Google Search Quality representatives recently responded to such questions on the Webmaster Central Blog after seeing a number of these questions pop up on the Google Webmaster Forums.
A couple of points from the article stand out. Google posted that a website owner should only submit a reconsideration request when you receive a manual penalty. There is uncertainty around whether the penalty is manual or algorithmic, the submission should be "fine," day Google's team. If you recently embarked on an SEO campaign that included spammy blog comments, auto generated forum posts or text advertisements with PageRank-building links, you may have issues worth resolving--as these actions are viewed as unnatural links. If you find "bad links" in your link profile, then a good idea would be to try to get these links removed or nofollowed. If those options are not possible, then consider the new Disavow Links Tool by Google to help clean house.
SOURCE: Google Webmaster Blog: https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/06/backlinks-and-reconsideration-requests.html