Trading Links a Hazard?

Yahoo excuse...

[rogerd]

In this thread [webmasterworld.com] Gavstar reports that Yahoo told him that his "site has been banned because I have traded links with other webmasters. And because I have affiliate links on my site."

This certainly seems like a bizarre rationale for a penalty, although it seems to be a general belief that recips either are or will be devalued. Is anyone concerned that some at some threshold reciprocal linkage could actually be harmful?

[walkman]

"traded links"

depends on the extent I would say. Otherwise, 95% of the sites would ba banned.
[help.yahoo.com...]
--
Pages that harm accuracy, diversity, or relevance of search results
Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent, or provide a poor user experience
Pages dedicated to redirecting the user to another page
Pages in great quantity, automatically generated or of little value
Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
The use of text that is hidden from the user
Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
Pages built primarily for search engines
Misuse of competitor names/products
--------
those two can be interpreted broadly. Your own sites, or with other sites? And the built for SE, who doesn't do some SEO? I guess soon we'll learn by trial and error

[rogerd]

After a bit more research, I think the real risk factors related to the original post didn't involve conventional reciprocal linking by quality sites.