Should this post be considered spam?

Question

I notice that this answer has been deleted as spam and have gone to check it out. The contents of said answer are as follows:

I currently am working on a server-side Fabric mod which would entirely focus on such a matter. And even though it still only is in beta, you can still set a config to make it work properly, since making it work properly at first was the alpha version challenge.

You can actually find that mod right here. I'd also soon be publishing updates, as soon as I'll reach some real step in the development.

The content of this answer makes me question whether it is actually spam. According to the guidelines, spam is defined as:

A post should be marked as spam only if it promotes a product, service, or similar; and is unsolicited or lacks disclosure of affiliation.

I do not believe that this post meets the spam criteria:

• Criterion A: Does the post promote a product, service, or similar?
  Yes, the post is promoting a mod, which is considered a product.

• Criterion B: Is the post unsolicited?

  Unsolicited means that mentioning the product serves no purpose other than promotion. For example, if an answer mentions a software that may solve the asker’s problem or a question about web programming references a website as an example, this is not unsolicited (it may still be spam if there is an undisclosed affiliation).

  No, the answer references a software that may solve the asker's problem, so it is not unsolicited. To prove it, here is an excerpt from the mod's description:

  When any player dies, if the keepInventory vanilla gamerule is set to true, and the death matches any condition set in the blacklist, the player's inventory drops anyway. If set to false, the mod searches for matching death into the whitelist, and if it finds any, the player gets to keep its inventory. But here comes the second gamerule, conditionalDoVanishing, which makes it so that, when the player gets to keep its inventory despite the vanilla keepInventoory, and this gamerule is set to true, all the items with the Curse of Vanishing in their inventory still get to disappear in thin air.  Finally, when the server stops, the mod saves the config to the config file to make sure it matches the gamerules.

• Criterion C: Does the post lack disclosure of affiliation?

  Lacks disclosure of affiliation means that the author is clearly affiliated with the product but does not disclose their affiliation. Note that a simple “my” may suffice. However, the disclosure must happen in the post itself; the author’s username or profile do not count.

  No, the post contains the words, "I am working on". They have disclosed that they are affiliated with the product in question.

The guidelines say that a post is spam if it meets criterion A, and meets either criterion B or C. In coder's terms,

spam = A and (B or C)

While the post is a promotion of their product, they have clearly stated that they are author of said product and it is relevant to the question. This works out to true and (false or false), which is FALSE, the post is not spam.

Answer 1

I was the one who flagged it as spam, and my reasons were:

• It was put into the First Answers queue, where the system identified it as spam (there was a message banner on the review item stating this)
• There was no clear description provided on how to use this mod, other than "you can set a config." This doesn't really make it spam-like, but it certainly doesn't really give any useful information on how to use the mod (see below why this is relevant though).

I did refer to the help pages about how not to be a spammer and it states:

Don't tell - show! The best way to avoid being seen as a snake-oil salesman is to demonstrate a solution rather than simply asserting the problem can be solved.

So that's what influenced my decision to flag it as spam. And since I'm a mod, the community user went ahead and deleted it right away (I believe that's why at least). Was I perhaps a little harsh? Maybe. Looking back, I think the user had no intentions of "being a spammer," and they do indicate that it is a mod they have created. So let's undelete the post. I will however edit the post to include the quoted description you have in your post, as I feel that will improve the answer.