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I was browsing Azure collective articles and I found an article posted by a user (Microsoft Azure Employee) who was not the author of the article.

The real author, also a Microsoft employee, was credited as the author, but the article didn't link to the original post, but rather the author's LinkedIn account.

Now, it is possible that MS has employees dedicated to posting around content that other MS employees write and from their perspective this is fine.

But, on Stack Overflow we expect that people who write posts are their authors, not that the whole thing is written by someone else. Also linking to the LinkedIn account is too much like "self" promotion that is also not appropriate.

Self-Help Document to handling Errors due to deprecation of Legacy TLS protocols

Is this article following SO rules?

If not, what is the appropriate course of action, since they cannot be flagged?

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    From Article guidelines: "Articles must be the original work of the author posting them, or - in the case of multiple authors - the poster must be one of the primary authors." So if the poster is not a primary author, it is against the guidelines.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 9:43
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    The same page also states "An Article does not necessarily need to be (but ideally is) content written exclusively for the collective. Reposting your own content from elsewhere on the internet is allowed, provided it meets the other guidelines. - When reposting content from elsewhere, the author is encouraged to mention this fact and link to the original." As the article doesn't link to the original source then this guideline is always not being adhered to, but this one seems more advice rather than requirement.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 9:45
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    This specific user seems to have multiple articles. Looking back at even their answers which are remarkably lower quality than I would expect out of what a presumably expert would produce. Just shows a pattern.
    – Security Hound
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 12:28
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    @SecurityHound Not a first nor a last MS employee that posts low quality answers on poor and off-topic questions related to MS technologies. MS is using SO as customer support venue.
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 12:47
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    @DalijaPrasnikar - At a professional level, I would argue that the article's author plagiarized another Microsoft employee's content since the material that clearly should be quoted and properly referenced by quoting that employee hasn't been performed. But they did provide a link to a reference,. But it's not the first article from that original MS employee this article author ripped off. Can you tell I am also not impressed? Honestly looking further into the situation, neither Microsoft Employee, is submitting high quality content. I doubt neither of them are experts on TLS.
    – Security Hound
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 12:56
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    @SecurityHound it certainly looks like plagiarism. I didn't want to refer to it as such because it is not clear is whether this was done by the poster alone or is this part of some internal "job" delegation at MS where some people write and other people spread it around. Also I am not expert in what they are writing about, so I cannot comment on quality of the content when there is some actual content in the articles or answers.
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 13:11
  • "How to Fix it?" What? Where was it copied from? It is always ".NET" (never ".Net") in Microsoft official documentation.
    – Peter Mortensen
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 14:28
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    When I had a look at quick look at this user's content, I quickly found at least one answer that was entirely plagiarism (it was cited, but not in a quote block and contained no original content). I've flagged it, but I would be concerned that other content is the same.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 14:35
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    As for flagging, as no one has addressed it, I'd suggest flagging one of the user's posts (doesn't matter what) and explain in that flag the problem; make sure you are explicit and link to the article. You might want to link to this meta post too.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 14:37
  • As I understand it the culture at Microsoft is not individualistic. In the case of a product like Excel there are multiple technical teams who may or may not write actual code. Coders are not in a public facing role! There are technical writers who generate content for external consumption and this content may be posted on the internet by others whose role is public relations.
    – MT1
    Commented Jan 23, 2023 at 8:50

1 Answer 1

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Please consider this to be "flagged" via this post, and we (Stack Overflow Community and Customer Success Teams) will follow up with the team at Microsoft. Thanks for highlighting this and detailing the concerns.

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    What would be general approach for the future. Flagging some other post by same user for mod attention, posting on Meta, or something else?
    – Dalija Prasnikar Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 19:15
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    @DalijaPrasnikar we're building flagging (and the other moderation-related actions) into articles as part of an upcoming release. So in the long term, it should be the same as with questions and answers: flag concerns about specific pieces of content to mods, post on Meta to highlight/discuss broader trends or concerns. Until then, I'd defer to the mods on when (or if) the "flag another post by the user" is appropriate. Meta is probably the best option right now.
    – Berthold StaffMod
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 19:51
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    A further note: we've discussed the past trends and concerns with MS as part of launching the collective. The ongoing direct communication that's part of the relationship will facilitate addressing those past concerns, the issues with this specific article, and any future concerns that come up.
    – Berthold StaffMod
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 19:54
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    This is not the first case of opening a new collective resulting in a bunch of garbage posts where authors don't seem to respond to feedback. How do you plan to address that? | As an aside, why does downvoting of articles cost reputation?
    – Dan Mašek
    Commented Jan 20, 2023 at 23:36
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    @DanMašek I can't speak to why you're calling this topic-relevant article "garbage", but it's already been deleted by a collective admin (as a result of this feedback) and will be reposted by the original author's account. The initial publication of the article was during the pre-launch period before the author had access to the collective. It was our oversight that the attribution issue wasn't caught before launch. Article reputation follows the same conventions as reputation for questions and answers.
    – Berthold StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2023 at 17:46

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