8

This is a slight variant on the previous topic about obvious advertising.

Let's say there's someone who enters 7 answers within a few hours of sign-up, and hasn't returned since. Half of those answers point at for-pay software which he doesn't personally develop, but is sold at 30% commission by a marketplace site which employs him as a blogger, on the topic of marketing(...)

Despite not actually producing the software there's still a vested, if indirect, interest here that calls for disclosure, right? I'm not calling spam(yet; it's only been a week), but it definitely looks a bit like Astroturf to me.

2 Answers 2

6

Flag them for moderators who can review them and make a decision based on the quality of their answers. We might remove them, we might edit them, or we might do nothing at all. It will be judged on a case-by-case basis. But we may not notice them otherwise without you, or anybody, flagging them for us. Be sure to leave a comment when flagging an answer that says they are astroturfing or advertising so we know to review their entire history and not just that one answer.

And full disclosure is required in those cases. If they're associated with the sites they link to they need to be up front about it.

1
  • Alright. Incoming.
    – Su'
    Jul 4, 2011 at 17:08
4

In addition to John's (correct!) answer, I just want to point out that the faq has a section specifically addressing this:

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/faq#promotion

May I promote products or websites I am affiliated with here?

Be careful, because the community frowns on overt self-promotion and tends to vote it down and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, so be it. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.

If a huge percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source projects and non-profit organizations.

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