Let me put it this way.
When 'charms was started, we had no need to be so harsh - for we didn't have these crazy amounts of useless, moronic n00bs, the kind of which should be fed to the e-Lions (get in the car >>). We could allow ourselves to go with Three Strikes, then you get some time to cool off, restricted to posting in only one board, until we saw an improvement. If you failed after that, BAN'd.
It worked for years. Then the trainer card maker came along and the proverbial shite hit the proverbial fan. So, we had to make our system harsher. Yes, we ARE harsh, and we are harsh because we demand quality of our posters.
QUALITY, I must stress, NOT Quantity. That is why your Artiste argument is invalid.
See, when we can tell in advance that a member is bad news, we tend to keep a watchful eye - or three - on them. Artiste and a whole bunch of little pains in the ass arrived together. Some of them gave us an excuse to sparta-kick them out of the board faster than you could say Yukio Oikawa. Others, like Artiste did their best not to break any rules, but that didn't stop him from being a pain in our collective ass. So we stalked him like a hawk until he tripped and allowed us to finally kick his sorry derriere out of here, and good riddance to bad rubbish.
Also, I'm amused by you sales-pitching a warning bar that you cannot even provide. It's true that SMF modifications are very diverse, but installing them might be a bit of an ordeal that Alex would not want to go through. We have a working warning system, no need to replace it for one that will use features we don't need.
Three strikes and you're out. That's how it's been, that's how it's going to be, and if you have problems with that, kindly take them elsewhere.
As for ye with the name full of redundant X-es and O-s - nothing is wrong with lurking as long as you don't spam the place up like there's no tomorrow.
Regarding the rule about reviving dead topics - It's quite simply because we said so. We don't want old topics from like 2004 floating up all of a sudden because some mindless n00b decided to reply to them after the question has long since been answered. This happened before.
Dead threads can be several months old and untouched, and then it is frowned upon to revive them if there's nothing relevant to add. The early 2006 thing (that is soon to change because we're about to enter a new year and so the deadlines need to be moved!) is a time frame from which threads MUSTN'T BE REVIVED NO MATTER WHAT - that goes beyond necromancy and into sheer beating a dead horse. However If a mod or an admin revives a thread from early 2006 that means they have a good reason to. This will almost never happen though.
(Bear in mind that 'Recent activity in an old thread' could also mean, for instance, a thread that was started in 2005 or something but is still active and getting posts - such as, for instance, the chat log topic).
Off-Topicness... let me put it this way. Conversations that naturally derail, as long as it's kept intelligent, are alright. However, a post like 'Kittens. Aren't they just fluffy-wuffy adorable?' in a thread dealing with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire is something completely different. If you go TOO off-topic however, expect to be warned.
Also, if you're worried about entering crazy dictatorships and selling your soul - I'm sorry to tell you that that's pretty much what we are: A soul-consuming dictatorship of doom. Deal with it, kthx. ^^
