Not a big fan of carpet bans. Every so often, a thread (that is no worse than many other threads that are simply locked with the OP banned) is carpet banned, catching a few users and doing nothing to deter others. No punishment is effective unless it is applied consistently. Feel free to keep on telling yourself that carpet banning the occasional thread will do anything to stop the larger problem. Your thickheadedness isn't really hurting anything. But you're kidding yourself if you think it's helping to stop people from replying to spam threads. The only way to do that is to lock the threads before they gain traction. Maybe if rule enforcers do their part, rule breakers can actually be discouraged. Every carpet ban is a mod saying "whoops. I failed at this moderating thing, time to overcompensate".