14

I found this user who puts a link to a commercial extension in all answers which is obviously advertising.

The extension probably even solves the issues, but an answer that only exists to promote a product without disclosing the authors affiliation is considered spam.

So in the first question I flagged the answer as spam and moved on. But then, in others there is also halfway useful information. Just enough code to give a hint how the problem might be solved. One even got accepted.

How should we deal with such a case?

  1. Edit the question to remove the link? Although it might be an acceptable solution for some?
  2. Rigorously mark as spam? Removing potentially useful content?
  3. Leave it as it is? Promoting shady link placement in answers?
6
  • If you're sure the user is affiliated with the extension, flag a post for moderator attention and let them deal with it.
    – ArtOfCode
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 21:41
  • @ArtOfCode The user "Dan Nguyen" is the "Founder & creative director" of MLX, the company being spammed
    – DavidPostill
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 22:35
  • I've raised a mod flag on one of his answers "The user "Dan Nguyen" is the "Founder & creative director" of MLX and is spamming links to this company in all his answers. He is not disclosing his affiliation in his answers (or in his profile)."
    – DavidPostill
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 22:39
  • In this case helpful meta.magento.stackexchange.com/questions/27/…
    – Qaisar Satti
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 5:37
  • If someone asking for extension then its okay that you give link of a extension, but for every time you provide link then its marketing and that should not be done at here, and user should block for doing so
    – Murtuza Zabuawala Mod
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 6:11
  • I think mark answer as spam is only option for us
    – Keyur Shah
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 8:59

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

To answer your question...definatelly not option 3. As for the correct option, there is no silver bullet. It really depends on the behavior of the user.
Flagging always helps since moderators have access to additional tools that can help see if this is spammy or not.

As for this specific case.... Thanks for the heads up.
This looked to me also like a combination of good answer and apammy answer. But I saw that this user and an other one from the same ip address were targetting questions linked to m2 wishlist functionality so they could promote their content.
I didn't want to delete all the answers because some of them contain good content. But I did remove the link and suspended the users because this was obviously a marketing campain.
If you see this behavior again, please flag it.

1
  • Take Magento2 for example. There are plenty questions that could be answered with one single commercial module, but not in a anyhow readable answer, because it is to complex or it is to broad. As there are not many free extensions so far you could only write "There is a plugin for that, use google." - that should not be the spirit. Anyhow, as for this specific user, it could be seen as advertising.
    – Max
    Commented Jan 31, 2017 at 11:40
5

If it's in every single answer this user is posting, it is definitely spam to my eyes. Thus, the user behavior is not respecting the idea of SE and he should be flagged.

If the user posts answers without links to his website, then I reckon it's an "on the edge" case and a moderator should review it.

Just my 2 cents

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .