Chris,

You ask a really good question. I am an 'expert', and I participate in several forums very similar to this. The practices you all have described are common, and I have to say that Startups Admin and the 'Mod' team are pretty good at keeping an eye on them. Like you, I feel strongly that the 'quality' of the interaction actually depends on real contribution, not just a 'lick and a promise'.

Some of them, the 'here read this' guys, are just as you describe. Exercising their little 'hidden agendas'. Others are just ignorant, lazy children who come here to play and try to build 'points' for some ego driven purpose. Either way, both are less than desireable in an information sharing setting.

I don't read every post, or every queston. But I promise you this: drop me a line on any that you see and feel needs attention, and I will certainly look at it just as soon as possible. If I don't take direct action, it will get kicked up to one of the other Mods or Admin.

By the way, Jay, the one you flagged yesterday is gone. :) handled just as described.

Use the 'comment' boxes. Flag what you can. Contact one of the 'Mod' guys. It is YOUR site, and keeping it clean is in everybody's best interests.

Another, 'by the way': This site is by far the highest quality site I've seen. Questions are asked that apply directly to the purposes of the site, and answers for the most part are valuable and interesting. It's only because people like you get involved.

Thank you all!

Over on StackOverflow, I expect this might get closed, or at least transferred to meta. However, to my knowledge, there is no meta for Startups, and I've not seen many closed questions here on Startups.

Anyway, I have to admit that I've seen this practice several times and find it annoying also. Doubly so when their answer doesn't really say anything more than "follow my link". My preference would be for folks just to link to their sites from their user page.

That said, considering a couple things about the site, it not surprising:

• Firstly, when one has low reputation, one is limited to just one link in one's answer. This can limit the usefulness of answers given, so in those circumstances, I could excuse a good answer with a link to other links.
• Given the nature of the site, I can see how some people would use it as a means to generate hits on their own sites, especially if they're trying to generate ad revenue from the site.

The above is not a real answer I suppose, but (speaking of low reputation) I don't high enough reputation to enter this as a comment.

In answer to your "Are you people legit?" question: Currently I do not work for myself; I work for a small business doing government contracting and have some thoughts about trying to help it grow. Also, I have an interest in starting a side business which I hope might eventually become full time. However, personal circumstances currently prevent that.

Legit..that is up to us, the reality is web 2.0 you have to police yourselves. The cost to monitor every single thing would be too expensive for any company. They give us fun little coins where you hope someday it leads to hot sex.. it never does.. but still this site fills a need but it depends on us. Truth is it is a chance to show off what you don't know.. nothing like taking a risk and sounding stupid. It is more fun than TC which will censor my special brand of crazy cause mike is a slave to the ads on his site.. as we all are..lol..

Logically linking to good sites would increase ones reputation.. I wonder if I could use the reputation on my job application.. amoung my fellow dumbasses online I am a professor.. the absolute funny thing is.. this girl who is kind of hot, she was learning blogging from a prof who didn't know why you blog.

My advice is be harsh with those who link to crap, be kind to those who link to good sites.. love those who link to megan fox..

The posts on startups.com are indexed by the search engines. Spammers link to their posts in hope of increasing their page rank. Often, the links are to some crappy articles that don't say much, but have nice links to AdSense ads. That's where spammers make money.

The solution is fairly simple. If somebody does not offer useful content with a link, or if they link to a crappy article peppered with Adsense ads to make money on clicks, then we have to vote down their postings.

Another way to get rid of spam is to make sure we diligently up-vote good content. I'm as guilty of the next guy for not doing that, but it is the only way to drown out the crap.

I think all of you guys have a point. I think we've miss-educated our users, and I'm going to take actions against that. I'm putting up a System Message, to remind people that when linking to an outside source, they should at least tell people where they're linking to, why, etc. The bottom line should be: link with value, not just "check this out" because that's weak and no value is added to the community.

PS: We are legit :)