You're getting there, Richard. Doesn't have to be strict. If someone is peeing in the street all of the time & ignoring your warnings, is it right to issue the death sentence? (Awful analogy, I know

). But if you issued a short ban of a couple of days after the warning was ignored, it might sink in with some. Another repeat, a longer ban. And so on. Most might get the message before a 6 month ban, I'm sure. Then again ....

I think the word I'm pushing here is proportion. The transparency message seems to have been acknowledged by this late OP, for which I'm grateful.
This is dragging on. It's a 5 min conversation in the pub. I think we're making progress. I can see our mods thinking. Sadly, our supermods think their attempts of humour & avoidance are more important than addressing an issue. But that's supermods for you. Hopefully we'll never need to use them again.