Not playing devil's advocate or anything, but how is this considered advertising and spam? The link is to a blog that is not commercial, nor charges for access. Might be a way of trying to drive traffic, but I don't see what would be against the rules?
To me, coming to a man's forum or website just to try to steer that man's traffic over to your site
is just plain rude.
It would be like coming here in the nature forum of LuLa and, instead of just posting a nature photo for everyone to enjoy saying,
"Click on the link to my site to view my nature images!" Again, this is just rude and lame.
If Jeff has some helpful things to post, why can't he just post them here on this site? If he wants to post them over on his own site, then stay over there. But if Jeff isn't getting enough traffic of his own, it is simply bad manners to come here just to shamelessly solicit it.
For example, Alain Briot and others have their own sites too, but when they come here to this site to post their articles
they do so as contributors, not as thieves! You don't see Alain trying to steer business
from LuLa, you see him
contributing to LuLa's article base over here. Sure, there is a link to Alain's website too, but this is a
reciprocal benefit from Alain to LuLa and from LuLa to Alain ... it is not one man just coming another's site trying to steal his viewers in a one-way manner.
Maybe Jeff means well, but his methods have a slimy "used car salesman" feel to them ... and I say that as someone who sold cars once
The way I see it, We have the availability of placing our website
as signatures under each post, which is a nice enhancement. But this is a silent, subtle form of advertising that is okay (and which someone can choose to click-on, or not, on their own). It is not a direct "Look at me! Look at me!" shameless attempt to divert traffic away from the site-holder's forum onto your own.
I think if Jeff wants his articles to be seen so bad that he should ask for Michael's permission to have his articles posted
here in Michael's article base for us to read (or Jeff should post them here on the forums himself), and if any of us thinks they're good enough we will take it upon ourselves to click onto Jeff's website link to see more. But this shameless "Look at me! Look at me!" one-way attempt to divert traffic away from here onto his own site is in very poor taste.
That's my $0.02,
Jack
.