In a potentially sensitive and even inflammatory forum such as TER, most(?) contributors are moderated until they have a proven track record of not being overly stupid or careless. There are a handful of moderators who, I think, are volunteers (or do they get a break on dues?) and may only log in at odd hours to check the queues, approve a submission and post it to the forum. A few hours delay is similar to my experience. (I've been posting regularly for ~a year and I'm still moderated.)

I'm pretty sure that the time stamp on your post is the time of SUBMISSION, not the time of posting so it's actually the people submitting later than you that will look like copy cats in the long run.  They posted w/o seeing your post and you posted w/o seeing theirs. Don't sweat it.

Also, in very long discussions, people don't read all of the posts so there is occasional redundancy there, too.

You can ask your local moderator to remove your gag. He will decide if your status will change.

and the moderator made me unmoderated without me having to ask. It didn't take very long to become unmoderated, but if you want to speed it up you can just ask a moderator.

Thanks for explaining and the advice! I guess I'll start talking to a moderator.

How do you find out who your local moderator is?

you must establish a posting history.  Your local board is the best place for that.  Once you have shown you can follow the rules, the mod may unmoderate you, or you can ask for it.

Swim

That is how I got unmoderated. My posting history was old and not a lot. However, one of the moderators was running amnesty for 24 hours for all topics on the General Board which included getting unmoderated. I sent an email requesting per his instructions on the amnesty post and voila, I was unmoderated. If you get unmoderated on any board, you are unmoderated for all boards.  Good luck