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What should we be doing with comments that are spam?

Ex:
How can I use my oven to sanitize equipment

Is pouring down on a lager yeast cake any different from pouring down on an ale yeast cake?

Using Granular Yeast in a Lager

Those are just a few but they all seem to be coming from this user: https://homebrew.stackexchange.com/users/1220/slw1111

What is the recommended action? Ignore them? Flag them? I was on the site just browsing the top 10 questions and could have blown through all 5 of my flags in the first 10 questions. Love the site, hate seeing the SPAM bots come here.

~ Tom

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Flag them. They will be deleted.

If you run out of spam flags, or notice a spam-user with too many answers to flag individually, flag one or more answers for moderator attention and note the problem in the text field provided - a moderator can remove all answers (and the user) in one go.

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  • I'm burning through my 5 flags every day and there are still dozens of spam answers. Is there a way to prevent users with low reputation (or new users) from including links in answers?
    – Hopwise
    Apr 10, 2011 at 12:52
  • @Hopwise: well, that's where a moderator should step in... They can destroy an entire user and all its posts with two clicks. Which I've now done for the users you've flagged. Thanks!
    – Shog9
    Apr 10, 2011 at 14:40
  • Ok, thanks. In the future I'll only flag one answer per user.
    – Hopwise
    Apr 10, 2011 at 22:04
  • I've been burning through mine daily too, usually all on the spammer-of-the-day. Is the recommended procedure to flag once per account then? Apr 11, 2011 at 11:19
  • @C4H5As: flag them when you see them, but... If you happen upon a user with lots of spam answers, you can be sure they'll be noticed without flagging them all. Also note that you can flag for moderator attention if you run out of spam flags.
    – Shog9
    Apr 11, 2011 at 15:11
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    And thanks to you both for running out of spam flags. You help make this community what it is! Apr 13, 2011 at 16:29
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And don't waste your rep down voting those spam posts. Unless somehow the rep is reinstated after deletion or flagged as spam.

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    It will be reinstated if you force your reputation to be recalculated, but... It's still a waste. The Community user down-votes the post for you when you flag...
    – Shog9
    Apr 12, 2011 at 16:49
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I've been flagging them and then editing the comment to remove the link.

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