[Matt_Cutts]

stephp, it's great that you sound like a high-quality contributor, but my intent was to highlight the issues around the hundreds of awful spam emails that you mentioned receiving. I've seen a lot of business owners fall for them. :(

[graeme]

Matt, if that's the case, then perhaps you should clarify the original blog post. Guest posting is something I would do even if Google didn't consider links at all in their ranking.

If a site author accepts high quality guest posts, should they no-follow the outbound links? That appears to be the message in your blog post.

[Matt_Cutts]

"perhaps you should clarify the original blog post."

I added some paragraphs of clarification to the blog post.

[graeme]

Thanks. It's clearer now, though you may consider retooling this in the future. Usually I've found your writing + videos admirably clear, but the message here still seems a bit off.

If it helps give you an idea why it's confusing: I get tons of spam comments on my site offering me spam content generation tools, among other spammy offerings.

They're obviously spam. I'm sure some people do fall for these ploys, and it's unfortunate. An appropriate message would be "don't fall for these". An inappropriate message would be "if you're relying on content generation in 2014, stop".

In other words, just because something has spammy elements, doesn't invalidate the practice entirely. What's still unclear about your blog post is this: If someone does legitimate, high quality guest posting, the kind they would do without Google, is this a positive or a negative in Google's eyes, and should links be no-followed the same way you'd do for a high quality affiliate or high quality sponsor.