Usually URL links that may contain advertising is not actually allowed on Answerbag. You may have seen some many other URL links, but are not rather related to advertising, usually to Answerbag.

Some people do, in fact I've been a victim of this myself. Someone was asking people for the best site they've ever been into, I posted the ones in my bookmarks, and I got rated down. I sometimes mark it down if the user who posted the site SEEMS to be a spammer [ie. is a lvl 1 user with less than 20 posts, or if I try the site and it's garbage] But I don't do it automatically. I've seen people make great website suggestions, so obviously that won't warrant a markdown from me.

I flag heavily, but I don't flag questions that mention a web address as spam. Usually I just recategorize them. I think one of my questions that mentioned a website http://www.lovecalculator.com/ was also marked as spam/offensive. That's why right now, I'm trying to avoid asking questions that mention a website.

I've seen plenty of links in questions and they usually get hit with a reject flag, though not by me unless the person is an obvious spammer and doe sit multiple times, and they just joined AB. It seems like this site doesn't really approve of having links in questions that may send you or encourage you to leave here. That could be it, but' I'm not sure about that. I see them used in answers all the time and use them myself but again, unless it's an obvious spammer, out to promote their website, I leave them alone.

I flag spam when the same answer (with link) is given over and over to many different questions. Sometimes the answer is not even relevant to the question, but usually a spammer pulls up all the old questions that are on the subject, and posts his spam to all of them. I flag those. I flagged a user for doing that the other day, and he claimed his answer was a good one, because it was relevant to the question. I say spamming is spamming.

1) I think Galeanda is right, links in questions are not encouraged on this site. The proof: - links in questions never work - links in questions contains inserted spaces Because of this, if you want to reach such a link, you have to: 1. copy the link into the address field of your browser 2. suppress the spaces 3. enter the corrected address (you could also suppress the spaces inside an editor) 2) On Answerbag, it is often considered spamming if you just ask a question like "What do you think of this site: www.ibm.com ?" It would be different if you just pointed at a particular page, like "What do you think of this video: youtube.com/PPP ?" It is considered better practice to formulate a question which does not necessarily need further informations from a link or a video to be answered. At the least, it is better if you get an idea about the question by just reading the text. This help also to avoid duplicates. Example; don't ask: "What do you think of this site? www.peta.org", ask rather "What do you think about the site of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) on www.peta.org ?" However, this question could still be rejected because it could be seen as just making publicity for PETA. 3) As an example, this is a question of mine which was rejected as Spam: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/534374 The problem with this question is that it seems to focus on a particular company (actually, I wanted to focus of a particular, interesting product). 4) According to the Answerbag Terms of Use, "You must not post to the Service any Content that, as reasonably determined by Answerbag, is or appears to be the following: " "- unsolicited, undisclosed or unauthorized advertising;" http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/15 "If a user references a business with a link or with unsolicited information about a product, it should be flagged as spam." http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/99373 5) New users who post a lot of this kind of questions could easily make such experience. My recommendation would be to avoid to ask this kind of questions too often. Wenn I flag items, I do not assume that a mention of a web address is automatically advertising. I usually follow the link or, at least, read it (some links can be classified offensive from their very address text).