Spam Flag declined.. exactly what *is* the line?

Question

I flagged this answer, and questions by this user on SU, SF, UL and here - he has had a clear pattern of similar posts with minimal content, linking back to the site. This sort of breaks the self promotion rule and seems flaggable to me.

I only worked this out cause I remember seeing the domain somewhere else, and finding this through a SE wide search. The decline reason is " declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention "

Well, I'd consider this spam, and as such chose to flag it. If it isn't, at what point do we consider somewhat pointless SEO attempts (since new users have nofollow tags on links) to be spam and not?

Answer 1

My take on this.

Spam is where a post does not bear a close enough relationship to the question posed, just provides links to irrelevant external material - and/or looks like self promotion to an owners website.

It appears at first glance to be on-topic & relevant.

• What Constitutes Spam?

The link in the answer seems to have some relevance to the question being asked i.e. The link provided is to an article with relevance to the question posed.

Thus to the Self-promotion issue - this should really have a pattern to this.

Having asked other MoDs from other sites (yes we have a room for just MoDs) - I just got blank looks.

I can only surmise the reason for deletion of answers from other sites was that there was indeed a pattern to the person.

On AU there doesnt appear to be a pattern of self-promotion (yet).

Thus, I dont believe this falls into the spam category.

The standard comment text would apply though:

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.