I also think the “in thread” moderation is off putting just as a technological/standards thing. I see incidents like this: Champlain Towers South in Miami has caved in {2021-06-24} - #235 and I don’t know if that Ron guy was a sock or a deliberate troll, my opinion is if he wasn’t either, he was unlikely to develop into a high quality or even medium quality poster.
However, I also see a situation like that, and I think, anyone coming into a forum like this with no experience with a forum like this, might frankly find it strange and bewildering someone is posting at them and telling them what to do, and then making other posts “warning” them. Maybe the post has yellow in it, but I don’t know how obvious that is.
Most people have experience on reddit, facebook, etc. On those venues moderators don’t typically pop in and “make posts at you” to behave. They usually pop in to delete your stuff and then you get a notification on the site telling you what’s up. I’m a little torn because I do think anyone of reasonable intelligence can “figure out” what’s going on here, but I also think if someone lands here from a google search and is making a few posts, the format of the moderation here is “abnormal” and I could see it being confusing to people who, given time, probably could have developed into valuable community members. Instead they just remember that time they tried to post on some weird website, got someone posting angry stuff at them, and then suddenly their account was banned.