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I reviewed this answer and flagged it as spam. I see on my flag history that it was declined with the comment a moderator reviewed your flag, but found no evidence to support it. The answer has since been removed. Why was this question not spam? Should I have flagged it differently?

For those who can't see it, it was basically "I wrote a blog post about this. Here it is."

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For context, this is the post:

It's a legit user who wrote an article that's relevant to the question. And they'd like to share it. There's nothing wrong with that, except that we don't like link-only answers. Hence the comment and the deletion.

This is not spam. It would be spam if the entire participation record of this user consisted of links to their blog, to various articles, only to promote their website. We do get this quite often, but you'll notice it ("Look at my blog for answer!") – often including lots of advertisement and free downloads and whatnot.

It would also be spam if the user tried to sell us a crappy tool (which often coincides with a fake name or location).

If you see a genuine person posting a link to their website, and the answer isn't useful without the link, flag it as "not an answer".

For spam, we'd need to either see the typical spammer's language ("I recommend use SuperRecoverUltra to recover files! It best program and cheap.") or a pattern of very similar answers without disclosure.

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  • Thanks for the answer. I guess my interpretation of what spam is was wrong. I saw this as self-promotional, hence my flag.
    – Cfinley
    Jul 23, 2014 at 18:01

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