How to handle this Li Zhi guy?

Question

Most who have spent a considerable amount of time on Chem.SE this past year knows Li Zhi.

• visits on a biweekly or monthly basis: Li Zhi, et al, et al, et al, et al, et al, et al ...
• quality of the content of answer varies, but is sometimes alright
• formatting quality is terrible

They never use any formatting, not even separation into paragraphs. This is not from a lack of experience; Li Zhi has been called out on this many times, provided comments to helpful links, and usually posts have been edited courtesy of passers-by.

• Can anything be done to improve this situation? If so, what?

Editing each and every one of Li Zhi's answers is surely not a big issue now, more than that of annoyance, but I am having nightmares thinking about potential mitosis gone wrong... (unlikely as it is)

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Right now I have resorted to simply downvoting Li Zhi's answers without reading, and that makes me feel good, but perhaps there is a better option. If not, you may always use this thread for venting purposes ;-)

Answer 1

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Fun aside, we have discussed this internally and taken steps to counteract this, but these attempts are not very fruitful so far. There is actually not much that we can do, as for now we can only react.

We have already tried contacting the user, which was without result. Seen all of the posts combined, the user would probably have been suspended by now due to a high volume of flags. Since most of the posts belong to unregistered users, this is a route we cannot really follow, or at least it would not matter.

However, to get this a little more under control, please do the following:

1. Custom flag the post. We will destroy the user account. The content will then be attributed to an empty account.
2. Decide:
   • Flag it as low quality, if it is low quality so that others can review it and can decide if it is salvageable or not. In the latter case it will be deleted.
   • If it contains some good content, salvage the post to the best of your abilities.
   • Of course you can (down) vote on it as an interim measure if you decide to sent it to the VLQ queue.
3. Wait. With a bit of luck and combined effort we might get the message across.

Answer 2

This was actually something we (the moderators) looked at a few months ago. Suffice it to say that we've tried everything that is reasonable to contact this guy, short of sending him a Howler by owl post.

My personal opinion is that ~80% of his posts are salvageable. If you are not willing to put in the effort (and I don't mean that in a negative way - it is irritating) then feel free to drop a downvote. Still, regardless of what you do, it would be very helpful to raise a moderator-intervention flag for us. TL;DR Follow what Martin said except for the porcine section ;)

Do these accounts still preserve information for moderators to identify the as Li Zhi?

Yes, if need be, this is possible.

In that, will all his/her answers be tied to the same id empty account if I flag them?

Since the person has been creating new unregistered accounts for every single answer he/she writes, each of these accounts will have a new user ID associated with them. As such upon deletion they will not be tied into one account.

It is possible to merge accounts. Diamond moderators like Martin and myself cannot merge accounts; it has to be done by the Stack Exchange team. We have consulted them already about this issue, and the bottom line was that it would be a huge hassle for little benefit. After all, this person doesn't seem to care about what happens to his accounts, or answers, after he submits them. We could merge 50 of his accounts now (that's not a real figure, but I'd guess it's somewhere near there), but he would just create another 50 more, and we would have to ask the SE team to merge 50 more every other month...

