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For this question, I was extremely suspicious about the question, but I felt like I couldn't justifiably flag it as "Rude and abusive".

Is the claim likely to be complete nonsense? Yes, quite possibly, but potential nonsense is our bread and butter. In fact, I'm personally of the opinion that all potential nonsense ought to be asked only on Skeptics.SE rather than other sites.

Is the claim about a protected group of people? Yes, it's about Jews, but I don't think that should prohibit the question per se.

Is the question from an evil, hatemongering website? I'm not of the opinion that it's a disqualifying attribute, though others have differing opinions, but in this case it's not from such a website.

Is the question a duplicate? As far as I can tell, no. (I recently flooded the front page because of retagging spree I went on. Sorry about that.) The closest I could find was this one about Nazi Germany, rather than the Soviet Union.

Is the post not a genuine question? Unlike some recent questions that weren't really a question, but just a statement, this one was structured as a question.

Is the claim notable? Regrettably, I think it's a fairly common anti-semitic claim, so it is notable.

Is the claim trivially googleable, such that a genuine person could find their answer without asking? No, I don't think that's the case. It's kind of hard to prove a negative here, even if the USSR had antisemitic policies of its own.

Have lots of bad-faith antisemitic questions been asked before? Yes, but that doesn't mean this particular person was asking in bad faith. (Thankfully, most bad-faith antisemitic questions end up getting deleted - if you want to know more about that, see the questions listed in Require questions about the Holocaust to receive moderator approval before publishing)

Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to check whether the user was behaving in bad faith. I can't see if they've posted any previous rude and abusive questions on Skeptics, let alone on biology, meta, Mi Yodeya (the SE about Judaism), or philosophy, even though it seems odd for a user to have a series of 1-rep accounts with no activity on a series of different stack exchanges. (Update: The user has since been deleted on at least this web site)

I'm also unable to see whether this question is similar in structure to any other question that's been deleted as rude and abusive, because I can't search for deleted questions.

I don't want to become a diamond mod - it's a commitment I don't have time for at the moment.

I'm feeling limited in what I can do to investigate a suspicious question - all I could do was flag the question as merely potentially suspicious, and let a diamond mod check it out. (I was declined, though I know the moderators take antisemitism seriously)

What else can I do?

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    When I declined your flag, I added a brief note saying I investigated and couldn't find evidence that it was a problem. Are those messages presented to you, or are they just journalled somewhere? I can't remember ever seeing one as a user.
    – Oddthinking Mod
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 23:15
  • 1
    @Oddthinking yes, this time I saw the message. Unlike in 2016, where you genuinely thought you sent a message but didn't.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Nov 13, 2019 at 11:17
  • 1
    The user who posted the question has now had their account deleted and the question itself has been protected. Perhaps you were right to be suspicious? I'm obviously not privy to what happened, but something clearly happened.
    – F1Krazy
    Commented Nov 13, 2019 at 16:58
  • 1
    @F1Krazy one mod deleted the question, a second mod undeleted the question, and the first mod protected the question.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Nov 13, 2019 at 20:22
  • 3
    @AndrewGrimm FYI: your editing of Holocaust-related questions has made the front page of skeptics.se all about Jews, which makes the site look pretty strange to a casual observer.
    – Criticizing Israel not allowed
    Commented Nov 18, 2019 at 10:24
  • FYI: you might have noticed this on politics: politics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4194/…
    – days of love iff good genes
    Commented Nov 23, 2019 at 22:38

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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What else can I do?

Nothing. You did what was needed. It was investigated and no evidence of bad-faith has been found so far. If this changes, it will be dealt with.

In addition a comment was posted:

Due to past anti-semitic trolling, a close eye will be kept on this question. - Oddthinking

That should hopefully be enough to indicate that the question is being monitored. It will continue to be monitored.

Please continue to flag content which may need review by a moderator. It is appreciated.

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If you think that these questions have been posted in bad faith, I think the better action would be to ignore them and let them get lost in the archives. Just by looking at the action, you just made sure that a lot of people are reading the questions. This could just as well have been the attempt of a bad-faith actor to spread this kind of conspiracy theories you want to fight.

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    “This question” or “these questions”?
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Nov 15, 2019 at 19:59
  • I regard the question that I was primarily talking about in my question as being asked in bad faith, but I don't necessarily regard the questions I retagged as being asked in bad faith. When I said that there were lots of previous questions asked in bad faith, I was referring to ones that have since got deleted.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 1:29
  • I've updated my question to clarify what I was referring to with "lots of bad-faith antisemitic questions" previously asked - the ones that have gotten deleted.
    – Golden Cuy
    Commented Nov 24, 2019 at 1:37

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