Tired of LinkedIn Answer Spam?

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Williams on November 20, 2009 at 9:19am

I completely agree Doug. I subscribed via RSS to a group of questions that interested me and, in the beginning, I would respond to handful here and there. Now, almost without fail, I simply mark all the questions as read because 95% of them are spammy non-questions.

It's disappointing because LinkedIn Answers had the potential to be very helpful.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Seidle on November 20, 2009 at 9:29am

Doug -

I'm not sure why you are upset about answers as it's one of the few places LinkedIn gets it right:

It's really, really easy to report people who are spamming answers on LinkedIn. To report questions that are spammy, just click the report question as...link under the question. LinkedIn makes them go away really quickly.

Likewise, you can report answers as spam by clicking the Report answer as... link under the answer.

Oh, and they do ban people for spamming.

Where LinkedIn's got it all wrong is letting these things get in your mailbox so easily.

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Permalink Reply by Douglas Karr on November 20, 2009 at 9:36am

Hi Mike,

As Jeremy states, though, 95% of the questions are obvious spam and LinkedIn isn't actually doing anything about it. I would report every single one, bit it appears no one is monitoring it from the LinkedIn side. Pressing a button doesn't make me feel any better :).

Doug

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Permalink Reply by Erik Deckers on November 20, 2009 at 10:02am

Then you're not pressing the right buttons.

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Permalink Reply by Douglas Karr on November 20, 2009 at 10:03am

Ha! Nice.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Seidle on November 20, 2009 at 11:03am

Hmm. Maybe it would help if it was a button instead of a text link :).

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Permalink Reply by Brian Schutt on November 20, 2009 at 10:04am

I agree that it can be annoying, and clutters the space with many times pointless noise. But, it seems that with any social media platform, it starts to imitate life in that many people, in business or life for that matter, are inward focused and trying to exploit for their benefit. Whether it's a majority or those self-focused folks are just so loud, I'm not sure. But, I do believe it gives those of us who do want to enter into genuine conversations an opportunity to shine on the platform. Hopefully the spam doesn't become so rampant that passive users throw the proverbial "baby out with the bathwater" and look as the whole device as junk.

Great question.

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Permalink Reply by David W. Grigsby on January 4, 2010 at 12:34pm

Doug,

If it is blatant self promotion, I am in agreement and like you I have seen this. I also have seen noobie moves around soliciting jobs, posting what is really a job, etc.

I don't think you mean "just because it has a link back" aka to show an image or to provide "validation" something is real and not spam.

As an author wanting Community feedback, I just posted a Question/Feedback requested about a topic I am sure we are all dealing with, "Are your drowning trying to manage Leads&Contacts with Salesforce.com,LinkedIn, FB, si, Outlook,your site and Business Cards?". I posted this to my blog, the "salesforce" group on linked in and to the Smaller Indiana Forum.

So I hope you don't feel this falls into this "spam" category, but if it does, please let me know.

In general I am happy and glad they added it as it is another source of "learning" for me :-)

Cheers and great discussion!

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