Curation question - "Pseudo-spam" accounts ?

[Chris Cheatle]

Just wondering from a curation perspctive if there is any guidance or the appropriateness of flagging accounts which are clearly machine generated, but which technically have no spam content in the profile. For example : https://www.inaturalist.org/users/681400

Thx.

[Ian Toal]

How can you tell that this is a machine generated account and not one that was made but the person just hasn't gotten around to posting any observations (honest question)? Would it be possible to send a message and see if it gets a reply? With no data, should it not just be deleted?

Ian

On Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 10:28:24 AM UTC-5, Chris Cheatle wrote:

[Chris Cheatle]

They tend to follow a very specific pattern in terms of naming the account etc, and when something is 5-6 years old and has never contributed anything, it is a good clue there is not a person behind it.

Curators can't delete accounts, all we can do is either mark as spammers or suspend them which in both cases makes them invisible to the public.

[Ian Toal]

Thanks for that. If it is not a valid account, should it not be suspended (even though it has no spam) since it's not really doing anything?

[ellen hildebrandt]

I flag lots of spam accounts, sort of becoming a hobby. And a feature that would be useful in this department is "a user since [date]"

If an account had been there six or eight years with no content ever added, there's nothing lost by eliminating it. 

Some of these may be machine generated, others just forgotten passwords, but either way it would be nice to get rid of them. Why? Because it reduces the burden when doing a people search.

On Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 10:28:24 AM UTC-5, Chris Cheatle wrote:

[ellen hildebrandt]

The feature was added -- thanks for doing that! Now dormant accounts are evident at the profile view

On Wednesday, April 25, 2018 at 10:28:24 AM UTC-5, Chris Cheatle wrote: