How do we handle one hit answers pimping own sites?

Question

I've noticed that due to the nature of the site, Web Apps tends to get a lot of one-hit answers from people pushing their own sites.

For example:

• Is there a web-based VNC?

Looking a look at the answer:

• Post is by someone who's affiliated to the site
• The person doesn't disclose their affiliation
• That's the only post by the person

Should these be deemed as spam? I ask because the faq mentions:

Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, so be it.

(emphasis mine)

But with just one post, is it a good sample to be considered as spam? I'm inclined to say yes, because the person is just pushing their site instead of helping the community as a whole, but if there's no other answer on the site, does this one-hit answer qualify to be considered as spam? What're the Community's thoughts on this?

Answer 1

It qualifies as self-promotion as the link is also in their profile section. Comment, asking for affiliation. If they don't take the time to respond then they are indeed just dropping their business card and leaving, so delete sounds reasonable.

See: What is the official policy on identifying yourself as a team member for a product?

Answer 2

I know that since I have joined Web Applications and gained the respective rep points I have tried my best to regularly clear the review queue for First Posts and Late Posts. I try to flag these types of posts as spam when I encounter them.

I have noticed that when I check these users profile they usually have only been members for a few hours and they usually have more then one post that are almost identical to each other advertising their sites/products with no disclosure of affiliation or real reason for recommendation.

Almost all of these types of posts end up in the spam box for moderators or the edit queue (for me at least since I don't have instant edit abilities yet) since I have edit in a description of the product/service/site being advertised after a visit to their site.

As Alex noted in the comments section above, some of the spam flags are getting rejected. I do not think that any of us see it as intentional, but rather as more due to the mods having enough work load that they do not see the same reasons to the flag as those of us with few responsibilities. I do think it would be extremely useful to have a comment box to add a reason and note to the mods as to why we believe that it is spam. It may also be useful to have a see also box were we could add links to the user's other posts that repeat the spam. I really do feel that this would help to clarify and improve the spam reporting and removal.

I am not sure exactly what the best solution would be, but one other starting thought to help to try to curb this a bit, is that we could try to implement a no external links on a new users first two posts or before at least one upvote or during the first 24 hours. These are of course only starting thoughts and obviously would need more opinions and thoughts on them.