Hi Matte: as you saw on your story, Sanjay recognised that the story was not in fact spam and acknowledged that he had made a mistake by posting the second flag (ie, "not spam"). Your article was reinstated by this action and has the same status as all other articles that are not spam. For reasons of transparency - and the fact that others have since commented - I think it is appropriate to leave the discussion on your story.

I have full sympathy for matte and what he was outlining but sanjay has agreed to his mistake and this story has an happy ending.The story is back.Sanjay should be forgiven.

My suggestion on this whole issues is that spam flagging should be designated to the editors who are working in that area for e.g. if some editor is from canada or america he should be allowed to flag spams of that area,If the editor is from India he should spam the mail eminating from India.

come on Matte be a sport forgive him,this is my humble request

P.S.love ur stories

Hey, Azzy, I think that any editor should have the right and responsibility to flag any material. This is supposed to be an international operation. How can we learn to talk to and learn about each other if we divide up territories?  :)

One  of the key things that's important in editing, I think, is consistency. When I  raised an editing issue recently, on the column for the related story, I was reprimanded and told to place it in the forums rather than in the column. Matte was told to take it back to the column.

Another editor, in defending Sanjay, noted that looking at the post, it looked like spam. I have 2 issues with that. Firstly, if you have a long-time contributor, they're not likely to suddenly go spamming. Secondly, the issue would have been solved if both editors had simply.....followed the link. And the circling-the-wagons  that staff sometimes does  kinda just ignores the basic issue: was the material (regardless of personalities) properly flagged? Rather than making it all personal and subjective, it would help to instead look at the issue, and ...follow the link......!

I've found that it's very very easy to catch spam, plagiarism, and other things, and find out whether the material is really as presented, simply by using the tools and following the link provided. In the future, I hope that more editors follow the links and also do some basic research if they're unsure if something is original or stolen, or spam. It only seems fair, and one of the basic things to do.

It's true, Sanjay has apologized. And that was a good thing to do, and I applaud him for that. It's nice to see a staffer apologize and/or accept an apology; it sets a good example.

"In the future, I hope that more editors follow the links and also do
some basic research if they're unsure if something is original or
stolen, or spam. It only seems fair, and one of the basic things to do."

So efforts can be directed towards finding more creative news instead of me following a link in the sidebar only to see that this story continues to run on.

If I think there is a SPAM article, I go through all of it to see if ultimatly there is a sole commerical purpose.  It is not spam if you have a link to your own site within the article.  I will alaso ask another npee to take a look and see if ny conclusions are correct.  I think the Wranglers should have a couple additional features, one of which is deleting spam.

Is it allowable when a contributor offers a link that goes to a book within their Amazon account for commissions? I recently saw a post where a contributor had mentioned 3 related books and surprise! All three were books at Amazon that if you purchased them, would kick back a commission to the account holder.

Is this OK? We need to know.

We look at stories on a case-by-case basis but generally speaking the answer is no - it's not OK to link to something from which you would profit. Please see our Spam guide for more on this.