So currently you are reading some book on spammers and bots, Dugan?

No, why do you ask?

I've just been remembering what I see here and doing what additional research I can (e.g. on webmasters.stackexchange.com).

Also, not only am I a native English speaker, but I also have a degree in English. That means that I'm better than most at recognizing not only the writing style of bots, but also the patterns of their behavior. (Mining huge amounts of data for patterns is what literature students do).

I wrote here some dry humor, and then I pressed backspace Wasn't sure how it'll be received

I would add this guy to the list of possible bot accounts:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-gudda-596868/

There isn't enough evidence to actually make the call though.

Not sure about bot, but I am fairly sure that something odd is going on.

10 reputation? From 2 posts? But no 'reputation' tab in the profile. I call shenanigans.

I did report another example of someone who had, I think, one post (maybe the mods had closed another, and that might affect the validity of the count), that post was such that no one who was human would give rep for it, and the guy had, again, a rep of exactly ten. My guess is that someone has found a way of, at least, 'gaming' the rep system (maybe worse than that) and we are going to see a list of people with spammy links until Jeremy/the mods have some automated way of clamping down on it.

I'd also guess that measures are underway.

I'm noticing more 'one line, not exactly useful' posts but I'm not sure that this isn't purely psychological; once you've noticed the fact, you keep seeing them, whether there are more, or not.

One thing that could be considered would be to have a minimal post length of, say, three lines for the first ten posts. The probable effect, after the short term, is that we'd just have longer posts in that category, which wouldn't be an obvious win.

And, re the 'murga' user: I'm pretty sure that this poster is a human, albeit a human with an attitude. It may even be a justifiable attitude, I can't tell, but XavierP statement on the subject is definitive.

No "gaming" of any kind involved, although it looks like new members are starting with 10 rep when it should be 0. We're looking into it now. Additionally, we have *multiple* automated ways of detecting and blocking spammy links and do catch the vast vast majority of them. A small number do slip through, but we're constantly tweaking/updating the measures and the mods do a very good job cleaning up the little bit that does get through.

--jeremy

Here's a frustrating one:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...erdave-401206/

Posting history shows that this is definitely a person, definitely reading responses and definitely participating. But not only are the poster's signature and homepage ads for a business, but all of its blog entries are also commercial in nature.

I understand that regarding the sig and the homepage, the current policy is "let it slide." The blog posts are pushing it just a bit farther though.

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