gpilling - 10:40 pm on May 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

In reading the threads about pro spammers I noticed a lot of names that used to contribute a great deal of quality information, that have not posted in a long while. DigitalGhost, WebGuerilla, Paynt, Sugarrae--- these people added a lot of content and help. What do THEY think about these questions? Surely they left for some reason.

About your questions:
1. What is wrong with Matt Cutts finding out about spam?
2. I need to buy products, and forums are a way to find out about them. You get much more NEGATIVE reviews about products in forums than you do in the typical online Yelp, Insiderpage type sites. Those are much easier to spam. It might be nice to find out what other people think about the tools to use to do this job.
3. whisper campaigns. sounds like people that tweet about their product all the time. I unfollow them - is there an equivalent in forums? banning?
4. Other forums or sites could have useful information. To read it there and discuss it here would benefit your users, not harm you. And yes, they will come back to discuss it here.
5. professional forum spammers- do they add value? then keep, if not- ban.
6. If Rand wants to add value to your site and he gets some promotion, how is WebmasterWorld losing on the deal? You had value added.

I guess I am modifying my position on links, and seeing some of the value in dropping them. The old pros here all say the value is in the discussion, so why does that discussion have to be limited to the WebmasterWorld walled garden? Why did the other big names mentioned above leave? Surely you are still in contact with them, so you can find out easily enough. Ask. What would they do about WebmasterWorld?

I am grateful for everything I have learned here, from 26 steps on, but in the last few days I realize that I get a lot more information now from twitter and other places where links abound.

For a technological solution, make a flagging system "this comment has been downgraded to oblivion" and let the users flag the crap. This would ease the burden on the mods.