What happened to Mr. Kanarek?

I was just looking back through a bunch of old threads, and I noticed that Benjamin Kanarek is now banned; which sparked some curiosity on my part.

A few of his threads sparked some minor controversy, but I cannot see anything on his part that comes anywhere close to warranting him being banned from this forum. Perhaps the moderators feel bound by some confidentiality principles that prevent them from saying anything more, but if not, I'm curious to know what happened to get him banned.

Seemed like he or someone working for him was using our Forum to post links to his webpages. It was viewed like Spam by our team of moderators. We felt we were dealing with an ad agency, not a real person. It's sometimes not so easy to decide if the poster is a real person or an organization... We only try our best so that regular contributors are not harassed by spamming robots.

Marcel said:

Seemed like he or someone working for him was using our Forum to post links to his webpages. It was viewed like Spam by our team of moderators. We felt we were dealing with an ad agency, not a real person. It's sometimes not so easy to decide if the poster is a real person or an organization... We only try our best so that regular contributors are not harassed by spamming robots.

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Really?

Interesting...
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I don't think that's entirely true because any time someone asked Ben a question, he immediately responded with an answer. Certainly more/quicker than folks who log in here for the sole purpose of having a question answered (that's readily available in their documentation) and then never has the curtousey to say Thank you, and never posts again.

I always like Ben's posts.

I appreciate a good dialog and discussion as the next person, but it was a difficult decision that was discussed at length among the mods. In addition, we had complaints from other members who felt the commercial aspects were inappropriate. Bottom line, I'll refer everyone to the Forum Rules where "Nikonites reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any content item for any reason".

FredKingston said:

I don't think that's entirely true because any time someone asked Ben a question, he immediately responded with an answer. Certainly more/quicker than folks who log in here for the sole purpose of having a question answered (that's readily available in their documentation) and then never has the curtousey to say Thank you, and never posts again.

I always like Ben's posts.

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Ben is a regular on some other photography related sites and from what I can tell, he's a really nice guy and a true professional.

Just my opinion, but the way he was harassed here (by one member in particular) was disgraceful and should not have been allowed to continue as it did.
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