And, as always, don't feed the trolls! If you suspect me or anyone else of trolling, just ignore it and move on :)

@Iain I'm sorry. My intent was not to defend Izap or his specific answers, which this comment thread kind of turned into, but rather I meant to use this instance as a sample in discussing the general interpretation and application of SF's policies. My understanding was that Meta was the place for these discussions and that it's OK for people to disagree in such discussions. If the questions would be closed under today's guidelines, then someone should go and close them. If shopping questions are bad because they invite product pushing, then the questions should be flagged, not the answers.

Also, there is no indication that anyone attempted to speak with Izap on the subject. Perhaps someone did and I am simply not privy to that conversation. But the appearance is that these answers were dismissed out of hand with no attempt to ascertain the intent and purpose of the writer.

The answers were deleted before I could read them in their entirety, however Skyhawk's comment on the OP clearly demonstrates that in at least one case Izap acknowledged his involvement in the project. I am not trying to advocate letter of the law over the intent - quite the opposite, since my observations indicate an overabundance of "letter-of-the-law" jurisprudence on SF. It just so happens that in this case the letter and the intent of the law, in my opinion, exonerate Izap and his answers.

"The official stance is: It it's on topic, adds value to the discussion, and they disclose that it's their own product, it's ok." By what I read, Izap appears to have met these criteria.

Also, there is nothing to indicate to me that any of these answers, or all of them together, qualify for deletion under what I read in the FAQ on the criterion for deletion.

Izap has been on SF for almost 3 years and has over 400 reputation from 16 answers and 6 questions. Hardly worthy of the "spammer" label. To refer to an answer as spam, or to refer to a user as a spammer, insinuates malicious intent; I see no more malicious intent here than if a Citrix consultant were to answer questions about virtualization. Or if an MS partner were to answer questions about Active Directory. And if a user asked "What is virtualization and how do I do it?" would you really expect a VMWare developer to keep quiet when he is perhaps the most qualified to answer?

@Iain I suppose the "by this community's definition" is the part I should spend more time getting familiar with. Each of the example questions in the OP were asking for recommendations for particular applications to automate a particular task; Izap gave direct and succinct answers. And it's no surprise that he found several of these questions in short time, since SF is designed to point them out to us. So we're essentially discriminating against him because he is associated with the product he's recommending (never mind that he was asked to recommend something to begin with).