While reading this answer, I stumbled upon a referral link for a service similar to Dropbox. The link is one of those kind "Click my link and register, so I get more free space"
Should I remove them?
The rest of the answer seems somehow useful and the user tried to give a worthy answer.
Frankly, I think referral (or affiliate) links should be nuked on sight.
Okay, sure, there's disclosure here, so nobody's being tricked. But what if that leads someone to post another answer to the same question, perhaps with some more detail so it's more valuable, with a referral link of their own? It's a better answer, so why shouldn't it stay?
More likely, someone posts a good answer that contains a referral link, but six members of the community flag it as spam. Then that answer owner comes over to Meta to complain that their post was wrongly flagged, especially since here are these other answers that also have referral links. Why haven't they been deleted/flagged? Where do you draw the line? How much disclosure is enough? How much detail in the answer is enough? Is each person allowed to post one answer with a referral link? One link per service? If I post a lot in the Dropbox tag, why can't four or five of my answers have referral links?
No, I think allowing referral links is more trouble than it is worth.
As commented above, as long as
then I don't think there's a need to remove the referral link. If the referral link is the only thing that's being blasted across - then you know where & how to make use of the spam flag.
