Because regardless of how good his reasons are, what is more important is how his apology is perceived. There is a huge difference between saying "Yeah, I'm sorry", and saying "Yes, we fucked up in how we treated this story. Sorry, we'll try and do better next time".

/. does't even publicly disclose when Dice shills post stories here.

Yet he can't understand why his apology is not accepted.

I actually think that someone loads "Timmy" up on cron at the start of the weekend and takes off fishing.

You need to acknowledge that the delay in publication was a fuckup PUBLICLY, at the top of the story. In all caps.

As it stands a meek "I'm sorry" in TFS can be construed in multiple ways, and while you may intend it one way, the people with the pitchforks and torches do not see it that way. Until you do that the pitchforks and torches will still be out.

And I am pointing out that posting two mutually exclusive reasons for why this particular story was not posted until today is a major fuck up. But continually repeating them (without acknowledging that it is a fuck up) just adds to the fucked upness of the whole situation.

Your statement here appears to conflict with your edit in TFS. Both of which look like excuses rather than genuine reasons. As such the damage IS done. You are going to need to be 100% transparent even to start recovering from this debacle.

^^ THIS

Editors on news aggregation websites are very susceptible to being replaced by computerization. In fact I am pretty sure that I have seen examples of (albeit bad) computerization already happening on a website that I regularly read.

I dunno, maybe you could power things that need external batteries?

No, he is not trolling, he is merely pointing out the power of propaganda as mentioned by the OP. I believe it should be more considered irony given the context off this story

I occasionally check into the PINAC site, and in the comments there is always one guy there taking such an outrageously contrary opinion to all the other posters that I am beginning to suspect he is actually a sock puppet of the site's owner, solely to drum up reactions from those other posters.

Sort of like what's his name, who treated this place as his personal blog and who we haven't seen here for a while (an no I am not saying his name doing so is sort of like saying "Beetlejuice" 3 times)