That's interesting that you ranked, or at least noticed a penalty being removed after 90% of your links have been removed.

I wonder where you rank now having removed 90% of your links? Likely behind the brands and the churn-spammers.

I only had a page "affected".
After a lot of cleaning and 2 reconsideration req, I got this:

We received a reconsideration request from a site owner for [xxxxxxx...]

We've now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it's in violation of our quality guidelines, and revoke or adjust manual spam actions applied to the site if appropriate.
You can use the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools to view actions currently applied to your site.

If your site isn't appearing in Google search results, or if it's performing more poorly than it once did, check out our Help Center to identify and fix potential causes of the problem.

What to understand from this? Limbo?
I even deleted and put 410 error for that URL! :o

For another site, we uploaded a disavow file (90% of the links from GWT) and never contacted any sites! The reconsideration request was ONE sentence

Do I take it from this then that you didn't actually get any links at all removed, but just intimated to Google that you had done? Or am I reading it wrongly?

Do I take it from this then that you didn't actually get any links at all removed, but just intimated to Google that you had done? Or am I reading it wrongly?

Correct.

It was just a test and I never thought it would work at all! It was the fastest and shortest reconsideration request I ever done. Just goes to show that effort does not equate to reward.

One thing different I did compare to the others was I submitted the disavow file and waited two-three weeks before submitting the reconsideration request. I guess this might be important too as it takes time for the results to sync/what reviewer actually sees when doing a backlink check? Who knows.

I wonder where you rank now having removed 90% of your links? Likely behind the brands and the churn-spammers.

Yes, that seems to be the case but I'm not alone. It seems many people out there are seeing the same thing right now, no return of traffic after their penalty is removed.

I'm just highlighting an example, that people believe Google want to see detailed work into each reconsideration request. I had believed this too, but now I'm not too sure. If you look at my other post, we did the same thing on another domain (disavowed everything) and Google didn't budge. Maybe it really just depends on each reviewer...

The important thing to know now is that this domain can now begin clean link building again, without being held down by any manual penalties.

It all depends on the person sitting at the other end and his judgement call...

I'm just highlighting an example, that people believe Google want to see detailed work into each reconsideration request.

It's an interesting observation. It's beyond me that we're supposed to "pay a penance" for having spammy links point to our sites i.e. beg webmasters to remove the links first of all. Not just beg once. But beg 4 or 5 times per webmaster, over weeks. It's almost like giving alms - to "make merit" - an offering of goodwill to Google. By willing to waste our own precious time, Google will reward us for our corrective behaviour.

Of course, Google can't know how much effort we've put into removing backlinks, because the vast majority of webmasters either ignore these requests / there's no webmaster to send this request to. Therefore, if the vast majority of link removal requests are ignored, why not just pretend you went through the motions, and yeah, here's my disavow.txt file.

Any ballpark on how many URLs or domains you disavowed in the shorter request?

What was the one sentence please, would like to use it.

What was the one sentence please, would like to use it.

How about reading the thread from the beginning. Then you will find your answer.

Ah OK got it. Thanks