tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed ([Redacted])

Andrew Stacey comments on "[Redacted]" (2555)

2010-02-05T11:21:35-08:00

Hold on a moment while I park my zimmer frame ...

(I've nothing particular to add to this discussion except that all of a sudden I feel very old.)

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "[Redacted]" (2554)

2010-02-05T11:19:29-08:00

20 is also a strange age to complain about. As far as I know there are only four active 20-ish-year-olds on this site and none of us have really been the driving force behind this troll hunt, such as it is.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2553)

2010-02-05T10:03:45-08:00

@Ironical Observer: apologies if it seemed we -- myself in particular -- were not taking you seriously. For what it's worth, assuming things about our ages, or our knowledge of the iniquities of the 1930s purges, might be construed as provocative, no? I think David Speyer's comment illustrates why using the adjective "Stalinist" to describe discussion/attitudes here, even if done in jest, seems inappropriate. I don't think it's MO's role to, like, mellow on the harsh, dude.

For what it's worth, I am 31, and some of my colleagues in their 40s would be even more keen to stop the vandalism if they were using the site. So once again, age is irrelevant. However, I can feel a rant about politics building up behind my forehead, so will stop here :)

David Speyer comments on "[Redacted]" (2549)

2010-02-05T07:51:48-08:00

Ironical Observer: The troll came by, vandalized our forum and insulted us. We have responded by attempting to identify him, based on publicly available information, and contacting the appropriate authorities. If a teenager spray-painted graffiti on my apartment, would you say that I was wrong to note his licence plate, call the DMV up to get an identification and call his parents?

I realize that a lot of people don't realize what a visible public trail they leave when they use the internet. When these people are victims of identity theft, or are sucked into the NSA's database, I sympathize with them. Even when they have done something wrong, I believe it is inappropriate to retaliate by spamming or harassing them. But the only thing that anyone has suggested doing here is reporting the troll to his IP. Since that's a legitimate thing to do, and we are doing it using only public data, I can't see what is wrong with it.

By the way, I am 29 and Scott is a few years older than me.

Ironical Observer comments on "[Redacted]" (2538)

2010-02-05T03:44:16-08:00

@Scott: and can you "calculate" my real name? I am a cheerful user of your site, and I did leave some (vague) traces, intentionally! )))))

And some advice:

1) just put more attention to what older people say (of course I understand that this is not so easy when you are 20);

2) do learn to cope with the software you are using. Then no troll will be able to do much harm.

By the way, can't you simulate any IP address?

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2509)

2010-02-04T13:33:49-08:00

Our "ironical observer" is using an IP address based far from Granville, OH. I suspect he really is an observer.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2505)

2010-02-04T13:13:04-08:00

@Harry: That's as may be; but I have a paper to finish rewriting, and no shortage of other things to do, so we may as well leave the visitor to bask and go and do something more productive.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2501)

2010-02-04T12:54:41-08:00

@Ilya: I'm not sure our newest visitor is interested in discussion (or, indeed, in historical accuracy).

Jason DeVito comments on "[Redacted]" (2500)

2010-02-04T12:52:32-08:00

@Ilya,

Fair enough - I probably jumped to a few conclusions too quickly.

(Edit - My comment refers to Ilya's comment about the LJ user)

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "[Redacted]" (2498)

2010-02-04T12:50:34-08:00

Isn't there any man older than 20 who could explain you that such a Stalinist troll hunt is much, much worse than any coprological comments?

I would be interested in hearing somebody explain your point of view. However, I find it hard to believe that somebody will find "coprological comments" that are offensive to readers more suitable for online discussion that a search for troll.

This search for troll cannot be Stalinist: assuming the troll is found we can't kill him/her or put him/her to jail which is what Stalin would do to his enemies. At most, we could go to court for an injunction preventing the person from appearing on MO and ask university to cut off his internet access — and so far, nobody suggested even that.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2497)

2010-02-04T12:42:05-08:00

Slow handclap.

Ironical Observer comments on "[Redacted]" (2496)

2010-02-04T12:36:55-08:00

Hi all,

and aren't you ashamed of such a fascinating discussion going here publicly? Isn't there any man older than 20 who could explain you that such a Stalinist troll hunt is much, much worse than any coprological comments?

