The OnPage blog has an interview with a Google spam fighter, aka Search Quality Analyst, on what it means for him to keep Google's search results spam free.
The interview was not with John Mueller, but rather Johannes Mehlem. Johannes Mehlem was the one who the major link bust in Germany a year ago and also helped communicate the flash warnings for mobile users. But he is very involved in webmaster communication in the German SEO industry, which is a big one.
From what I know, German SEOs are very into their links, so it may be seen as a Penguin pool.
The most interesting part of the interview, and there are many interesting parts, is his personal view on what web spam he dislikes the most:
What I dislike are websites that are purely generated for search engines and not at all for users. Apart from the fact that those pages are not compliant with our webmaster guidelines, I think that organizations or webmasters are already discrediting themselves with such methods in front of their visitors and potential clients.
I always felt, if you can understand what Googlers dislike or what their pet peeves are on the web, you can quickly know what to stay away from.
Forum discussion at Google+.
