I understand the philosophy behind banning referral links, and I do respect those reasons. I just think in the real world they don't really make sense:
- Allowing community members to use affiliate links incentivizes people to promote and/or advocate for products they could profit from (through the use of affiliate codes), rather than to promote products that are germane or in the best interests of others.
So this is clearly the main objection. It really doesn't need to be for many reasons, here are just a few...
A. Affiliate links do not convince a person to buy a product. The research the buyer does convinces them to buy. The linker might aid in that, but the link has nothing to do with the actual decision to buy.
B. The argument that a linker might funnel people into less optimal products is good on paper, but in reality, it takes the same amount of work to just link someone the right product for them.
C. The members/staff here opposed to linking put a ton of weight on reputation of the linker--assuming that people will just use whatever link the linker types out because of their reputation. This is a pretty big stretch (see A), but even if it held true the thing about reputation is that it is earned and maintained.
D. It doesn't matter if someone's posts are profit motivated. It doesn't. People care about the quality of the content, not the motive behind posting it. The truth is some of the best content on the web (useful, accurate, clearly presented) is motivated by profit.
Who cares why someone posted something. I think we all care about WHAT was posted. Modern art does a pretty good job illustrating my point here...I don't care that the artist pooped in a bucket to demonstrate wealth disparity between the first and third worlds...I care that my local museum has a bucket with poop on display because it couldn't pay an artist with talent to demonstrate the same idea. 
2. While not all uses of referral links are abusive, we don't currently know of a reasonable method available to us to moderate all affiliate links, such that we can distinguish (and delete) the abusive ones. (There would also be a considerable cost associated with simply attempting to do so, even if the solution was ultimately imperfect.)
Why would you even bother? They are affiliate links. If someone is posting links to indecent content how would this normally be moderated? A user would report it and you would ban them. If they are posting a link to a low profile GPU...well then, I'd say that pretty much fulfills the purpose of this website.
3.The gains by individuals who are using affiliate links in a non-abusive way are outweighed by the costs Minutiae takes on by moderating all links, as well as the costs the community incurs by having to co-habitate with abusers of referral links.
Again, why would you bother to moderate these links? Deal with spammers the way you would normally deal with spammers, and let community members be free to tarnish their own reputation with bad suggestions. It happens now a hundred times a day anyways without referral links.
CONCLUSION
I'm not a social justice affiliate link banner waver. Honestly whether your allow them or not doesn't really impact me financially anyway, I just think the reasons that were given are weak; especially when they were given in the same post that was trying to raise money through purchase of forum swag. I personally fully support SFF.net for asking for donations, making money through light ad revenue, and selling T shirts because you provide an awesome service and you need to pay the bills. Why not let your members who make up your community have the same opportunity?
And yes, for the front page reviews, I can see that affiliate links might hurt "journalistic integrity." But if you are selling exposure for Computex coverage, this is literally the same thing. And I guess this is what bothers me about banning affiliate linking in the end.
With absolute sincerity, I wish us peace--and no matter what the decision is...peace.
