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I came across this answer in the First Answers review queue which I wasn't sure about, so I was hoping to get some insight from other members of the community.

On the one hand, it does kinda-sorta address the question. On the other hand, the answer was given three months after the question was asked, as the first post by a new user, and leads up to an external link which is offtopic here.

Should it have been flagged as spam, or should we give new users the benefit of the doubt?

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  • Tastes like spam to me.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Oct 26, 2021 at 9:46
  • Looking at the link and thinking again apparently a "robot mop" is a roomba, a tool which is spectacularly useless for cleaning computer keyboards, unless you habitually leave your keyboard on the floor overnight. It would also need to be able to get on top of the keyboard and have rather impressive suction to do anything useful. There is no reason at all to suggest that kind of device for the intended purpose of cleaning keyboards and so the answer moves even further into territory of "exists only to post a link".
    – Mokubai Mod
    Oct 26, 2021 at 10:27

1 Answer 1

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While we should indeed give new users the benefit of the doubt there is a very fine line between a genuine but misguided attempt to help and an excuse of an answer only intended to post a link.

If they'd have left out the link then we could assume the former, that they are actually trying to help, the link pushes the answer firmly into the latter.

The link is to some random blog post about robot mops (roombas) on an "expert" site, rather than any well known brand that doesn't need this kind of spammy advertising, and is borderline useless to the actual question asked.

We don't actually care about vacuum cleaners or sites where you can buy them and that one broke because it sucked up a piece of plastic is a sad commentary on how awful or broken their cleaner already was.

A roomba cleaner is also pretty much useless in the context of cleaning a computer keyboard.

In my opinion the answer has no other reason to exist except to post that link.

Redacted content of original answer for the curious:

I would not advise doing this because I have one unpleasant case associated with cleaning the computer with a vacuum cleaner. I always ate over the keyboard and after a while it started to work badly. I decided to clean it with a vacuum cleaner. As a result, during suction, the button fell off and it was sucked into vacuum cleaner. This caused the breakdown of my vacuum cleaner. This situation <makes me think>(link to a blog post about a robot mop) about buying a new vacuum cleaner. I chose the robot mop and I am very happy.

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    The website linked to was obviously designed for spam posts. There is no benefit of the doubt possible in a case like this
    – Ramhound
    Oct 27, 2021 at 9:06

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