The Rayaan / Jacob(smooth) Situation

[Jackalope]

Let me clear up your confusion, as I am the mod who moderated two of his posts and who banned him.

His first post was pushing a book, and contained a link to where the book could be purchased. This *can be enough to justify a ban*.

His third post was a duplicate of the first, clearly a second violation of our spam/advertising policy, and *this alone* is enough to get someone instabanned (two identical violations of the same rule in 3 posts).

The outside posts only confirmed what we already knew, and in any case a ban was justified with or without it.

Thanks for clearing some of that up.

Would you agree that the third post was the first spam violation since it was the first duplication?

So the user was banned due to the second advertisement?

Would you agree that there was no need to investigate the users outside activities since the users outside activities were irrelevant?

No, the first was a clear violation - and is often enough to justify a ban. It depends on the circumstances. If it was a clear hit-and-run post, it would have been. The second made it instaban-worthy.

I would agree that it is rarely necessary or relavent to investigate outside activity. In a case where a member reports that they've seen an apparent copy-pasta elsewhere, yes we're going to at least look into it, if only to add additional confirmation to what we already have learned.