I’m a big fan of hyperbole, but there comes a point where it crosses over into straight-up fiction. It’s nice that you’ve retracted your original claim, but in your last sentence you simply replaced with a slightly vaguer one which is equally untrue, so I’m not sure how much progress has actually been made here, fighting ignorance-wise.
Seriously, click on the link I supplied and page through ten pages or so of thread titles. Click on any link related to the staff and note the tone of the thread. I think you’ll find things were generally far more civil in the Pit back then than they are in the ATMB now, for the most part. The narrative that the rules change came about in response to a consistent pattern of staff abuse is simply false.