I tend to agree that they should not be allowed, but how would everyone feel about an exception if they're obviously called out?
I think of communities like churningcanada on reddit for example, where affiliate links / referral codes are intentional and wanted by the community.
IE, something like:
Any affiliate or referral links must be obviously called out as such, with a clear description of what the poster gains and what the user would gain by using it
I think this is fair. I'm not necessarily against referral links in communities where that's an expected and desired part of what people are looking for from it.
If you want to contain it all in a specific place that can be blocked, okay. But if the instance starts allowing people to just post advertisements like that, I'm gone and it's getting blocked.
So you're saying if lets say GCPGrey moved his community here, he couldn't have links to his store here or other material as that would be "bad".
Let's get real here, Advertising is going to happen, donations are going to happen. If you don't like that you're going to have a hard time on the Internet.
Yeah I think that would be an OK case and these specific things can be up to the moderators of communities. I know that some communities require mod approval before self promotion is allowed, so I think in the CGP Grey community case it would be a non issue.
I think starting with a super specific rule around affiliate disclosure as proposed would be good enough to avoid this particular problem.