Shelby, I was the first one to respond to Pguy and my reasoning has somewhat been explained by others but, let me do so in my own words.

First, go humping a mule and insta-ban are not extreme. My language compared to most is rather reserved. And, as he indicated in many later posts, he has such a thick skin that such a comment would fall off him like it was nothing, so he couldn't have been offended.

Second, anybody who shows up on a board and their first post is something like, "Rare cigars for sale," or just in general, "cigars for sale" is not here for anything more than a sale. It is like going door to door in real life. I chose to shut the door on this guy instead of inviting him in and hearing his "sell." With the British guy selling cubans, the board decided to let him in the house, make his pitch, and then we threw every odd question or scheme back at him, hoping he'd just realize how annoying a salesman really is. If PGuy ever wanted anything else out of this board, he would have started with an intro thread, or he would've asked a question that would elicit some typical response of, "Welcome to the board, briefly 65% get beads, and cello doesn't matter, for future reference, use the search function."

But no thread like this was written. In fact, the only time PGuy even started to act like he was anything but a salesman was when Poppa tried to diffuse things, and so made small talk. But, salespeople love this, they want to make you think they're your friend. Clearly, PGuy failed as a salesman, in fact, he knew that we knew that was all he was here for and is why he never apologized and never said anything like, I wanted to become a part of this board, I've been lurking and this looks like a great bunch of guys.

So, to sum up, Shelby, we shouldn't chase newbs away by being hostile, you're right. PGuy was not a noob though, his intention was pure and simple, sell, sell, sell. He never had any intention of sticking around (at least until it was explained to him that only established/trusted members would be allowed to engage in sales without getting flamed every two seconds). If I could sell cigars for a price of up to 750 dollars, I'd change my tune to make the sale too.

I did nothing wrong and neither did anybody else who went after PGuy. We caught him red handed (and like I said, I'm a little more reserved, so I won't even use the red smiley we have available, nor have I ever).