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With the recent rash of spamming, I am running lower and lower on flags. What do we do to notify the right people about spam when my flags are gone for the day?

Also, this rash of spamming was by the same 3-5 people. Where is an ip ban? Why aren't they getting a question ban for too many down votes? Anything to stop them until they can get ip banned.

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  • @texenthusiast I am down voting too. – dustin Aug 19 '13 at 0:36
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In terms of spam notification, you have a number of options:

  1. Flag it as spam. Enough spam flags can lead to deletion. This will also notify moderators who can take immediate action.
  2. Flag for moderator attention and mention it is spam (similar to above), but will require moderators to take action.
  3. Downvote. Questions with a certain number of downvotes are removed from the front page, and therefore should not be visibly listed. Reputation loss due to downvotes will be regained at a later stage once the post is finally deleted as a result of a reputation-recalc.
  4. Mention it in chat and ask for others with remaining spam flags to cast them.

With these options, I'm sure you will have enough going around for 24 hours (when flags are reset) to keep the spammers from receiving attention (well, technically they are receiving attention, but...).

For a general discussion on the current "football scam flooding" and what is being done to avoid future problems of this kind, see Recent Mass Football Spam. In fact, it also includes some personal actions taken to identify and "remove" spam bots.

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  • So with point 4, I can just ask for more flags in chat and I may receive them? – dustin Aug 19 '13 at 12:53
  • @dustin: Sorry, that was meant to read "ask others with remaining spam votes to cast them." There's usually enough people around that could supplement your loss with flags by casting it themselves. You can just mention this in chat and they will be willing to help. Have you seen how quickly the spam is removed though? There should not be much (if any) concern that it will be cleared quickly. – Werner Aug 19 '13 at 13:01
  • Last night it was iffy. Sometimes it was removed quickly and other times there were 4-5 post and answers on other non spam post that hung around for little bit. – dustin Aug 19 '13 at 13:02
  • How can we request that the spam removing bot ip ban spammers? The same user names just kept producing spam after we all knew they were bots or idiotic people. An ip ban should have been initiated immediately I believe. – dustin Aug 19 '13 at 13:07
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    @dustin: They may have around, but with enough downvotes they will be removed from the "Top Questions" list... I just list a couple of options that might be of benefit in the future. I have 100 flags per 24h period. If I run out of those (has never happened) I'll ask in chat for others to cast their flags. You can't ask for renewal of your own flags before the 24h period is up (Mods can't do that). Read the post I link to at the bottom; it mentions the current procedure to minimize this in the future. There are other options like captcha's as well - everything has a procedure. – Werner Aug 19 '13 at 13:09
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    @dustin ip ban is not easy stuff ? because in doing so there may be genuine users who get logged from the same system for eg: in a computer center of university. Also resetting router might change the ip etc and side effects. There would be some spam filter/spam detection scripts like stuff that come into effect from SX – texenthusiast Aug 19 '13 at 13:39
  • I only get 20 flags in 24 hours so running out is possible when we are bombarded with spam. – dustin Aug 19 '13 at 22:07
  • @dustin: I see, with 100 flags, we have to be swamped for me to run out of them, get frustrated and have to resort to other means... :-| – Werner Aug 19 '13 at 22:10
  • Do you know when a user goes from 20-100? My guess would probably be rep = 20k. – dustin Aug 19 '13 at 22:12
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    @dustin: According to the help page "When you start out, you are allotted 10 flags per-day. This number may increase to up to 100 flags per-day". You receive "one bonus flag per 2000 reputation" and "You are awarded additional bonus flags when you flag correctly." – Werner Aug 19 '13 at 22:26

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