Launchpad itself

[spamreport] What to do with fake questions with inappropriate contents?

Asked by Manfred Hampl

Launchpad currently is the victim of spam attacks.
Almost half of the most recent questions (222 out of 500) are fake, just linking to ripped videos, forged drugs, etc.

According to Colin Watson in https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/45419/comments/42
"The current protocol is to report it on https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad so that we can clean it up and improve our automatic detection techniques."

I have already created three spam reports recently, but they seem not have been worked on:
https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/684211
https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/682112
https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad/+question/683992

Is there anything that can be done except reporting spam messages on Launchpad questions - and waiting that the question document expires without action done?

I would like to help the Launchpad admins fighting these spam messages, e.g. by flagging messages. Launchpad, however, does not offer a mechanism for that. Some people have moved spam questions to the null-and-void project. Is this a reasonable action to be done by everyone who identifies a spam message?

What should be done by Launchpad users?

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Launchpad itself Edit question
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Colin Watson
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Best Colin Watson (cjwatson) said : 		#1

Nothing can be done except reporting spam messages on Launchpad questions. Please do not edit the spam questions in any other way as it complicates handling. I'd like to stop questions against Launchpad itself expiring (and thus needing to be manually reopened) since that's normally unhelpful, but that'll require a code change that we haven't had time for yet.

In regard to your reports in particular, it's generally easier to deal with them if you report in smaller chunks, or perhaps a search term rather than a huge list. I know that at least I sometimes find myself skipping over your reports because a single huge list is more trouble to deal with than several smaller ones.

Revision history for this message
Manfred Hampl (m-hampl) said : 		#2

Thank you very much, I understand.