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "[Redacted]" (2495)

2010-02-04T12:29:42-08:00

@Scott,

still could it be checked whether MO users named "Alex Krieger" and "Tom Jalinki" indeed connected from Denison U (or Ohio, more generally) as well?

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2492)

2010-02-04T12:09:57-08:00

I've now written the helpdesk@denison.edu, with all the information we have and copies of the offending posts. We'll see what happens.

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "[Redacted]" (2489)

2010-02-04T11:53:50-08:00

From a quick Google search, Alex Krieger is a name of real person who seems to have participated in a fairly well-known summer school in Russia (which includes many overseas participants, e.g. he is listed as being from Hamburg).

This is consistent with him having an alexxrussia username on Livejournal, a top blog service in Russia.

This links the MO user Tom Jalinki with the LJ user Alexxrussia

Maybe not: the user Tom Jalinki could have just copied one of his posts. In particular, the real person Alex Krieger shouldn't be considered a troll; at most, he is a suspect :) He's not on a directory of Denison U (person with the name Peter Krieger, however, is listed as '11 student, but not in math.)

Anyway, if there is sufficient information to personally find the individual, I don't see anything wrong with carefully writing to the math department. The IT could be theoretically used to unmask an IP address, but perhaps this measure isn't necessary for the time being.

Andrew Stacey comments on "[Redacted]" (2483)

2010-02-04T10:10:49-08:00

@Scott: I suggest going directly to the IT Services of the university in question. Most universities have a clause like "Abuse of services will result in termination and discipline" in their IT stuff, but it's the IT department that are in charge of it, not the individual departments.

Jason DeVito comments on "[Redacted]" (2481)

2010-02-04T09:22:38-08:00

I don't know if this matters, but this troll has attacked at least one other math website previously - the mathematics group on livejournal (LJ): http://community.livejournal.com/mathematics/

Currently, he goes by the name "Alexxrussia" and if you go back far enough, he goes by "Kruisin". Typically his posts on LJ are not vulgar but very subjective.

The reason I suspect they are the same person is similarities in some questions.

First, compare http://mathoverflow.net/questions/12186/are-there-any-historical-accounts-of-individuals-who-study-math-books-like-novels with http://community.livejournal.com/mathematics/1315314.html

This links the MO user Alex Krieger with the LJ user Alexxrussia

Second, compare http://mathoverflow.net/questions/12230/how-seriously-do-professors-take-teaching-evaluations with http://community.livejournal.com/mathematics/1317621.html

This links the MO user Tom Jalinki with the LJ user Alexxrussia

I'm not sure how this information can be helpful, but I'm also not that knowledgeable when it comes to computers. Hopefully someone else can take advantage of this somehow.

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2472)

2010-02-03T22:19:52-08:00

I hadn't realised until just now, but as Leonid points out the troll had been present earlier: the user Tom Jalinki is indeed the same person.

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2471)

2010-02-03T22:01:56-08:00

I've already been in touch with the mathematics department at Denison University, who were willing to help, but don't have much to offer so far. Please everyone, resist the temptation to take any action on the information appearing here, but do feel free to speculate or add more information if you come across it!

LK comments on "[Redacted]" (2460)

2010-02-03T20:19:00-08:00

@Anton: it began with the evaluations thread: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/12230/how-seriously-do-professors-take-teaching-evaluations
The OP of the thread clicked through to my webpage, found my IM, and we talked for a while on the subject of the thread. (Sitemeter registered denison.edu IP). Unfortunately it did not stop there: the OP started IMing me at random times without much to say, more or less as s/he behaves here. I eventually blocked the IM screenname ("loresuave").

Andy Putman comments on "[Redacted]" (2459)

2010-02-03T20:16:28-08:00

If all the trolling originates from a university, then maybe one of the admins should write a letter to a relevant authority figure at that university saying that a student there is attempting to disrupt an NSF funded research website in mathematics (I assume that Vakil's money source is the NSF). They probably don't care about random trolling, but that makes it sound official enough that they might take some sort of action.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2458)

2010-02-03T20:11:00-08:00

@Leonid: Denison University is correct ... how did you know?

Apparently some IP banning didn't work as expected. I'm keeping in touch with Fog Creek to debug the problem. I second Ben's thanks to everybody who has been flagging posts.

Ben Webster comments on "[Redacted]" (2457)

2010-02-03T19:14:24-08:00

By the way, thanks everybody for using the moderator attention flags. A couple minutes ago we got up to 33 (that's separate instances of flagging, not separate flagged posts).

