[mattmein]

I wouldn't classify those emails as spam, as spam is unsolicited bulk email, ie untargeted emails going out to a large amount of people.

Personalised unsolicited email or any other type of contact can be an important way to make new connections, at least in my opinion.

[jlgaddis]

For many of us, the fact that it is "unsolicited" means it is spam. I really don't care if it was an e-mail sent out to 1000 random people or it was "targeted" to 20 people just like me.

If it's commercial and unsolicited, it's spam and I will treat it as such.

[Deimorz]

I get at least 3 or 4 of these emails a week, and my site is a user-generated one along the same lines as HN or Reddit. They link to some thread vaguely related to a topic (e.g. VPNs, pets, gardening), usually compliment me on that "article", and ask me to publish their article on the subject too.

These aren't genuine requests. They're sending them to sites like mine where the request doesn't even make sense--the site isn't a blog, all they'd have to do is register and they could post any article themselves (I'd ban them immediately, but they could do it).

They're absolutely spam, and once you see a few of them you realize how formulaic they all are. There must be some tool that generates them, they usually just have some minor differences in words/phrasing (basically "spinning": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_spinning).

[pmlnr]

It is spam. I get them as well. It's annoying.

[gumby]

They’re asking the blog owner to create SEO spam.