All I see here is a bunch of cheap "Yay altruism" applause, some moralizing and a demand that users ignore details and quality of an actual post because they have some kind of external status that you wish to affiliate with.
The overwhelming majority of LW users appear to agree that the post was in fact useful and high quality. You would probably be more persuasive if, in this argument over whether the post was in fact valuable, you provided arguments. As is, you are asserting that it was terrible and then acting like jgweissman's differing opinion is a betrayal of a community norm.
The linked "context" is not useful- it is literally false (there have been no recent adverts for 80K), its description of the post as an ad is debatable, and it's sneaking in the connotation that all ads are bad and don't belong here. (The claim that is is a PR post is similarly both debatable and sneaking in connotations.)
The overwhelming majority of LW users appear to agree that the post was in fact useful and high quality.
I object to this statement. The current karma of that post is as well explained by people reading this post trusting JGWeissman and hastily upvoting that post to compensate for the community's "unfriendliness to allies". Given that it once stood at -7, this is at least as plausible theory as yours.
(I wouldn't object if you have omitted the word "overwhelming", though.)
Less Wrong was created to produce rationalists, so that many causes could benefit from the efforts of those rationalists. The point is not just to have nice place to talk about rationality, but to really make ourselves stronger, to apply the lessons that we learn here to improve our own lives, and to improve the world.
80,000 Hours is an organization created to provide direct domain specific help to people who want to support charitable causes, the same causes Less Wrong is supposed to produce rationalists to support. 80,000 Hours has goals clearly aligned with ours. Provided we think they are pursuing their aligned goals effectively, we should be excited about this. We should be happy when they reach out to us, to see how we can work together.
So, I am very disappointed to see the negative reception of a Less Wrong post by 80,000 Hours member Benjamin Todd, asking us what questions we would like 80,000 Hours to answer for us. They are basically offering to do free research for us on things that we care about, because our goals are aligned. And yet, as of this writing, that post has a score of -7, and it has received comments complaining that it is an ad. To be clear, ads of the sort that we want to avoid do not offer free services relevant to a core purpose of our community. I won't argue whether or not the post was an ad, but I will say that it belongs on Less Wrong and we should give it a good reception.
I would like to thank Benjamin Todd and others at 80,000 hours for their work in helping people be more effective philanthropists and otherwise support important causes, and for engaging Less Wrong in this project. I also thank everyone who responded to post with their actual questions about making a difference.
And, please, can we be nice to people who help us?