Once a Penalty Always a Penalty

Has a penalty ever been removed?

[twebdonny]

My question to those that may have some interest in
such, is specifically and verifiably, has a Penalty against
a domain ever been removed manually to your knowledge?

Are you certain or just speculating?

[Brett_Tabke]

Don't know about manual, but there are automated removals.

[netmeg]

I don't know if it was manual or automatic, but I have one site I administer where there was a penalty acknowledged by Google and they removed it.

[ptoma]

How did you get google to acknowledge a penalty?

[walkman]

my take:
if you are NOT listed, as in 0 results on site:www.domain.com, you need to contact Google since it is manual.
If you have bad rankings, not enough pages indexed, supps etc., those can be "fixed" automatically as they are algo penalties (You can more links for example, change the text on the page, or the algo changes and you no longer trip the wire.)

It's an opinion of course.

[netmeg]

How did you get google to acknowledge a penalty?

I emailed 'em. Twice.

[ptoma]

Google has a public email address they respond to?