I have had to remove some of the link exchange submission forms due to the huge amount of junk emails i was getting every day (hundreds!) trying to dump links presumably by an automated script thinking it was a comment form on a blog. These scripts still access my sites every day looking for the forms which are no longer there. It’s incredible.
Since I took them off I don’t get that many. I figure if someone is serious about exchanging links then they’ll take the time to email me. I only ask thast the site is of good quality and is spidered by the search engines. I’m not that bothered about PR which is meaningless these days.
Dominique is in a great position because she has a very established site so there isn’t such a need to build links as they will come naturally, but she’s right, it’s best to be careful in who we link to.