
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    @EricLeschinski a spam flag will automatically put the post in the moderator queue as well. It won't be cleaned up as fast as on SO, but on the other hand, it doesn't get as much visibility either.
    – Glorfindel
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:46
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    And 6 flags still automatically nuke a post, some rooms such as Charcoal HQ can nuke spam on smaller sites without involving their precious diamond time.
    – Kyll
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:57
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I don't want to be a member of all the hundreds of communities, I don't want to be associated with certain religious, gaming, philosophy, writing sites. So it looks like if I don't want to be associated with those bozos, then I get no say over what is spam. This is fine, but the consequences are that those lesser known sites fall victim to unflagged, undownvoted, unreported, and non-cleaned-up spam.

You're correct. If you don't want to participate on other sites on the network, then you don't get to participate in moderation tasks on that site either.

The consequences for the small sites are that spam sits around for a while. It will eventually be cleaned up, but compared to Stack Overflow's response time, it looks sad. That's both the benefit and curse of a smaller site. Stuff moves slower.

As has been mentioned in Glorfindel's answer, you only need 15 rep to flag things. With your reputation here, you more than qualify for the association bonus, which lets you flag spam. You do have the option to hide communities from your profile, if you don't want the general public to see everywhere that you are a member. It is important to note that this information is not hidden from moderators, though.

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  • I guess what I was hoping for is something that gives me as much power over wordpress as I have over stackoverflow. But I guess that would be a bad thing since it would be improper interference. So we're okay with the consequences that we let those lesser known sites deteriorate if they don't evolve their own strong teams to nuke spam. If they devolve into cesspools, then so be it.
    – Eric Leschinski
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 14:59
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    @EricLeschinski as much power as you have over stack is too much power. You don't know the rules for on and off-topicness for some of these sites (something off-topic here might be on-topic on wordpress). So, in that sense, it's OKAY to not give you power. You could make a Feature Request to extend SPAM-nuking to other sites. That I may be in favor of. It's a completely different discussions than "give me the same power everywhere over the network" though.
    – Patrice
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:02
  • @EricLeschinski it's not that bad in reality. Hop on over to The Tavern or several other chat rooms, and you'll see spam detection reports. Several users (me included) are actively fighting spam network wide. If you ever see something that hasn't been picked up, feel free to report it to us or even at chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq
    – Bart
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:02
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    Spam surviving a little longer is a natural consequence of less eyes on the site. That doesn't mean the site is deteriorating, especially if it is cleaned up on a consistent basis.
    – Andy Mod
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:02
  • Stackoverflow has spam deleted in about 7 seconds, on wordpress, even after I sounded the alarm, took about 10 minutes for the spam about "fitness tracking software" to get deleted. Just as long as we have a plan for spam on lesser known sites.
    – Eric Leschinski
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 15:10
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    Eric, 10 minutes for spam is nothing. On Stackapps, it's been 10 hours at times. Still, I'd wager that way fewer eyeballs actually saw the spam than on either wordpress or SO.
    – Brock Adams
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 16:28
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    @EricLeschinski - Even on Stack Overflow, spam handling time can vary based on who's around to deal with flags: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/309209/19679 . The moderators on these smaller sites do care about their communities, as do the active members.
    – Brad Larson Mod
    Commented Sep 15, 2016 at 16:39
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Raising a flag (including spam/abuse flags) requires 15 reputation points on that specific site. The association bonus you get on every account once you have more than 200 points on one site is more than enough to grant you this flagging privilege.

Not wanting to have your account associated with a specific site is somehow understandable at first sight, but think about it twice.

I personally have nearly hundred SE accounts, but only ever posted anything on just a quarter of them and on only 10 sites I have more than 200 points, as my main activity is focused on Ask Ubuntu (>22k) and Stack Overflow (>2.5k). So I have about 75 accounts currently which have no other purpose than spam flagging. This includes sites about Wordpress, Cooking, Religions etc.

Now, looking at my network profile, would you dare to draw any conclusions from all those 101 reputation accounts which never posted anything to my personality? I don't think this would be a valuable guess and therefore I don't care about those sites being associated this way with my account.

However, there would be still the option to hide accounts from your profile. Go to your profile page → Edit profile & settings → Hide communities to configure this.

And however, what kind of power over spam posts do you have on your high-reputation Stack Overflow account? You can also just flag them as spam and move on, your flag does not have a greater weight than the flag of a 15 points user. And once a post accumulated 6 spam/abuse flags, it is deleted automatically.

The only question deletion privilege level is Trusted User (20k) which allows "Voting to delete questions with a score of -3 or lower immediately after they are closed". However, this is useless for spam fighting as spam posts usually get deleted before they would get closed to allow you to cast a delete vote. And then again, it would need 3 delete votes do get nuked.

You see, accumulating 6 spam/abuse votes from users with 15 or more points is much much faster and easier than getting the question closed (5 close votes by users with 3k or more points), downvoted to a score of -3 or lower (needs 3 users with 125 or more points) and then deleted normally by another (or the same) 3 users with more than 20k points. Additionally, getting a post deleted via spam/abuse flags carries out an automatic penalty and trains some Stack Exchange internal spam filters (not that I would have noticed any effect of those, but it is said there are some).

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