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Why was my post marked as "spam/offensive"?

I’m confused why my recent answer about changing an oil pan was declared as “spam/offensive.” I have experience changing oil pans, took a while to write a thoughtful response, even did extra research because I wanted to help. Honestly I felt it was a really thorough and possibly helpful answer.

In looking up the common flags, it says that marking something as spam/offensive should be used as a “last resort” and not if someone makes an innocent mistake. After earning just one reputation point, I’m down 100. It’s frustrating and discouraging, because I’ve just learned how to be a part of answering questions (after lurking for years, getting vicarious answers for issues in my IT work) and I feel like I have a lot to add as a self-taught working class woman with many years of experience fixing computers, cars, and pretty much any broken thing I come across.

I understand that there’s a serious spam issue, and that I’m new. But is attaching such an extreme “last resort” label to an answer really the way to go? Would a spam bot really go on about their own experience, ways to diagnose, the actual procedure and alternatives? Even if I did go about the answer wrong, why isn’t there any kind of feedback - an explanation, a warning, or a chance to make it better?

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Hi Kat,

Sorry about your post! This definitely sounds like a mistake—I’m guessing that our spam bot flagged your post in error. I’ll reopen your post and mark it as valid, so hopefully the filter will know not to flag you in the future. (However, if you do run into trouble with the spam bot again, you can email moderation@ifixit.com, and we’ll take care of it there.)

P.S. Your post was awesome, and it’s great that you took the time to share your auto knowledge with the community. I hope you’ll stick around iFixit, and let me know if there’s anything else I can help with! :)

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Thank you!!!

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Yeah, IRobot loves doing that, I have tried to post links to spam posts and it’ll reject them. Not sure, but thanks for helping the guides! :)

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Kat Randolph will be eternally grateful.