-quote snip in reference to the earliest rule mention-
To my knowledge,
this is the first public mention of the rule in question, posted in April 2016.
Again, I might be mistaken but IIRC the rules has been in effect for much longer before theymos chimed in publicly about them. The quote in question even mentions that the he warned the user in the past for this violation. There's a reason why I took up compiling all the written and unwritten rules into a single source after all.
-quote snip in reference to merging the same user's posts in between now deleted posts-
I don't think this is in line with the above rule, and would also violate the forum stance against ex-post-facto rules, as someone has no way of knowing if someone else's post would be deleted when they make a post, so they have no way of knowing they would need to edit their post. In other words, someone has no way of knowing they need to follow a certain rule when they make a post. The logic behind the rule is that multi-posting unfairly bumps threads, and spams watch lists, neither of which apply in a situation in which someone else has replied to a thread.
Hence why AFAIK no one was punished (banned or warned) for having lots such posts merged. Either way, if I'm not mistaken, only admins can see deleted posts so it'd be difficult to
consistently check whether there was a post or two in between.
To my knowledge, I was not punished for having my posts removed, other than my receiving 60+ PMs about deleted posts. As far as I am aware, I was not banned for these posts. The majority of the posts were deleted May 2, in two batches, with seconds being in-between the time I had posts deleted in each batch, which implies automation was used in responding to the reports against me. I was not aware of my posts being deleted for over 3 days, so in theory, I could have been banned for 3 days without my knowledge, however if this was the case, it was not followed. I have serious doubts that I will be banned for this, or at all.
Yeah, no ban was issued for the merged posts, at least by me.
-quote snip in reference to appealing the posts deletions / merging-
This is the point of my creating this thread.
Not sure how often theymos checks Meta but you're probably better off at least pinging him via PM.