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https://money.stackexchange.com/a/134853/22266

The easiest and transparent way to sell gold and silver bullion is to sell them online through legitimate sources. Taking advantage of higher gold prices is the only strategy that investors follow to get great profits. If you want to sell a Pamp Suisse gold bar or an American Eagle 1 oz silver coin for the best possible price, the best way to sell them is online through a reputable buyer or a bullion dealer. As the price of gold and silver fluctuates, check the latest prices for coin value before buying or selling them either in-hand or online.

It has no reference to specific dealers, so can't be spam, and it's certainly not rude or abusive.

You might think it's low quality, but that's not reason for deletion.

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I deleted it after a spam flag, but without validating it as actual spam (which would have led to a rep penalty and a posting ban).

It seemed like "not an answer" to me, as the OP was asking "who are the actual buyers of bullion" and the answer was "find a reputable buyer of bullion online", along with some fluff about it producing great profits. If you strip out the fluff, the only actual content that addressed the question itself was "a reputable buyer or a bullion dealer". That might technically address the question but only technically.

Given the profile of the poster (a bullion dealer) I didn't spend that much effort thinking about it as it felt like they were just trying to advertise themselves than really answer the question. In other circumstances I might have spent a bit more time and left a comment to explain but my perception of this kind of "drive by" post is that it's very rare for the OP to come back anyway.

I agree that there is a very marginal case for keeping the post if we treat our rules as completely black and white and always err on the side of keeping content. But I stand by the view that it added nothing to the question.

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    #1 Bullion dealers are who buys/sells bullion, so it's a perfectly valid answer. #2 He didn't say anything about buying from a specific dealer. #3 What does "validation" mean? It's either "buy from Joe's Gold", or it's not. This answer said nothing about buying from the @DavidJerry company. Thus, deleting that answer is wrong and shameful.
    – RonJohn
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 16:33
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    @RonJohn I flagged it. Because: "The community tends to vote down overt self-promotion and flag it as spam. Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, that’s okay. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers." The answer was about their product, but no affiliation was disclosed. An answer, IMHO, need not advertise a specific business to be considered spam. Lack of disclosure when there's an affiliation to the product/service described is sufficient.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 17:22
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    @RonJohn To me it boils down to: is there an undisclosed potential conflict of interest in the advice? Yes.
    – Chris W. Rea
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 17:25
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    @ChrisW.Rea nothing in his answer mentioned his product or his website. It's like a car dealer saying that "The easiest and transparent way to sell" cars is through a car dealership. Well, that's true. Dave Jerry is a New Contributor, and we're supposed to be nice and helpful to new contributors, like telling him to disclose his affiliation instead of just arbitrarily deleting the answer.
    – RonJohn
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 17:31
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    As I said, personally I didn't delete it as spam per se, I deleted it because it didn't answer the question, and I gave it less consideration than average because I was sure from the wording and the profile that the underlying motivation was promotional. I mean sure, "bullion dealer" is an answer to "who buys and sells bullion" just as "1+1" is an answer to "what is 1+1?", but it doesn't actually add anything. Especially in this case when there were already several long-established answers that went into much more detail.
    – Ganesh Sittampalam Mod
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 18:57
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    "validating" a spam flag means confirming that I think it's actually spam, and means the poster gets a -100 rep penalty and likely gets their IP/account blacklisted for a while.
    – Ganesh Sittampalam Mod
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 19:00
  • @ChrisW.Rea His affiliation is in his profile, so it is indeed disclosed. Otherwise, you wouldn't have even known about it. If you think that the affiliation should be disclosed in the text of the answer, then a comment or an edit may have been more appropriate. How is a new user supposed to learn what was expected otherwise? Most users here never disclose who their employer is. How do we know if any of their answers are biased or not?
    – Ben Miller
    Commented Jan 14, 2021 at 19:41
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    @BenMiller-RememberMonica What you say might be theoretically the best approach and as I've said I didn't personally think the post was outright spam. But the reality is that the time that either diamond moderators or high-rep active users have to improve quality on the site is limited. This was almost certainly a drive-by post from someone primarily looking to advertise, and not really worth that much of said limited time. If I'd had a bit more time or thought it plausible the user would care I would have at least left a comment to explain. But I didn't and I don't particularly regret it.
    – Ganesh Sittampalam Mod
    Commented Jan 14, 2021 at 21:05
  • @GS-ApologisetoMonica I understand your viewpoint, but I respectfully submit that new users should be given the benefit of the doubt and given opportunities to improve. If you don't like the answer, and don't have time to even leave a comment, a downvote takes less time than even a flag.
    – Ben Miller
    Commented Jan 14, 2021 at 21:09

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