I hit a review audit that I thought was just about on the OK side of borderline spam.
See the original audit review (Only viewable by +10k rep); original text of the deleted answer:
I have a solution for this problem of yours, you can use an open source tool called Jumbune(www.jumbune.org).
Jumbune's debugger provides code level control flow statistics of MapReduce job. User may apply regex validations or its own user defined validation classes. As per validations applied, Flow Debugger checks the flow of data for mapper and reducer respectively and will give a very detailed view of where your MapReduce application is going wrong.
Ignoring the fact that I failed the audit for hitting "edit" (which seems was logged as a "Looks good" action). I was of two minds about the validity of it as an answer.
On one hand - yes it is promoting a tool and the author may have perhaps been posting similar promotional answers elsewhere that I guess I could have checked up on.
On the other hand though - it does explain what the tool does, how it can help in the specific situation the OP was looking for help with. It would be up to them whether or not they opted to use the tool (and I didn't check to see if it was a paid product or not).
I can't do any research into the user or post now, but that's a separate issue
My overall Question here though is when is a spam answer like this not a spam answer? Answers suggesting tools as a possible solution to a problem should not be unwelcome as a rule.
Are there any actual guidelines or rules of thumb to be following or is it all open to interpretation case by case and dependant on how "customised" or "copy paste like" an answer feels?
I would at least suggest that the review in Question be removed from the audit pool if we can agree there's an amount to leeway in how to interpret it.
I'm not asking for the ban to be reversed and I'll happily take the 2 day ban (my very first) if people agree that this is a clear cut case.
Related:
Limits for self-promotion in answers
What is the exact definition of "spam" for Stack Overflow?
More related posts found on meta.SE:
Limits for self-promotion in answers
How can I link to an external resource in a community-friendly way?