Ben Webster comments on "[Redacted]" (2455)

2010-02-03T19:13:15-08:00

@Zev and @blinowitz- that's exactly what happened.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2454)

2010-02-03T19:12:49-08:00

@Zev: no, what's happened is that he posted trollish answers, which were subsequently downvoted and flagged into oblivion; yet due to some software feature/fault, his name remains attached. Note that on the front page, the most recent name need not be the original questioner.

blinowitz comments on "[Redacted]" (2453)

2010-02-03T19:11:51-08:00

@Zev - I think that what happened was that the troll responded to several questions (hence his name appears on the front page) and later had his responses deleted after being flagged 5 times (or whatever number of flags is needed for an automatic delete).

Zev Chonoles comments on "[Redacted]" (2452)

2010-02-03T19:08:05-08:00

The troll appears to be able to attach his name to questions on the front page without posting (though when I look at the same ones, only in the complete list of questions, they correctly show the name of the person who asked the question / last posted). I believe this was the same effect we noted earlier with Bob's question somehow being relabeled with "Tiffany".

LK comments on "[Redacted]" (2451)

2010-02-03T18:57:41-08:00

Perhaps this is irrelevant, but I have a reason to think that the "very small university" that Anton refers to is Denison University.

blinowitz comments on "[Redacted]" (2449)

2010-02-03T18:56:45-08:00

@Ryan - Tell me about it. I just started receiving the 'You have already reached the maximum number of spam flags per day' message.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2448)

2010-02-03T18:54:32-08:00

@andyputman Apparently not. At the risk of sounding like one of the Four Yorkshiremen: what happened to the days when you had to go up to people in order to be such a jerk? (Natural selection sorely missed on the internet.)

Ryan Budney comments on "[Redacted]" (2447)

2010-02-03T18:53:02-08:00

This is getting a little out of hand.

Andy Putman comments on "[Redacted]" (2446)

2010-02-03T18:49:04-08:00

The troll has returned! Doesn't s/he get bored?

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2441)

2010-02-03T14:58:46-08:00

While I don't want to feed the troll, a couple of the deleted posts were targeted against a particular MOer (not Zev) in a way that made it seem unlike a random choice of target. Just to say that it might corroborate some of what Zev suggests and what Anton has said about the IP location.

Zev Chonoles comments on "[Redacted]" (2440)

2010-02-03T14:42:18-08:00

I certainly don't remember meeting anyone like this. In fact, I'm surprised he remembers me - the most we would have ever interacted was for a couple of minutes, and several years ago at that. I'll see if I can dig up the list of participants from years I was there, it would at least produce a list of names to cross check any suspects with.

For the record, this is the science fair under discussion: http://www.cciu.org/Departments/LER/SpecialEvents/sciencefair.html

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2437)

2010-02-03T14:03:58-08:00

@Yemon: That's a fair worry. If a post is not completely blatant trolling, just flag for moderator attention rather than flagging as spam/offensive. The moderators have access to extra information (e.g. the user's IP and what he entered as an email address) which makes it much easier to determine who's who. I'm quite confident that all the recent posts have come from the same person (they've all come from one very small university), with two exceptions (which appear to come from a Hong Kong troll who we haven't seen in a while).

Zev Chonoles comments on "[Redacted]" (2436)

2010-02-03T13:58:07-08:00

I don't know if anyone saw this (the troll deleted it very quickly), but when the troll posted the question "Lateral Thinking" under the name "Kevin Larson", he commented underneath that "This is a serious question"; after flagging the question, in a weak moment, I commented back that "I seriously doubt that." He replied, less than a minute later, something to the effect of "Come on, Zev, we were in the cciu science fair together - help a fellow science fair participant out." I was indeed in that science fair in middle and high school, and while this fact is probably available online, somewhere, I don't think he would have had time to think of looking up something about me and actually find this bit of info in the time span this took place in - and the fair usually goes by "ccsrc", whereas "cciu" is the organization which runs it. So, given all of that, I suspect he actually does know me in real life, from the science fair; I'm just not sure how we could use this information.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2435)

2010-02-03T13:58:00-08:00

@Andrew: 10k+ rep users can see which posts have spam/offensive flags, can see deleted posts, and have access to a list of all recent posts by new users. You're half way there. It might make sense to lower that threshold, but I can't yet ... we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "[Redacted]" (2434)

