I think most forums should ad-hear to these kinds of rule's.
I'm more speaking from experience of other forums rather than GH because I've not been here too long, but mod's have (in general) a problem with how to read rules and how to balance that out depending on who the user is.
Black and white rule sets simply don't make sense and in the long run don't work.
The best example of this is GameTrailers... it's a forum of millions of registered users but is now a spam filled mess of total morons who barely game and are barely over 15yrs old. It's complete trash, but it wasn't always like that.
As forums grow people grown with them and certain members pop up, these members are in fact more important than the people moderating the forums, but mod's have the power. This inevitably leads to a clash, and the key member being banned.
This happened time and time again to many members there, and it's partly why it's a complete mess.
Personally I don't understand the role of moderators, or why they exist. Forums have rules, but why are there rules so strict about things which, really don't matter?
I've been trying to work out for a long time how you could properly police a forum (of a large size) without it being dead, or full of spam and nonsense, I've yet to work it out but given the size of the community DT's stance on it makes allot of sense and is rather refreshing, but it's not a policy that works well to invite new members who simply see a niche little club where everyone knows each other.. there is a language barrier.
So while I like DT's stance and modding policy more than GH's... GH's is allot easier to get into and started at.
EDIT: Dan being banned isn't the end of the world!