ServerFault spam issues

For the maybe three of you still there, the StackExchange sites have been experiencing a multi-month spam wave from a certain group of spammers who've built automation for our sites. SuperUser gets it harder than ServerFault, but we both get hit. So I did some diving today to figure out just how bad the floods are.

For 2025:

  • Non-deleted questions: 2512
  • Deleted questions (mostly spam): 9748
  • One specific spam type: 6863

Yes, we're getting way more spam than legitimate questions right now, and have all year.

The Metasmoke people are doing a lot to make sure you rarely see it, but it's still a burden on the moderation staff due to the need to delete the spam-users. That deletion helps the StackExchange anti-spam systems identify bad IPs and others which increases the burden on spam-campaigners like these.