2010-02-03T13:55:14-08:00

Also, in troll-related discussions it's probably better to refer to users by their ID (e.g. 65) rather then display name (e.g. Ilya Nikokoshev) since it's trivial to change the latter.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2433)

2010-02-03T13:53:33-08:00

@anton: This is my only worry (well, MO-related, I have plenty of others elsewhere)... that in our frustration with the troll, our troll-meters start returning false positives. Now personally I'm not too cut up if a few genuine people turn up with ill thought out questions and are initially rebuffed, but back on that long elitism thread this was apparently a concern for some.

Anyway, as long as we don't flag Bob further, no problem.

Grétar Amazeen comments on "[Redacted]" (2432)

2010-02-03T13:49:33-08:00

@Yemon: Ok my bad, I thought this was the same person. I agree the question doesn't look very good but it isn't trollish.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2431)

2010-02-03T13:48:20-08:00

I'm pretty sure Bob is not the troll. I think he's a genuine user who just doesn't have any experience with MO.

rwbarton comments on "[Redacted]" (2430)

2010-02-03T13:47:50-08:00

Unregistered posting has other downsides too; many new users have been confused about why they can't comment even on their own questions (which doesn't require any rep as I understand it) because they don't realize they're actually logged in as a different user with the same name. But, maybe a discussion for another thread.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2428)

2010-02-03T13:44:38-08:00

We allow unregistered posting because it's really awesome! The more low-friction we can make the user experience, the better. We've had a lot of really excellent unregistered users (e.g. Richard Stanley had over 500 rep with his cookie-based account before he registered), and I definitely wouldn't want to exclude them. (Edit @rwbarton below: yes, this should go in another thread. Those downsides can be remedied by this feature request)

@Ilya: I know the user's IPs and ISP. I've been in touch with Fog Creek (since they directly control the servers), and they've been very helpful.

It should be somewhat harder for the troll now, but of course we'll ultimately just have to wait for him to get bored and go away. Please do keep flagging the posts, but don't waste any more energy than that. The troll is wasting plenty of his own time; there's no sense in him wasting your time too.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2427)

2010-02-03T13:42:34-08:00

Gretar: he hasn't changed his name: that was "Tiffany" leaving a troll-comment on that question, which was subsequently deleted.

Like I said, I wish we didn't get this kind of question, troll or no troll; but last time I and some others espoused this view, we were told off for Not Promoting A Good Image and Inclusive Mentality, so I defer to those less grumbly than myself;

Grétar Amazeen comments on "[Redacted]" (2426)

2010-02-03T13:33:44-08:00

@Yemon: Well there are 2 bobs, one is not a troll and has a link to a university webpage. However this one has changed his name to tiffany which is a username used by someone asking about scateating earlier. I may be wrong but I think he is a troll. This is his userpage http://mathoverflow.net/users/3766/bob

Andrew Stacey comments on "[Redacted]" (2425)

2010-02-03T13:28:53-08:00

(Sonia is completely correct: my apologies if I misled anyone.)

I'm guessing that this troll is getting stamped on fairly quickly, but is there any way that those of us with a high sense of civic duty can easily search for trollish posts? Since so many get deleted so quickly, I'm not sure I'd know to spot one of these - the early offensive ones were very obvious but now it's less clear. Searching for "troll" doesn't turn up much!

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2424)

2010-02-03T13:26:16-08:00

Time to start working on that Web 33.0 anti-graffiti wall...

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2423)

2010-02-03T13:25:07-08:00

@Gretar: Are we sure that Bob=troll? It actually sounded like a genuine question (albeit one that I wish we didn't get on MO, but let's not start that all that snootiness/outreachiness debate again).

Grétar Amazeen comments on "[Redacted]" (2419)

2010-02-03T13:11:48-08:00

I almost admire his/hers persistence.

Grétar Amazeen comments on "[Redacted]" (2416)

2010-02-03T13:05:17-08:00

The troll has now taken over a question, kind of. There is a question http://mathoverflow.net/questions/14032/finding-a-minimum-bounding-sphere-for-a-frustrum but on the front page it looks like it was asked by tiffany (the latest reincarnation of the troll)

Never mind, the question was asked by the troll in the first place under the name Bob

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "[Redacted]" (2413)

2010-02-03T12:59:24-08:00

@Anton,

is is possible to find out as much as possible about the user's location to contact his/her ISP and ask it to cooperate to find out who the troll is? [Disclaimer: I don't know how the law actually works with respect to privacy on the Internet; I just think that most provider's ToS include the line about privacy protection being contingent upon the person not engaging in unlawful/bad conduct.]

