I just think people have to be careful in thinking that everything comes down to back & white. I'll give you a specific example:
A few months ago when I had the fast respawn plugin we use re-written by a Sorucemod coder to insure it added the proper sv_tags, an error was introduced that went unnoticed for almost 6 weeks. For some reason, whatever the coder did (which, I have no idea, I have to pay freelancers to get these things done for me) somehow caused the "increased_maxplayers" tag to disappear when it added the "respawntimes" tag, even though my servers were set above 24 slots. Now, that is something I certainly did not intend to do (I didn't even think it was possible, as that's hard-coded into the engine), and I only happened to notice it when checking our servers in the browser one day. Now, as soon as I saw that, I contacted the coder and he found/fixed the error that caused it - but I certainly wasn't trying to game the system, it was an innocent coding error. Should everyone be aware of the rules? Sure - but unless it's something truly intentional and nefarious like the fake clients thing described above, then outright bans of servers is extreme. I agree ignorance of the law is not an excuse, but the last time I checked we didn't put jaywalkers in front of firing squads either. There needs to be a reasonable level of response to these types of things. A written warning with X amount of time to comply (with graduating consequences for non-compliance such as revoking quickplay eligibility, temporary delisting, followed by a perma-ban) is absolutely appropriate and acceptable. Those server operators that are less-tech savvy than others may someday put a plugin on their server that (as the example I noted above) causes unintended non-compliance in one or more areas, without their knowledge. A simple warning to these folks would go a long way towards preserving goodwill in the server community as a whole. Luckily - cooler heads usually prevail with the TF2 team, and they have the added benefit of seeing the big picture (and all the underlying player-data that denotes which servers players like).
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