My introduction post is a week old (7 days).

I managed to create 89 custom made welcome signs. This means each welcome sign has directly welcomed a specfic new steemian onboard. Let's do some maths:

89/7 days > 13 "welcome messages" each day.

So you asked this:

Maybe change your goal to connect to just 5 people a day using your own voice in a genuinely real way.

What if I had the time to welcome 10 people a day and did so? I'm being called "a bot" for working harder on this that what you would consider "normal". That is not a reason for banning.

I saw image after image. I did not see actual relationship building.

That's not true, I replied to each and any one that wanted to interact and helped many of those steemians with tips, like how to "validate" the account, etc. You could also have actually welcomed those 89 people isntead of just watching what I did, right? If that was the norm, then I wouldn't have created this welcome project in the first place.

None of the 89 flagged me, just @smooth did, destroying for the moment this project.

Remember steemit is not just a "blockchain" it is a social platform. To build a social-platform instead of a ghetto you will need to accept the fact that lots of people will act based on free-will and act independently. I am not asking to be included on @smooth circle of "SteemPower", I'm just asking that he lets me do my thing to help build a strong social network. And there is no way I can be called a "bot" when I humanly can't create more than 15 custom welcome signs per day and take care of 15 people per day on their first steps.

There is people acting like if they ONLY want new users to be approached by "their" team and "punish" outsiders. That kind of agressive power game may be usefull in term of SP and SMD (I really don't know) but certainly is harming the social-network aspect of this platform.

My advice: create a new account and try a different approach.

I played by the rules, it is better to restore the working capabilities of this account. The fact the there existed "welcome bots" before my initiative indicates that there is a "market" for welcoming new users. I was just providing a service to a small portion of that "market" avoinding that new users feel isolated and alone when they sign-in. "Some people" is acting as if they wanted that those users feel that way. And those actions are not only unfair, but are harming this social platform.