Posting a link to a site with list

Question

User asks "Is IIS SFTP natively supported by Windows Server 2012 R2?". The question is in "protected" state.

The correct answer is that IIS does not support SFTP and that he has to install a third party SFTP server. Having list of third party Windows servers could be helpful, but might be considered spam or 'shopping recommendation' type of answer.

I'm maintaining list of SFTP servers for Windows at sftp.net/servers.

Two questions:

• Is it OK to post a new answer to that question with a link to the site? Or is it considered a spam? The site is free.

• Is it recommended to post an excerpt from the server list in order to have at least a part of answer in ServerFault just in case if sftp.net goes offline? Are links to specific servers recommended or forbidden?

Answer 1

The question is only about if IIS natively supports SFTP. Two answers clearly state this isn't the case, thus the question has been answered.

Adding a third answer with just your list as an added bonus would be largely redundant in my view, but if you happen to come across a new or unanswered question like this, adding the link (with proper disclosure) would be OK. For your example question, adding a comment would also be OK. What we usually don't like is actively searching for questions where you could drop a link to your product and doing this a number of times in a row.

As for copying the list to an answer: You are right, we don't like link-only answers, but in this case, the link would be just an added bonus to the actual answer, so I wouldn't insist on it.

Answer 2

Some general suggestions (then some comments on this specific case):

• Since the external site you're maintaining isn't commercial, it should be ok to post a link to it along with a note that you maintain the site and that it's not commercial.

• It is recommended (I'd say it's pretty much required) that you include an excerpt or summary here so that the usefulness isn't lost if the external site goes away.

Specifically concerning your list of sftp servers:

• Technically, it's not an answer to the question, so it's great that you've asked here first. I think it would be useful to have that information on SF, but I'd suggest seeing what other comments answers/comments you get to this question before posting it as an answer.

• In this case, your list is small enough you could include pretty much all of it with a note that it's a snapshot of what's available as of this date.

OTOH, that last point illustrates the problem with answering "resource request" questions: the information becomes out of date over time. As I said, I'd be mostly ok with an answer like you're considering, but you should see what others say.