If you already have some information, please don't disclose it here, though.

Grétar Amazeen comments on "[Redacted]" (2412)

2010-02-03T12:56:12-08:00

Troll goes by the name Tiffany now.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2409)

2010-02-03T12:36:12-08:00

Thanks to everybody who has been helping by flagging posts. If you're out of spam/offensive flags, please continue flagging for moderator attention. If you're confident that it's the same troll, don't worry about leaving a detailed note ("the troll." is conveniently 10 characters long). I assure you that when you flag these posts, it saves moderators' time.

@Yemon: If you want, leave a comment along the lines of

This user has been trolling MO. See http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/192

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2406)

2010-02-03T12:16:43-08:00

Should we worry about bystanders (this "wider community" whom those of us who aren't Eeyorish are keen to reach, for instance) getting a misleading impression? Some of the troll's recent efforts look on the surface "vague but well-meaning" - is there any way we can flag up for casual users why such time-wasting is being squashed, without having to leave comments or waste moderators' time?

Sonia Balagopalan comments on "[Redacted]" (2404)

2010-02-03T11:53:39-08:00

The troll is back!

Pete L. Clark comments on "[Redacted]" (2403)

2010-02-03T11:25:15-08:00

I have been asked by one of the moderators to forgive Harry Gindi for his comments on one of the troll's borderline appropriate questions.

My response is that I wouldn't have handled it exactly that way myself: telling a good faith user to "go away" is rude; telling a troll to "go away" is feeding it, thus inadvisable by long internet experience. However, alerting other users to the fact that an innocent-looking question is one from a (very probable) troll is a positive course of action, and this is pretty clearly what Harry was trying to do. So I do forgive Harry and retract my comment. These were, I hope, very unusual circumstances.

Now off to log in as one of my many sock puppets and vote myself up. How else could I acquire 9000+ rep? By being knowledgeable and helpful??

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2402)

2010-02-03T10:07:07-08:00

or email/IM geraschenko@gmail.com

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2401)

2010-02-03T09:50:24-08:00

@Sonia,

no, I'd prefer not to give the troll any feedback whatsoever. We just want everything the troll does to silently disappear. Does "flag for moderator attention" run out as well?

Feel free to email scott@tqft.net or IM me too.

Sonia Balagopalan comments on "[Redacted]" (2400)

2010-02-03T09:46:15-08:00

@Scott, as Harry pointed out, we only get 5 of each per day. I used mine up quite early today.
Maybe a wisely worded banner on the MO frontpage to alert users who don't visit meta?

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2399)

2010-02-03T09:38:02-08:00

Adding to what David says -- please, everyone, use the "flag as spam" and "flag as offensive" buttons extremely freely while this is going on. Shoot first, ask questions later. It's very easy for the moderators to verify that it's the same user, and believe me, we're watching the lists of downvoted and deleted questions today!

Sonia Balagopalan comments on "[Redacted]" (2398)

2010-02-03T09:37:47-08:00

The only user page which shows me 'last activity from [IP]' is mine!

Andrew Stacey comments on "[Redacted]" (2397)

2010-02-03T09:28:01-08:00

By going to a user's page, you can see the IP from which they were last active. For those suspicious of troll activity, but without a moderator's access to the logs, that can be a quick way to check a suspicion that two accounts are the same (note that this is just evidence, not conclusive either way: IPs can be shared legitimately and spoofed illegitimately).

David Speyer comments on "[Redacted]" (2396)

2010-02-03T06:50:59-08:00

For these coming in late, last night featured a string of obscene and abusive questions such as we have not seen before.

All of them were from accounts with no contact information, and users with generic male names such as Elliot, Elliot Jones, Larry, Tom, Kevin Larson, Craig, Jerry and elliot-answers. There were frequent references to feces and sex. Mathematical terminology was used occasionally, but not in ways that suggested it was understood. Several of the questions were directing at insulting high profile MO users such as Qiaochu Yuan and Yemon Choi. (One of them may have insulted me; it specified that he was insulting one of the top four posters. I fling 1/4 of a gauntlet down!)

