Isn't this heavy-handed banning approach pretty much a tacit admission that the voting algorithm is broken? Why couldn't this spamming be prevented through pattern algorithms/frequency analysis and...this is what I thought Reddit aspired to...democracy? If a lot of articles from a source are voted up by a diverse group of users, then maybe it's because the source is good?

The worst part of this is how this countermeasure reeks of the fallacy of ad hominem: who cares who the submitter is and how he/she personally benefits...as long as the content is good?