Is there a way to report accounts that are spammers?

In the lower right corner of every question and post there should be a little link called “Flag as…”
Click that, and you get a pop up where you can describe the offense.

@snowberry – that’s not what I’m asking. I know how to report spam in a thread. I’m talking about users who have joined, have advertisements on their profiles that are blatant spam, but have not yet posted in a thread.

http://www.fluther.com/contact/

Let them know. That goes out to all the mods.

@tedibear A PM to a moderator.

But I noticed that we have one jelly who has a link to their business on their profile with a little blurb about it, but so far they’re posting just like anyone else. I have no idea if that’s against the rules, but as long as they’re not selling stuff instead of asking or answering questions, it doesn’t bother me.

I asked about this a while back. It seems PMing a mod is all we can do to help, though I imagine it would be very time consuming. There are just so many of them.

@glacial -Darn! I looked in the archives first but never thought to use the search term of “marketing.”

We (the mods) screen most new accounts systematically. If a new user posts a blatant ad with a link on their profile at the time they create the account, chances are we’ll catch it (when the volume is high some may slip through, otherwise all get a once-over). Since most of these accounts are created by spambots, not people, that’s the way it usually goes.

But if an account is created one day, and the spam is posted to the profile another day, there’s a good chance we won’t catch that. We’d appreciate a PM alerting us to it. This is much rarer, because it involves a real person. If a real person is behind an account, they may actually participate in threads, too. If someone seems to be participating in the community without an agenda of selling something, then we may just ask them to modify their profile. If a user is clearly just here to sell something, they’re banned outright.

Reporting profile spam is simple. Copy the user’s profile address (e.g. http://www.fluther.com/users/thorninmud/). Click the “Contact” button up by the search window, and paste the address in the “Your feedback” field, along with the word “spam”. We’ll zap it.

Thanks for helping!

I do it all the time. I usually PM Augie with the person’s name.

@thorninmud is very, very good at spotting spammers. :)

@thorninmud or any moderator: So, do you have a Terms of Service that we can point new members to so there isn’t confusion? I couldn’t find such a page.

@snowberry Well, the legalese Terms of Service are here yawn!, but the more practical “how to be a good Fluther citizen” stuff is in the Guidelines. The stuff about spamming is in the Important Rules tab of the guidelines

@downtide Thanks, It’s how I work out my aggressions in a socially acceptable way :)

Just to clarify, the “contact” button does not send an email to all of the mods. It only comes to me. Since I’m very hit-or-miss these days, it would be much better to PM an active mod with the spam profile name. Thanks so much for helping us catch them!

There IS a way to contact all mods at once though. Send an email to “support@fluther.com”. We all get those.

^ True.

@augustlan :: when did that change? I was always told contact went to all the mods.

@johnpowell I’ve seen it suggested many times, so the idea has been around for a long time, but I have no clue why. It never has gone to all the mods! It used to go only to founders and me, now it’s just me (effectively).