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This user just awakened an ancient thread on EE.SE simply to promote his own article. He tried to make it look like it was not his article - obvious spam, nothing to see, please move along.

Now, I don't take kindly to spammers, so I checked his account here on Arduino.SE, and.. it's complicated.

Every post but two has a link to his personal website, often without further comment and almost never even hinting that he wrote them. He also doesn't mention the answers, but forces people to click through. So far, so bad.

What's problematic is that the information in the link may very well be good answers to the questions, sometimes the only answer. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't want to flag all the posts as spam. Maybe a stern warning from a moderator is in order?

I know too little about the culture here at Arduino.SE, but I feel that something is not right with those posts.

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  • Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I have a quick question: how do you know that these are his articles that he is linking to? Most of them should be removed anyway as they are "link only answers," but I can't see anything to prove that the sites that he links to are his own. (Please reply to me using @Anonymous somewhere in your message so I'll get a notification that you replied to me.)
    – Anonymous Penguin
    Sep 15, 2016 at 23:47
  • At the bottom of one of the linked pages (at least) are the words by the author: "I am Syed Zain Nasir". So, he is self-identifying as the author on the target site. It isn't as obvious on the SE posts he is linking to his own pages. Personally I usually say "my page ..." rather than "see this page" to make it clear I am referencing my own work.
    – Nick Gammon Mod
    Sep 16, 2016 at 6:30
  • @AnonymousPenguin Indeed, what Nick Gammon says, all the articles he links to has "By Syed Zain Nasir" in the top bar, and they end with "I am Syed Zain Nasir, the founder of The Engineering Projects (TEP)."
    – pipe
    Sep 16, 2016 at 9:27
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    I think we might just comment on his answers and mention he should provide more details. Putting links (even to one's own posts) does not seem bad too me, as long as the articles are related to the question (obviously!) AND the content of the linked article is put back (in part, only the relevant stuff) into the answer. Adding a claim that the answerer is also the poster of the linked article might be welcome too, but not mandatory from my viewpoint.
    – jfpoilpret
    Oct 1, 2016 at 8:58

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