As a new user on Ask Different, and of Macs in general, I have a limited amount of knowledge to contribute to the community. I was drawn to Ask Different while seeking and later discovering a solution to a range of problems that feature in multiple questions on here.
The solution, however, is achieved by installing a single application, so I'm concerned that returning to all these questions with the recommendation of this single product will appear like astroturfing and raise suspicion, especially considering my lack of otherwise unrelated activity.
I am entirely unaffiliated with the application and its developer, and I would of course strive to answer the questions according to community guidelines in a relevant, individually tailored fashion.
Should I be concerned about being accused of astroturfing?
If I were accused, would I be afforded the opportunity to argue my case?
Does this scenario warrant the consideration of additional guidelines to avoid putting other, new users in the same dilemma?
Although the Ask Different Help Center's page on spamming does suggest I'm not at risk given my independence, the specific scenario is not addressed.
On another Ask Different Meta question, Daniel has suggested a help page for users charged with spamming who are seeking recourse:
I'd be more okay with a more aggressive anti-spam approach if we had a help page about "My message got deleted as spam but I wasn't trying to post spam. What happened and what can I do?"
For added context, other meta-discussions from various communities have emphasized volume, affiliation, seniority, recency, and relevance as factors in targeting astroturfing, factors among which many seem to stack up against my case:
Could we set out objective criteria for what is “spam” or “commercial promotion” here?
If a new, mostly unidentified, unregistered, 1-rep user posts an answer to an old question, and the answer mentions/links to a commercial product or service, or a sketchy blog/article linking to such, my shit-detector goes off. [by Chris W. Rea]
If a user's first post is to recommend software that actually is relevant to solving someone else's problem, I'm inclined to give the user the benefit of the doubt. Now if the same piece of shady software keeps popping up in first-post recommendations, if the user only recommends software in answers and nothing else[...], fire away. [by Daniel]
Is it appropriate to mention my product in a StackOverflow answer?
[...]it would also depend on the numbers; if [every] answer you post is a plug for your product, there is a chance you will get flagged as spam - and possibly even astro-turfing. [by Marc Gravell]
Astroturfing on Stack Overflow
[...]how can you tell the difference between an enthusiastic user and genuine astroturfing? In this case it was pretty obvious because the user had little content otherwise [...][by Kyle Cronin]
Old recommendation answer flags declined?
This user joined two days ago, and in that time has posted two answers. Both are late answers to old topics. The text of the two answers are word-for-word identical[...] The posts are not really off-topic, I will grant you that, but the motivation of the poster is clear. [by Ernest Friedman-Hill]
