The conversations were all public and spread throughout this board.
Our first response was to move the intro post where she describes herself to the commercial section and left that link intact. At that time we also removed the 7 other links she had posted throughout the board with a simple note to please follow the TOS and commercial posting rules. Next, the OP responded in various places arguing with us and continued to post links to her blog after she had been told it was against our TOS.
There were warning signs of her being a spammer in the beginning:
- posting multiple links in the middle of the night
- raising old threads to post links
- not contributing usefully to threads
However, rather than banning her right away (or even making her user ID a Commercial Member), we thought she might become a productive member of our site and decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Once she again ignored our rules (which had been reiterated to her and acknowledged by her), we still chose not to ban her, but instead responded to her arguments and encouraged her to follow our rules and continue to be a member of our site. At that time she was moved to Commercial Member status in the hopes she would become a participating member of our site.
If anyone has further questions about it, please PM me.