Take a look at these 4 exhibits (images are for benefit of -10k, and are also links to the posts themselves):

Exhibit A Exhibit B Exhibit C Exhibit D

All 4 posts are absolutely useless, promote some oddly named, dodgy website, all by the same user, with 3 of the posts spanning less than a day.

Based on this, I flagged all 4 posts as spam, which I thought was reasonable:

Flagging page: all spam flags declined

Are such posts really not worthy of a spam flag?


migrated from meta.stackexchange.com Apr 18 at 13:29


In my opinion, just from what you've posted here, those are absolutely spam. (but see my mitigating comment below, too) –  Andrew Barber Mar 31 at 14:33
Link only answers should in general be flagged as NAAs. The spam flag should be restricted to blatant spam like advertisements and commercial product links. –  AsheeshR Mar 31 at 14:35
Can you link us to the posts themselves? If they were an answer in context to the question asked, then they're not obviously spam. This would be an instance where an 'other' flag would apply. But again, this is all supposition because I don't have links to the posts themselves. –  George Stocker Mar 31 at 14:35
@AsheeshR They're not NAA. They are attempts to answer the question. They are low quality answers, possibly even very low quality answers, but they are answers. –  Servy Mar 31 at 14:37
Hmmm... I have to agree with what @Servy has said, also. I am looking at them here as a group, of course. Individually... they would look different. –  Andrew Barber Mar 31 at 14:40
@Servy I am not sure where I saw this, but NAAs are an acceptable way to flag link-only answers. VLQs work too, but edits to the answer can create problems there. –  AsheeshR Mar 31 at 14:40
@AsheeshR But these aren't link only answers. There is supplementary text to the links. You can remove the links from the answers entirely and they are still attempts to answer the question. They're very low quality answers, but still answers nonetheless, making NAA an unacceptable flag. –  Servy Mar 31 at 14:41
I would say it is indirect spam. The links bring you on a site were content can be found that is relevant to the qauestion. That 60% of the screen is used for advertisements which generate revenue for the OP if clicked makes it indirect spam. I agree that those answers should be deleted but I also understand why a mod declined your flag. –  rene Mar 31 at 14:41
@AsheeshR No, "Not an answer" is not an acceptable way to flag link-only answers. –  George Stocker Mar 31 at 14:48
Okay, I've linked to them in the images. –  Qantas 94 Heavy Mar 31 at 14:48
Nuke nuke nuke --- –  Pekka 웃 Mar 31 at 14:50
@Pëkka A moderator has deleted not just the posts, but the account as well :) –  Andrew Barber Mar 31 at 14:54
It might have been useful in this case to flag one of the answers with custom, and explained, with links to the user account and a couple of the other answers. If you flag a bunch of things individually, there is no guarantee that the same moderator will handle all of the flags, and even if they do, that they'll see the commonality. And now I've read Servy's answer and realized that's pretty much what he said. –  Aaron Bertrand Mar 31 at 22:08

2 Answers 2

up vote 15 down vote accepted

Using the description of a spam flag here:

What makes something spam and when should I flag it?


It should NOT be marked as spam when:


I reviewed those flags and I didn't see them as spam, these appeared to be an answer to the question using a link to an outside resource. This was IMO not spam but a low-quality answer and as a result I declined your spam flags, but deleted the answers.

If you run across something like this, use an "Other" flag and explain why you think these answers should be removed - something like "all of this users answers are pointing to the same website". The mods will then review the answer and take appropriate action.

But what if the answer contains a single link to external website owned by the author? Isn't it "unsolicited advertisement"? –  Shadow Wizard Mar 31 at 14:55
Well, you must check again, spammers are smarter right now –  Braiam Mar 31 at 14:55
@ShadowWizard You could say that for every link-only answer but that doesn't mean it is spam. If you find repeated answers by the same user linking to a specific site, I would use an other flag explaining the problem. –  bluefeet Mar 31 at 14:57
It's also worth pointing out the spam flags carry very harsh penalties, so we tend to be pretty careful when handling them. When someone is promoting a commercial product, that can be pretty clear, but a lot of people post links to their blogs while contributing good content. Judging when this steps over the line into being excessive self-promotion can be tricky sometimes. –  Brad Larson Mar 31 at 14:57
@Braiam - That's not what happened here. We've seen plenty of that kind of activity lately on SO, and it's pretty obvious when the link is to Indian real estate or Turkish escort services, even when surrounding content looks legit. This was someone posting a link to their blog, which was code-related, although doing so a little excessively. I know Bohemian was working on a more intelligent query to pick out cases like you've identified, and I've been combing through review to make sure none of them get approved. –  Brad Larson Mar 31 at 15:10
@BradLarson that's good. –  Braiam Mar 31 at 15:16
@ShadowWizard How do you know that the external website is owned by the author? In any case, while announcing affiliations is encouraged, I don't think they're expressly required. I have probably posted links to SQL Sentry Plan Explorer without a disclaimer that I work for SQL Sentry. Does that make that spam? –  Aaron Bertrand Mar 31 at 20:37
@AaronBertrand good point. Well, maybe not spam but still after all. –  Shadow Wizard Mar 31 at 22:02
@AaronBertrand: If you're discussing a product you are affiliated with, you absolutely need to disclose that affiliation. That can be done bluntly, or else by mentioning it on your user profile page which you have and using first person in answers (both are needed, use of I/we is not sufficient by itself but should clue reader into clicking your name and seeing your connection to SQL Sentry) –  Ben Voigt Jun 16 at 6:06

Each answer, when looked at in isolation, is not spam. It is an attempt to answer the question. While it includes a link, the answer isn't just a link, that link is relevant to the topic (I assume; if the links actually bring you to a site where you can buy Viagra, then yes, they're spam.), and the link has enough supporting text to make it at least an answer, albeit a poor quality one.

What can make it spam is if the user is only here on SO to promote his own articles. In this case it's not the individual posts that are a problem, but rather the sum of all of them. In these cases it's best to use a custom flag to explain that, so that the mod knows to look for that. If you said something like, "All/most of this users posts are just here to advertise links to his own articles." then the flag would be much more likely to be acted on, as you're accurately describing the problem you want them to look into.

Sometimes, users dont know about site policy against link only answers and self promotion. I would give the benefit of doubt to new users. These should be flagged as NAAs or VLQ, not spam. –  AsheeshR Mar 31 at 14:38
@AsheeshR They are answers. Flagging them as NAA is entirely wrong. A custom flag is almost certainly the proper action; the moderator will decide what to do. I never said that a spam flag should be used. In fact, I explained why it's probably not a good idea. If you want to post a comment explaining the problems with these posts, in addition to flagging, feel free to. –  Servy Mar 31 at 14:39
@AsheeshR I used to strongly agree that answers of the pattern of the individual ones noted above deserve to be deleted as NAA/VLQ, and a notable portion of the community seems to tend in that direction, too. But I've come to the belief that provided they are an attempt to answer, they should not be deleted. Commented, down voted, one-upped with real answers (that perhaps use the info in the link as a starting point) - but not simply deleted. Of course, the collection of answers in this case also suggests Servy's suggestion of a Custom flag is quite appropriate. –  Andrew Barber Mar 31 at 14:46
@RichardTingle that's true –  user221081 Mar 31 at 15:01
Also, this has an added benefit of only costing you a single point of your daily flag quota (not that I run out of them too often, but still...) –  Jan Dvorak Mar 31 at 15:26

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