My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.
When you use a lot of phrases like: "Maciej cheated", "Maciej tried to game the system", "He tried to stack the deck", you don't make it sound like you think he accidentally took cold medicine - you're directly attributing malice to him.
Nitpicking here: I don't think Silken Laumann lost any Olympic medals, only Pan Am medals if I remember correctly. Not that it makes any difference whatsoever to your point.
My opinion is that if you use performance-enhancing drugs, you lose Olympic medals, even if it only happened because you accidentally took the wrong cold medicine while in a foreign country (see Silken Laumann). Maciej should have known that soliciting votes via twitter was against the rules; whether he did know is irrelevant to whether he should be excluded.
You didn't actually answer my question.
When you use a lot of phrases like: "Maciej cheated", "Maciej tried to game the system", "He tried to stack the deck", you don't make it sound like you think he accidentally took cold medicine - you're directly attributing malice to him.
He deliberately took a drug which he knew would improve his athletic performance. He may or may not have known that it was on the banned drugs list.
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Nitpicking here: I don't think Silken Laumann lost any Olympic medals, only Pan Am medals if I remember correctly. Not that it makes any difference whatsoever to your point.
Huh, you're quite right. I guess I mentally conflated "Olympic athlete" and "lost medals" into "lost Olympic medals".