Okay....I understand the necessity to have a process to reduce spam by eliminating those who abuse the signature campaigns but isn't that the responsibility of each individual campaign manager?
Yes, however that has been shown to not work because:
1) Advertisers hire random fools to manage their campaigns just because they are cheap.
2) There are managers that do not care (at all).
3) Some services manage their own campaigns.
The other alternatives are: Neg. rating both managers and service and/or banning them (per new signature campaign guidelines).
What is the goal of such a network? Will it end up being a method by which a single group of advertisers, with common interests and investments, have the ability to eliminate their competition via labeling other advertisers as "rogue" members and working together to label other advertisers' campaign members as spammers and coloring their competition's reputation with red for not falling in line?
To fight back spam as widely as possible. The involved managers usually handle most of their business on their own (e.g. I do not tell Lutpin what to do). What you are describing is a scenario where the members of SMAS are actively colluding to gain an advantage over the other campaigns, which is not the case.
Mob rules? I understand the necessity to eliminate spam; I don't understand the intent of building a centralized authority to accomplish that goal....it seems like a slippery slope.
3 people are neither a *mob* nor a *centralized authority*. I'd say that SMAS has been pretty effective so far. If the number of campaigns managed by the participating managers rises, then it will become even more effective.