Hey man, sorry to hear about this, again!

I've had a read through the visibility guidelines, or 'rule's and think its a bit of both you say here:

Maybe I needed to wait a few weeks until I finished walking these people through the week long verification process, or maybe I needed to disregard the privacy and post the list of email addresses I compiled from people wishing to learn more and receive help.

I think the category is seeking proof of results, which in your case is going to be a list of new Steemians i think.

Other visibly posts, like advertising on FB/twitter have the advantages of built in metrics like hits and click-throughs which can show proof of engagement.

This post of yours, i would suggest changing a tag to #promo-steem and editing out the Utopian footer. Then if/when you get some sign-ups, you can present links to their intro posts which i'm sure would be proof enough.

I hope that helps dude

Cheers