I think the administration must reconsider its work methods due to recent events. As you said, roleplay quality in Discovery is falling. But silently introducing/using hard rules/sanctions before you introduce some sort of changes is an awful way. As a faction leader, I must say that I make the same mistakes and do not communicate with faction members enough when needed, and for that, I can apologise, and I'm trying to change it. But my "work" does not affect as many people as yours.
I know that you are all doing your work for free and because you want to change something/help game, etc. But please consider making a community manager(or something like that) role whose main role will be to talk with people, introduce them to your event plans, new rules, ask their thoughts about RP quality, etc. And make it more visible so everyone will see it. Because the last what I remember is that you introduced thoughts about new rules for Official Factions and nothing before it.
upd. + I have a strong feeling that if such harsh sanctions were imposed against someone less active/well-known, they would be successfully oppressed. Since people who could talk and work with such cases before sanctions seemed left server after they helped Haste. And we would have zero knowledge about everything from your perspective.
