Things went back to normal afterwards, strange though because some other people complained about the same block in slush's thread... maybe some regional connection issues.

Well, same here mate.
I agree that spam is bad, but this newbies rule just doesn't make sense when you use this forum for support.
Maybe Slush could (should) make his own forum?
Anyway something wrong must be going on at least with blocks 140962, 140965 and more obviously with block 140977, the reward that I got is inconsistent with the expected and usual results.