Quick question for any mods or users who have reported this kind of thing before.

We all know that referral link spam is against the rules:

My question relates to users who post links to third party pages or sites which are solely designed to lead people to clicking on referral links. The most recent user I've seen doing this is gocryptowise, but he certainly isn't unique in this behavior. He's started multiple topics in the last few days, and made many more posts, containing links to various pages on his site which shares his name (I will not link to it here, but you can review his post history if you are interested).

The pages he links to are disguised as a variety of "helpful" guides for newbies - "How to make money from cryptocurrency", "Best cryptocurrencies to invest in", "Beginner's guide to crypto", that kind of thing. Every single page contains link after link to sign up to various exchanges using his referral code, or buy hardware wallets using his referral code, or buy some tax software using his referral code, and so on. It's also worth noting that large parts of many of the articles seem to be plagiarized.

Even ignoring the plagiarism since it is off-site, to me linking to a page entirely designed to get people to click on your referral links is no better than just posting the referral links themselves, and these posts should be trashed. Am I accurate in my thinking here?

The referral link spamming isn't directly happening in the forum so I don't think it is a reason for a ban.

I checked the website for a few minutes, it didn't look like it is completely filled with referral links.

Plagiarized or not (didn't care that much) I think the website provides some information.

Is he promoting his website? Yes he does.

But every signature wearer promotes some website... So... I don't see a problem here. There are far worse spammers who post complete non-sense. His is a far better poster than them. Click ignore, problem solved.

I dont know to see that as an Ref Link directly but i saw something similar in the Mining Board too !

Its not directly an ref link and its getting you to some Amazon page where you can buy hardware things for Mining Rigs .
The Ref Link gets just activated when you realy buy this product there .

This is the thread for i have seen it lately https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5210557.0


Guess its maybe the same thing here but dont know , just have seen it and its not an direct Ref Link so should be not a reason for a ban.

A lot of member here spams here for getting backlink. I guess that's what he is doing as well. The referral link he shared in his article is common practice for most of the bloggers.
Most CPA marketers either do guest posting or forum posting to have some backlink for ranking up a keyword. That doesn't mean he is sharing the link for having leads.
The guy you referred are having backlink as well, so that's can't be marked as spam; although it is. If it is marked as spam by mods, I guess a lot of articles will be deleted.

I just re-read the rule book. Isn't rule 24 (and rule 22) has something to do with what he (and most of us) is doing.

Maybe I need to clean my glasses but am I getting this wrong? Because "rule 24" clearly says "Advertisements in posts aren't allowed."

It even says including signatures... I mean... bruh...

The problem is... where do you draw the line? For instance, what about people linking to news stories on news websites that contain advertisements (and/or referral links)? Should we prevent people from doing this too?

I don't think it is something that we can (nor should) actively police. As long as the initial link isn't a referral link and the site isn't an obvious scam/malware site, then I personally don't see any issue with it... if people want to click links on external sites once they're there, that's their problem.

Yep, I'm pretty sure that's the only reason that member is on the forum.  I've seen some of his posts, and the way he's spamming is devious and annoying at the same time.  I've seen crap like this before and have had the same reaction--except I've always reported posts like that, since they're basically advertising spam no matter how much you dress it up to look like a regular post.  It's like putting lipstick on a pig.

Nah, I wouldn't go that far--but it's obviously not my call to make.  I don't envy the mods and the kinds of decisions they have to make about this stuff.  But news links are generally pretty valuable, regardless of how much advertising they contain or the intent of the member who linked to a news source.

gocryptowise in each post is indeed always pinned its own website link. But we must see the posts that he made useful or not for forum users.
in my opinion if the post has benefits and does not directly include a referral link on the post will not be a problem.
Although in the article he spread a lot of referral links. But there is no encouragement or coercion to follow the link.
the articles he made are also good and not spam articles.

Theymos has also talked about the Ads Link in the post:

this is a blogger way to get backlinks from bitcointalk.

I don't think there is any difference between making a new topic and posting in other threads. Rules are rules.
There is a big difference between the post made by LTU_btc and posts mentioned in the OP.
LTU_btc has made that post in micro-earning which is sub-board of service Announcement. As a service is announced, so no rule is broken.
gocryptowise is posting links to his/her website everywhere in the forum. He is advertising his/her website in Beginners & Help, Trading Discussion, Altcoin Discussion, Service Discussion (Altcoins), etc.
In my opinion this user breaks the rules, even if his website doesn't include referral links.

I usually report these kind of posts with this comment. "Advertising using external links."

And when the post history is full of links: Advertising using external links. Please check the post history of this user too.

You and me are doing that in only one board, and we respect the rule of bumping our thread once per 24 hours. The user in question is without question using the forum to promote his site, and it is only doubtful how many of his posts are against rule number 24. I personally don't see anything substantial and useful which would justify his links.

Direct referral links are also allowed in at last one part of the forum (Gambling), and a concrete example is this user who has no problem with posting direct ref links in few threads.

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Personally, I find that there are users who are working for some web-sites and get pay for posting their links on forum. They are aware that moderators do not delete such posts if they write several lines of text and add a link, but let's be honest, such things are very irritating and should not be allowed.