Answer 3

Hey it's no fair that two mods wrote an answer to this question but no mortal user did so I decided to answer and what I was about to say is that it's hard to deal with such users, if not impossible I won't cheat like Mart and type all the wall of text myself so you format I feel so evil. The worst. part of Li Zhi is sometimes they add punctuation marks to posts random.ly so it looks weird like that you just saw. I remember a while before I saw a nice image from one of the CM's which means Community Managers and it was this https://i.sstatic.net/JWy3W.jpg oh wait it's actually from Tim who's like an uber-boss or super-boss or some.thing It's from this post BTW https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/277386/280934 The funny thing about it is it's applicable to this very situation Such users hide behind the lack of rules for what they do and still manage to annoy you greatly so I'd say you can't do anything other than downvoting them But actually to be honest, I don't mind them. much True, their posts usually require lots of basic editing and a user of this site for that long would've already grasped them but I give them some credit because to me, they're way less annoying than similar users on other sites, and sometimes their answer turns out to be a. decent one One such user similar to Li Zhi is this guy How to find an appropriate StackExchange site for my question who's been posting that one question for one year and half in 4 to 5 SE's We flag that guy's posts as abusive in Charcoal HQ http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq which is a chatroom you'll find a link to and be introduced to in the now-featured meta post about dealing with spam but I won't recommend that course of action here And heck, we don't need to go far because we have a questioner in this very site that does the same thing called. Nadine This Nadine guy would've been banned thrice already because they post very poorly researched questions and sometimes delete the questions right after they get an answer Funny you don't mention them because to me, they're much more of a pet peeve and. nuisance and make me want to punch something/someone And although you asked us not to turn to Li Zhi mode, we thought it would be fun for a change to see what post formatting looks like when you just. don't care And it looks like this I could't believe one could write so much relevant stuff about this topic BTW if you like wall of texts there's this https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/210452/280934 which is generated using Flack OverStow https://stackapps.com/questions/306/flack-overstow-generate-spam-from-stack-exchange-posts And the. most satisfying part of this post was not having to format links Ooooooooooooh The possible reason of Li Zhi doing this, I believe, was not evading quality bans, since they have not been activated only until recently Comprehensive question quality blocks now enabled everywhere it might actually have security reasons, like they suspected their identity would be revealed if they keep posting a lot But this is just a guess because I'm definitely not. Li Zhi Definitely And/Or they're giving away information from a textbook they shouldn't be giving info away from which is a common scenario in meta-sites around here like Stack. Overflow

If that was a bit hard to read $\ldots$

Hey, it's no fair that two mods wrote an answer to this question but no mortal user did. So I decided to answer and what I was about to say is that it's hard to deal with such users, if not impossible.

I won't cheat like Mart and type all the wall of text myself so you format. I feel so evil. The worst part of Li Zhi is sometimes they add punctuation marks to posts randomly so it looks weird like that you just saw.

I remember a while before I saw a nice image from one of the CM's which means Community Managers and it was this Oh, wait! It's actually from Tim, who's like an uber-boss or super-boss or something. It's from this post BTW. The funny thing about it is it's applicable to this very situation: Such users hide behind the lack of rules for what they do and still manage to annoy you greatly so I'd say you can't do anything other than downvoting them.

But actually, to be honest, I don't mind them much. True, their posts usually require lots of basic editing and a user of this site for that long would've already grasped them but I give them some credit because to me, they're way less annoying than similar users on other sites, and sometimes their answer turns out to be a decent one.

One such user similar to Li Zhi is this guy who's been posting that one question for one year and half in four to five SE's. We flag that guy's posts as abusive in Charcoal HQ which is a chatroom you'll find a link to and be introduced to in the now-featured meta post about dealing with spam but I won't recommend that course of action here.

And heck, we don't need to go far because we have a questioner in this very site that does the same thing called Nadine. This Nadine guy would've been banned thrice already because they post very poorly researched questions and sometimes delete the questions right after they get an answer. Funny you don't mention them; because to me, they're much more of a pet peeve and nuisance and make me want to punch something/someone.

And although you asked us not to turn to Li Zhi mode, we thought it would be fun for a change to see what post formatting looks like when you just. Don't. Care. And it looks like this. I could't believe one could write so much relevant stuff about this topic.

BTW if you like wall of texts there's this which is generated using Flack OverStow And the most satisfying part of this post was not having to format links. Ooooooooooooh!

The possible reason of Li Zhi doing this, I believe, was not evading quality bans, since they have not been activated only until recently. It might actually have security reasons, like they suspected their identity would be revealed if they keep posting a lot But this is just a guess because I'm definitely not Li Zhi. Definitely. And/Or they're giving away information from a textbook they shouldn't be giving info away from which is a common scenario in meta-sites around here like Stack Overflow.

Answer 4

Instead of making this about Li Zhi, how about we adapt a meta-policy. If anyone posts an answer that is a wall of text then we down vote [once] and add a comment

Didn't read. This wall of text is impossible to comprehend. Please use better formatting.

Then other users can upvote the comment rather than bang the answer. Then just let this go...