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Questions tagged [spam]

Questions about suspected user spam, the spam flag or combating spam as a community

16 votes
1 answer
1k views

Why is the site being flooded with junk right now? What is being done about it?

Right now the site is being flooded with posts from new users, with pseudonymous names, who use a mixture of obvious AI-generated nonsense mathematics and weird sentences (sometimes borderline ...
Sam Hopkins's user avatar
  • 24.2k
19 votes
2 answers
778 views

More spam bots than usual?

Has anyone noticed the site getting a lot more spam posts than usual over the past couple days? The ones I've seen repeatedly have "BingX referral codes" or similar codes for Bitcoin or ...
Sam Hopkins's user avatar
  • 24.2k
1 vote
2 answers
348 views

Why was my spam flag declined on an answer that does nothing but promote the answerer's book?

I recently encountered an answer that does nothing but refer to the poster's book: Please look pages 141-147 of the book: S. Saitoh and Y. Sawano, Theory of Reproducing Kernels and Applications, ...
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
87 views

Blocking things from feed

Is it possible to block certain users or tags from appearing on one’s personal feed?
Monroe Eskew's user avatar
  • 18.6k
1 vote
0 answers
37 views

How should we respond to user profiles (as opposed to questions or answers) that appear to be spam? [duplicate]

I've come across 10 different MO user profiles that all have very similar usernames that contain the name of a company. None of these users have any activity on the site except for filling out their ...
tparker's user avatar
  • 1,311
9 votes
2 answers
215 views

Should tags be removed from spam?

When flagging spam, I usually delete tags and replace them by tag-removed as well. I just received a comment suggesting that this is not useful. It probably doesn'...
Neil Strickland's user avatar
12 votes
0 answers
417 views

To which extent should spam posts on meta be considered a problem?

MathOverflow is one of the few sites in the Stack Exchange network where users with reputation 1 can post on meta.1 Clearly, this has some advantages2 and some disadvantages. Probably one of the ...
Martin Sleziak's user avatar
14 votes
0 answers
1k views

Why is the question about SO(4) embedding into SU(3) attracting so many troll answers

This question: Is SO(4) a subgroup of SU(3)? has already attracted 5 rude spam answers (most of which have been deleted by the time I posted this, but if you have enough reputation you can see them). ...
Sam Hopkins's user avatar
  • 24.2k
12 votes
2 answers
343 views

Filtering out the Autobiographer badge from "Recent Badges"

As discussed in this recent post, there is currently an influx of a ridiculous number of profile spammers showing up with the Autobiographer badge in the "recent badges" box on the MO ...
gmvh's user avatar
  • 3,065
18 votes
1 answer
617 views

Influx of ridiculous number of spam users – what to do?

There is currently an absolutely ridiculous influx of spam user profiles: almost the entire "recent badges" section in the right-hand column of the main page is full of Autobiographer badges ...
gmvh's user avatar
  • 3,065
12 votes
1 answer
202 views

Ability to flag user accounts as spam

There is currently no method to flag a user account as spam (only posts). However, there is a huge influx of user accounts that are clearly spam (look for the "Autobiographer" badge on the ...
gmvh's user avatar
  • 3,065
10 votes
1 answer
350 views

How to report intrisically spammy user accounts?

Sometimes, I notice that some very odd username is listed on Home as having earned the "Autobiographer" badge, where by "odd" I mean something very much non-mathematical and ...
gmvh's user avatar
  • 3,065
17 votes
1 answer
736 views

What should I do when I see a spam post on MO?

What is the correct way to handle spam on MathOverflow? Can regular users do something when they see a spam post?
5 votes
1 answer
279 views

My question looks like spam

I'm trying not to be offended, I know how spam filters work and sometimes someone gets wrongly accused and it just happens to be me. I'm just a little frustrated because I carefully craft this ...
SK19's user avatar
  • 237
13 votes
3 answers
775 views

Flagging spam user

I just noticed an "Autobiographer" badge awarded to this unusually named user: https://mathoverflow.net/users/117744 . I immediately moved to flag this obviously spam account, only to realise that ...
LSpice's user avatar
  • 12.9k

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