Let's go over this, from start to finish.
1) The first thread.
You begin by saying "Nothing makes me smile more than..." and then leading off to "Than realizing how incredibly ignorant SRK is when pertaining to Brawl: LINK". Looking at this, the intent of the thread is to mock the person in question. This I would chalk up under rule #5 of the SWF Global Rules. There is a clear intent that the topic is for mocking someone else.
There's one other line in the opening post as well. "Also, expect a Christmas present from me, Sonic players. :D!" Okay. That's great. You may have said this thinking everyone would be like "Oh this is a great placeholder thread Tony made for us about giving us Christmas presents! Let's all speculate that!"
But that is not what happened. NO ONE got that from the way you made the topic. Everyone went along and decided to laugh and mock, and the thread quickly degenerated into spam. Not only that, there was no attempt from you to stop their spam. You didn't come back and say "Guys, you're supposed to be speculating the Christmas presents I'm getting all of you! This isn't a topic for spamming or flaming!" So yes, the topic had every justifiable action for being locked. There was 0 need for a moderator to tell you why your first thread was locked. Why? Because it was seen by EVERYONE ELSE to be nothing but an attempt to flame and spam. Mods are not required to post in a topic and say "Oh in case someone didn't realize somehow, this is a flame/spam topic!" Or send a PM to you alerting you of that.
In fact, no one in the thread received warnings or infractions about anything at all. Everyone was let off the hook, when in reality nearly every post in the thread should have received an infraction.
2) The second thread.
Now, here's where you go ahead and instead of attempting to be reasonable and contact a mod attempting to sort things out, you simply take matters into your own hands. You go by the "I'm right. They are wrong. How dare they tell me what to do!" policy. There is no contact between you and any mod attempting to work something out. You go ahead, with your own questions unanswered, and make your next topic.
And what do you do with the topic? You give it the same title with a 'Part 2!' attached to it. Now, instantly when someone sees this, they are going to look at what the 'Part 1' was. To any outside person, the part 1 was nothing but a spam/flame topic. So they are already walking into your thread assuming that this is the case.
And guess what! That's what happened. Two of the three posts made are other users telling you that they don't think it's a good idea to recreate it, and another user makes a spam post. Well that's a great start to things! But they shouldn't be doing so if the intent of the topic was clear. Let's look at that.
"Since some ****** baby decided to close my old thread" This is where nearly everyone would probably stop bothering to read. Seeing this as the opening remark, it looks like we're right on track to go the same path as the previous thread. This sentence alone qualifies for flaming and disrespect of the forum mods.
Moving on we find "here's the new one as a placemark for my X-mas/New Year's presents for the Sonic community." Okay, so it's a placeholder thread. So it basically means nothing at this point. There's a reason many mods don't let placeholder threads stay open. It's because there is nothing to discuss. "Oh cool!", "I can't wait!", etc... are going to be the most productive posts you find with this. And I'm sorry, creating a topic that leads to that is indeed a spam topic, as are all placeholding topics. They offer nothing to the smash community other than a way to increase one's post count for no good reason. Simply create your thread when you have something of value. "Hype" threads are nothing more than spam threads.
Looking at the rest of the thread we don't see anything else that can be of value. You making a few jokes and telling moderators to do what you want them to do. So essentially you've set yourself up for a good spam topic that is a remake of a closed one. Because of this it's closed and you are given an infraction for rule violation.
3) This thread.
Then finally we reach the present. Here you make a few good choices, however you quickly stamp out any meaning they could have had. One of the correct thing you do is that you contact a moderator! However sadly, you decide to mock the moderator instead of attempting to sort anything out.
You begin by saying that the moderator is wrong and definitely didn't read your topic. You point out where you say what the intent of the topic was in order to defend against the "The topic does not state what the point of the previous topic was." However this really isn't the case. You clearly stated that this topic was for placeholding, but the last topic we're still clueless about. I guess one could interpret the last line of the first topic as its purpose, but that's asking people to read your mind considering the way you set everything up. So the mod is still confused as to why this second placeholding topic has something to do with mocking a user from the SRK forums.
You then move on to say that the topic is not spam, and that the claims of flaming and disrespect for moderators are due to the moderator's "lack of humour and knowledge of pop-culture references." Well darn! Looks like you've beaten the moderator there! "****** Baby" is a hilarious pop-culture reference, how could I have forgotten? So once again you play the "I know the rules better than you. I'm right, you're wrong." card and are basically disrespectful in the private message itself!
You then go on to say "I'm making another thread!" Obviously the moderator is supposed to be swayed by your mocking attitude and cave in, admitting they were wrong and that you know the SWF Global Rules much better than they do. No, that's not how it works. You're supposed to explain your side of the case politely and ask for the moderator to give their own explanation and an 'okay' on creating another thread. Hopefully a thread that gets straight to the point of things.
Sadly, you go off and make the new thread, and when you do, you make sure you push every attempt to prove you are right to everyone else.
Let's start going through the thread. You begin by telling no one to spam or post haunter or anything. Well that's good. Then you go and take your stab at the moderators. Calling them a killjoy and blaming all of your terrible forum troubles on them not being attentive enough to your forums. That's not so good.
You then make it clear what the purpose is...sort of.
What's the topic about?
It's presents for the Sonic community!
But what does that mean?
It's a surprise! Wait for tomorrow!
Well that's helpful. You now have a placeholder thread for something that only you really understand. You want us to wait, but why can't you? You want people to speculate? Well that speculation turns out to be nothing but spam, which is why placeholder threads are frowned upon. It's simply people responding to nothing.
Next you make another big mistake. You not only complain about your infraction, you post it for everyone to see. I do believe private messages are just that; private messages. Not things for you to set up for display. You go on to say that every point given is wrong, because you know everything better than the mods do and if they had just understood you, everything would be okay. You complain about not having a warning or anything, but really this is not a requirement. So anyway, in this opening post along, you've already managed to change your topic from "Sonic X-mas presents" to "Attacking the moderators!"
You then go on to make another comment about the mods and then explain that you'll do your best to circumvent any ban to ensure you have your presents topic.
Then you send out something directed to the mods. Telling them how wrong they are and how unjust and power-hungry they are. You don't tell this to them in a PM or try to work things out with them directly. Instead you tell them they need to come crawling on their hands and knees and explain every little detail about their actions to you. You make some bitter stabs at the SBR over their weekly discussions and that's how that part ends.
You expect everyone to do things your way and come to YOU instead of it being the other way around. Basically, you've shown you are very unwilling to compromise about anything, and instead very bitter and confrontational with everything you've done.
And already the topic has degenerated into spam and haunters. Isn't that great? Seems you really aren't as clear and convincing as you believe you are.
So there you are. I gave you a long detailed explaination about EVERYTHING for EVERYONE to see.
Now please do not create placeholder topics, especially with the large amount of off-topic content in the opening posts you add.
This topic will be closed, and I am giving you no infractions or warnings. Please create your presents topics on the days where it actually matters and have the opening posts be relevent and pose for good discussion. If your thread turns out to be nothing more than spam bait and it degenerates into that, then you can be assured it will be locked.
Also, I noticed your stab at other threads being "placeholder" threads. If you feel this way and believe they should be closed, then by all means direct a moderator to these threads with a link letting them know your concerns.
