I'd like to address the members of this group about the locked thread

[Stinky The Clown]

I was the person who made the alert that led to the hiding of this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12206664

I may have been wrong. If you think I was, then I was, and I will own that.

Please allow me to share the background.

I am a MIRT member. Our job is to stop malicious intruders (MIs) and spammers (MIs, too, but of a different sort). Our job is NOT to police the boards and certainly not to police the small groups like this one.

We have access to all new sign-ups to DU. We routinely look at each and every one of them. We have a direct link to their latest posts (but not any earlier ones). In this case, I looked at the new poster, bschwartz. The poster's first post appeared as spam. It certainly fit the profile of a newer spam form, which is a pseudo-personal story wrapped around a link to a commercial site or service. On that basis, I banned the new member, bschwartz and reported that back to the MIRT.

Upon reporting that, another MIRT member (doesn't matter who), checked behind me and asked if the OP, which was formatted similarly to the now deleted post, was also spam. I had not checked the context of the first post and therefore didn't see the OP, or for that matter, did I pay any attention to the group in which it was posted.

I saw the post appeared to follow the same pattern as the now deleted thread, but also saw the post count of the poster was too high to unilaterally PPR. So I alerted on the post, with ToS checked.

That sent it to a jury and a jury voted to hide it. That sent it back to MIRT. Since then it has been a hot MIRT topic. I've read all the comments discussing the locked thread and have decided I was in error.

I am here all on my own. I'm not representing MIRT as no one asked me to do this.

Since I think I was in error, I ask for the forgiveness of this group in general, and particularly from the OP, findrskeep, for getting your thread locked.

I don't know if it is possible to unlock it, but it is certainly possible to start the thread again.

I hope you'll forgive me. I am sorry this happened.