As much as I appreciate with the premise that this shouldn't have happened.. I'd much rather people feel safe coming here talking about it. They talk about a long past incident and they don't suggest they are proud of it.

Having this sort of discussion here increases the visibility of these sort of annoyances in ways that make Google more likely to clamp down on the practice. It makes forum administrators more likely to clamp down on abuse, and frankly anything that helps decrease trust in the SEO industry is a good thing.