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There seems to be a tendency for more questions appearing with users created just for that question. i.e. those two questions seem to be an example:

How to share a DHCP Server(Debian) that is created on VMware to other PC in the same switch

and

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/290086/cant-sftp-to-raspberry-pi-using-public-ip-address-can-ssh-without-problem

Is this behaviour condoned, are there any built-in code defences, or we just ignore it?

What is the best advisable way to deal with these questions?

Interacting with these users also gets more complicated because they do not have enough privileges to comment or edit the question.

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    what's wrong with simply answering the question ? (when you can)
    – Archemar
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 7:37
  • The pattern has been low quality posts. I have left helpful comments, however unless something interesting, I am not compelled to invest a significant time with people side stepping our community/game rules.
    – Rui F Ribeiro
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 8:00
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    Is it really a big problem if someone has a problem and then needs to create a new account because they are not a member yet, and their post is low quality because they don't have any experience asking questions?
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 11:26
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    You really sound as if those posts are made by people who are existing members, but create new accounts for the express purpose of asking low quality questions?
    – Mr Lister
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 11:27
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    Yeah I think it's important to not underestimate how many people probably just lurk SE websites and never post. We probably only see posts from 1% of visitors. Occasionally one of the lurkers is going to have a question, though. There's no real advantage to using the throwaway account. Like Rui said, it's actually kind of a hassle to do it that way.
    – Bratchley
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 14:38
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    Pretty sure editing and commenting on your own question doesn't require any rep.
    – derobert
    Commented Jun 16, 2016 at 15:13
  • @Bratchley I think even 1% is off by a few orders of magnitude — some posts here get huge amounts of visits compared to their activity, e.g. unix.stackexchange.com/questions/222597 which has 12 upvotes and over 50,000 views (which is more than half the number of questions on the site!).
    – Stephen Kitt
    Commented Jun 17, 2016 at 16:04

1 Answer 1

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It's not just condoned, it's intentionally supported, which is why the ask page has the option to:

                                      Post as a guest

You seem to think there's some issue with these questions, without actually saying what the issue is -- the best way to deal with them is to answer them. Users can always comment on their own posts, as well as comment on answers to their question, and can always edit their posts (not to mention suggesting edits to any post).

One issue that can come up is the user submits the question under one guest account, gets logged out, and registers a new independent account to start interacting with people. That account won't be able to comment and confuses people when they starts talking like the asker when they don't appear to be. In that situation, flag for mod attention and we can get Stack Exchange to merge the accounts (or the user can do it themselves).

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