OK. I know that both Mark and I are amenable to whatever reputation repair is necessary. Both of us stumbled by violating community taboos that we were unaware of and have absolutely no intentions of repeating such actions (and are more than willing to apologize for our mistakes). A newbies guide that outlines such taboos would be very helpful (as I understand it, my offense was to use the same tactic that I saw used by other users that you were attempting to perform reputation repair on -- except that I wasn't the repairee [yet :-( ]) -- and we would be more than willing to participate in creating one (we also have some ideas about a reputation repair tool).

Could you please offer additional clarification and advice as you see fit? Thanks!