Unwarranted deletion of post and ban in A/R

[ZeTurd]

I'm usually an easy-going fellow. I have no problem observing rules and respecting authority. If I go to a party and the owner of the house says no smoking inside, well then I go out to smoke no matter how drunk. Likewise, if I'm participating on a privately owned website, I respect that there's no such thing as free spech and that the owners are in their full right to enforce any arbitrary rules they might like to.

If Mat Sklansky wanted everyone to post in all caps, I'd be the first one to glue down the Caps Lock on my keyboard.

However, what I don't appreciate is being misled about the rules, and then punished afterwards. Which, in my opinion, is what happened to a post of mine in A/R (Affiliates / Rakeback).

I PM'ed the moderator of the forum and asked if I was permitted to make a post about seeking help for an affiliate site I administer. To be sure I didn't do anything wrong, I asked specifically about what could be posted and what couldn't be posted.

So I posted the post. I don't want to get into trouble again, so I won't requote the whole post, but I basically offered a percentage of our earnings for assistance in marketing, SEO and traffic increase. The post was deleted/moved shortly afterwards and I found my account banned for two days on the grounds that my post was "spam to get sub affiliates". This doesn't make sense. My post contained exactly what I PM'ed the moderator of the forum it would be. Yes, I offered payment to anyone who would be interested to help out. Of course I did. Did the moderator really think I was hoping to get free services? And no, I wasn't looking to hire sub-affiliates - I was looking for a partner in my enterprise, which obviously is something quite different.

I'm curious, seeing as my post apparently was so out of line, exactly what the moderator thought my post would contain when I PM'ed him.

(I later made a post in the same forum where I told someone to check my profile, which admittedly may have been more out of line, but it shouldn't be considered spam either since it was an answer to a question posed. It should only be considered spam if it was unsolicited. Which it wasn't.)