This morning, we are greeted by a flood of vague questions by Elliot. None of them are blatantly offensive, and they suggest some awareness of mathematics, but none of them are the sort of thing that has right answers either. There are also so many of them that one can't believe any serious thought has been put into them. In general, they would probably get attacked by some people for vagueness, and answered seriously by others. If you are wondering why we are so unanimously opposed to them today, you now have the history.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2395)

2010-02-03T03:13:54-08:00

Have put my share in, we'll just have to wait for the European contingent (and others due east) to lend a hand.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2393)

2010-02-03T02:11:42-08:00

Oops, I spoke a bit too soon. Guess the troll has phases of bothering to write semi-coherently.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2391)

2010-02-03T02:09:29-08:00

@Harry: Those last two, that seems likely. Different voice from the "pure troll" who couldn't (be bothered to?) spell. Could be same troll with different voices; but as I said I'm not so sure. I think I've seen some similar to the present one(s) a while back, don't know if anyone else can confirm/refute.

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2390)

2010-02-03T02:07:04-08:00

I'm getting sucked into discussion in comments at http://mathoverflow.net/questions/13948/cocky-people-on-mo and I have to say I'm not convinced it's the same person who was attempting scatological provocation a few hours ago (and failing quite laughably) .

Any thoughts from those who can see the underlying data/details?

Grétar Amazeen comments on "[Redacted]" (2388)

2010-02-02T23:55:59-08:00

@Yemon. Perhaps it will be included in Web 33 1/3.0

Yemon Choi comments on "[Redacted]" (2386)

2010-02-02T22:36:57-08:00

For those who remember the anti-graffiti wall from "The Naked Gun", I sometimes wish a similar device existed for the internet. Web 3.0 perhaps?

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2384)

2010-02-02T20:25:28-08:00

It's just one persistent troll. We've had a couple in the past, but they haven't been quite as prolific as this one. One of the problems may be that MO is now running the beta 6 version of SE, which throttles new user activity much less. I've posted a feature-request to throttle users more harshly if their posts have been flagged spam/offensive. I've also emailed Fog Creek to ask them to ban the IP temporarily.

I'm glad you like the 404s :-).

Sonia Balagopalan comments on "[Redacted]" (2382)

2010-02-02T19:52:42-08:00

What's with all the spam today anyway? Does this mean MO has "arrived"? The upside(?) is that deleted posts lead to some very amusing 404 messages.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "[Redacted]" (2376)

2010-02-02T17:18:28-08:00

When a question gets three spam/offensive flags, it's automatically removed from the homepage. When it gets six flags, it's automatically deleted. We've suspended half a dozen users (I'm pretty sure they're all the same person). We don't have a way to ban an IP, but I'm looking into it. Suspending the offending accounts makes it a little bit more work for the troll, and an IP ban would help a little, but ultimately the troll just has to get bored. Thanks to everybody who's been flagging these posts as spam/offensive and flagging for moderator attention.

Everybody has been doing a good job of not "feeding the trolls" (i.e. nobody has left any frustrated comments to encourage the troll), so hopefully he'll go away.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "[Redacted]" (2374)

2010-02-02T15:59:45-08:00

Are all of these spam questions being deleted automatically if they're closed quickly enough, or is a moderator doing it by hand each time?

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2368)

2010-02-02T11:02:57-08:00

Oh yeah, and unsurprisingly Eliot Jones has the same type of email address, although no matching IP addresses.

Scott Morrison comments on "[Redacted]" (2367)

2010-02-02T10:46:19-08:00

Yeah, trolls need to be fed, or rather, don't need to be fed.

Interestingly, this is the same user (or at least, comes from the same IP address, and has a similarly structured nonsense email) as Thomas James. I've suspended both.

Andrew Stacey comments on "[Redacted]" (2346)

2010-02-02T03:03:34-08:00

As if by magic, the troll disappears.

(Explanation: Enough flags in a short enough time span deletes the post.)

((To anyone of a certain age and who grew up in the UK: yes, I did have that quote in mind when I wrote the first sentence.))

Pete L. Clark comments on "[Redacted]" (2343)

2010-02-02T01:31:29-08:00

Yes!

Harry Gindi comments on "[Redacted]" (2342)

2010-02-02T01:21:07-08:00