Half the scumminess here is that they don't understand StackOverflow isn't a general purpose forum, I think. It would be less offensive if they were paying a po

Half the scumminess here is that they don't understand StackOverflow isn't a general purpose forum, I think. It would be less offensive if they were paying a popular forum member to mention the contest. On StackOverflow, however, you are supposed to post questions about something you are programming, however. So it really isn't valid to just bring up a contest as a contest. I suppose theoretically, if they wanted to do something close to what they want they'd have to pay someone to try using their APIs and post questions they encounter and mention the contest on the side. Although even that is kind of stretching it.