From what I can tell, there is a lot of gray area here. Some plagiarists get a pass (well, he forgot to add the source, it was his first offense, he contributed so much to the community...), while others get an instant perma-ban and that's it. Where is the line? There must be a line somewhere. There must be defined rules that everyone must follow. I'm not referring to a super-censored version of this community, I just think the same rules should be applied, regardless of who is posting.
Seeing as how the rules of Bitcointalk aren't "official" to begin with, I don't think they want to be held down to absolutes and have freedom to weigh certain factors before making a decision (did this person contribute to the forum, are they likely to keep breaking rules, and how severe was the 'crime', among others).
In general, people just shouldn't be copying the words of others and presenting them as their own. Shouldn't be too hard to
not do, one would hope...
So there is a financial incentive for people to look for things such as plagiarism, alt accounts, and other frowned upon behavior by those in the CM campaign.
Are you sure that's a real thing? I've never heard anybody say anything about that.