Questions like this: https://drupal.stackexchange.com/q/123897/16495 suddenly started to appear in off-topic review queue. Why? Is it a human error, or we have some new detection mechanism that fails miserably? And just by the way, is there no way to stop that wave of spam we are encountering these days?
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1 Answer
I am confirming this, but it is more than likely because some users exercised close votes, and chose a custom off-topic reason. This was the WRONG thing to do with this.
When you encounter spam on the site, the procedure is to
- Flag it as spam
The spam flag is special. That is all that is needed.
Please
- DO NOT cast a close vote
- DO NOT flag any reason other than spam
- DO NOT edit the spamminess away
- DO NOT edit the links out
- DO NOT cast an additional downvote.
Just flag it as spam and go on your way.
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Actually, it seems to me that double-downvote was actually status-bydesign and is not considered something wrong.– MołotCommented Jul 21, 2014 at 6:29
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Yes, it is possible. The spam flag carries a automatic downvote, and it is possible to manually downvote it. However, you shouldn't. It doesn't really happen on this site because flags get handled quickly, but when you add an additional downvote, the post ends up with less visibility, so it gets fewer spam flags. This can actually make the spam post hang around longer.– mpdonadio ModCommented Jul 21, 2014 at 11:37
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If that is true, why spam flag gives downvote of it's own? It doesn't make sense. If staff here don't want spam downvoted, why would they implement mechanism that automatically downvotes spam even more than it already was?! No post with negative score appears on front page, as far as I remember, so after first spam flag additional downvotes does not make any difference for visibility, now does it?..– MołotCommented Jul 21, 2014 at 12:20
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@Mołot I added some links to the discussions about this.– mpdonadio ModCommented Jul 21, 2014 at 13:01
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Discussion for downvotes is from 2013, and auto-downvote is something I have seen only recently. Also, 3 spam flags hide post anyway, no matter what is it's score, and 5 or 6 spam flags are needed for deletion - so it does not look like Stack developers think the way you do.– MołotCommented Jul 21, 2014 at 13:15
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@Mołot The discussion is from the time period of one of the very intense spam attacks, network wide. When you downvote spam, it will tend to go off the front page quicker, which means it will tend to get fewer spam flags, and therefore not get automatically deleted as quickly. It seems counterintuitive, but it has been demonstrated to happen. Other flags carry automatic downvotes, too.– mpdonadio ModCommented Jul 21, 2014 at 13:19