I have the very strong suspicion that this question is essentially a thinly veiled promotion for the OP's business. That is, it seems to me that the OP is not primarily looking for an answer to his question, but mainly uses it as a vehicle to promote his services.
Are we ok with this? And if not, what can we do? The question, while rather uninteresting to me personally, does not really appear to be out of scope based on our rules.
To take yet another point of view and to address the more general question:
I do not think that we can distinguish whether such a post was created for purposes of self-promotion or from a genuine interest in learning about new ways of finding customers, jobs or similar. Therefore we should apply the presumption of innocence to such posts (maybe unless we are overrun by them). In this specific case, I find it plausible that the asker is honestly interested in what he is asking for. Therefore I do not think that it should be closed for this reason.
Moreover, I do not see how this question is much different from many questions from users who are looking for a position. Both imply that the asker has certain skills and is available for hire.
As someone who started in CV. I can vouch for this questioner as he has been nothing but a wonderful participant at CV. He always provides very apt and helpful answers.
Though, I think the question can definitely use some clarification. The deep root is about networking in academia, which I believe is a valid question for this board.
If the question was asked from the other side of the table and was about finding a reputable paid statistical consultant, I think it would be fine (assuming on topic otherwise).
The question itself reveals the potential conflict of interest with the "advertising" discreetly mentioned in his profile. This is exactly what we ask for in situations like this.
While he might be looking to gain clients here, it reads to me like he is trying to improve his networking/advertising efforts. So in general, I think questions with this level of "advertising" are okay.
Specifically, I am not sure the question is particularly clear or really answerable. I am not sure it is so unclear that it should be closed.
I think trying to project motives onto a posters question, and then closing it because it may be self-promoting, is flawed. The post is far from an egregious case, and honestly, even if it is a thinly veiled bit of self promotion, it involves the following chain of logic:
That's a chain of events that I'm pretty sure will never actually happen.
If instead we read this post as a legitimate question, I think it's a much more reasonable one. Connecting people who need statistical expertise with the people who have it is a problem for people in the same university (I know this from experience). Working outside that system strikes me as harder, and something worthy of discussion.
Hm, the user is a high-rep user on cross-validated...which actually makes the question particularly odd, because I don't really understand how the user doesn't know how to find academics who need help - he's answered over 1600 questions on Cross Validated alone. I too suspected something might be 'off' here, but I figured it would be best to close as "Unclear what you are asking".
It could be a valid question, but in its present state I think it could be closed anyway. But if it turned out to indeed be an attempt to advertise a commercial service or gain leads, then certainly it could be closed as "spam" - but we don't have that as a close reason, so indeed I wonder how these should be handled? Just closed as 'other', or do we need something more specific?
Though I don't question the OP's statistical knowledge and his capacity as a consultant, I think that leaving this question open as is can cause a flood of questions advertising a variety of consulting services or offers of collaborations.
