The common thing that I've seen when people complain about post padding is that the person complaining usually forgets that there are two criteria that must be met for the activity to be considered post padding, not one:

1) The post must not contain any information; and
2) The purpose of making that post is solely to increase the post count. (It's this second one that is generally forgotten.)

Once a person hits 180 posts (and gets OMNI access, with the requisite number of days of membership), I don't see the second criteria as coming into play nearly as often. While it's not out of the realm of possibility for someone with 9900 posts to start padding to get to "Evangelist," I think it would be really hard to prove. With FTers with lower post counts, it's a little more obvious.

Mike