I don't know for sure what happened in this case, since I'm no longer a mod - but I can tell you how similar stuff has happened in the past...

Some newbie joins RCU and posts the exact same "What's the difference between CA and epoxy" question in 27 different forums. This gets reported to the mods as violating the RCU anti-spam rule, and so the mods go in and clean up. Our newbie now gets incensed about the fact that the rules actually apply to him, yells about his "freedom of speech rights being violated", rants on & on about lawsuits etc. (all BS of course), and sits there simmering at the perceived injustice of it all. He's now on a mission to prove how unfairly he is being treated, so he keeps an eagle eye out for anyone else getting away with making the same post in more than one forum; when he finds one, he pounces on it and starts screaming blue murder about how the mod's are hypocritical, biased, yadda, yadda, yadda. Technically, he is correct in pointing out that the rules are supposed to be applied evenly to all people, and so the mod's grudgingly apply the rule. I say grudgingly, because the mod's do realize that posting something in multiple forums does have its place, even though it is not actually allowed.

I recall one particular incident in which someone had a whole crapload of stuff stolen, and he posted alerts in dozens of forums. We really felt for the guy, and wanted to allow the alert to stand, but Marc et al got so many *****ing PMs about double-standards in terms of the spam rule being enforced or not enforced, that the extra posts came down. The mod's hated that, and even tried to come up with ways like Ben (Ghost Rider) offering to pay for a banner ad that directed everyone to the one central post.

Perhaps some middle ground could be found here for the one or two posts that do merit "multi posting". Marc is actually a pretty smart guy, and could be convinced about the fact that some announcements do really need to appear in multiple places in order to be effective. Perhaps he could arrange something like a process where if you want a post in multiple forums, you don't actually make the post yourself, but send it to Marc / Nathan / whoever with a list of where you want it multi-posted to ; if accepted it gets posted by RCAdmin as an "RCU announcement", ratherthan as a user-SPAM post ? Dunno. Just thinking out loud to see if there is some reasonable compromise possible.