The recent actions are far too strict...I'm not speaking for spamming, advertising, flaming, or whatever...but just the signature enforcement, because that's all I'm familiar with...but somebody gave an example earlier in this thread that made me think of a good example...

When you get pulled over for speeding, do you get thrown into jail? No, you get a ticket - sometimes not even a ticket, just a warning. If you do it again, you probably get another ticket...again, your license gets taken away....again, you get thrown into jail. You can't throw somebody into jail after their first (small) offense.

It works the same way for forums. If you are instantly banning people for 3 days because they have one too many links, colors, lines, whatever in their signature, then people will get pissed off and people will start leaving. Sure, they have nobody to blame but themselves, but fact of the matter is that people are going to break the signature rules, no matter where you go...part of running a forum is accepting this fact and accepting the responsibility to take care of it in a fair and balanced manner...banning people for their first signature violation is not fair and balanced at all.