Also, has anyone else felt similar or does no one question anything, get in line, and put on a smile pretend nothing is wrong?
I'd neatly counter most of this with "Why are
you so serious?" This isn't some overwhelming, authoritarian, fascist regime that's strapping on jackboots and stomping all over your individuality. You got a warning on an internet message board; nothing more, nothing less. It's not the end of the world,
1984, horrible oppression, or something. Spouting melodrama about never questioning anything, pretending nothing is wrong, etc, is pretty heavy-handed and unnecessary.
In the end, the simple truth is the moderators are going to err on the side of caution and comfort. If folks report a post, it's a sign that there is something wrong with that post; intentionally or otherwise, if it got reported it means you
did say something that offended someone. Fastjack didn't swoop out of nowhere and peck your eyes out, or something -- he got called in, because someone didn't like something you had to say. It's the job of a forum moderator to keep as many people coming back to the forum as possible, and in this instance the way to keep most people happy was to politely ask one person to tone it down a little.
Forum +/- reputation scores are meaningless. A simple warning from a moderator is meaningless. You didn't get banned, you didn't lose posting privs for a week, you got informed that some folks took your comments wrong, and were asked to ease up in the future.
I mean, you did start your (admittedly amusing, don't get me wrong!) little rant by calling Stalos' player a "rules whore." How would you feel if you were Stalos' player, you made a forum account to ask a few rules questions or get more into Shadowrun since you like the new campaign...and you find that post?
Before this guy even gets to show his face in a new forum and introduce himself, he's gonna find out that folks are calling him names behind his back, and the moderators are allowing it. Right now
you're upset because you posted an in-depth response to someone's question, tried to add some humor to it, and you feel like the community's being super critical of you for doing so. Wouldn't it suck even more to feel like the community was being super critical of you (like by calling you a rules whore) before you even showed up?
In the end, the mods are doing their job by trying to make the place as user-friendly as possible, to as many users as possible at once. The fact you got reported means you liked your post, but at least a few others didn't; majority rules, when in doubt. Maybe you should just take the warning for what it is, acknowledge that sometimes humor gets absolutely lost through the internet, and roll on?
I'm not trying to bust your balls, here, but I've gotten my fair share of infractions, warnings, suspensions, post edits, and even a few bannings, during my years on the internet (and on RPG message boards in particular). You called someone a rules whore, you got asked not to do it again...and that's that. Nothing good (to your reputation, to the moderator's opinions of you, or to the forum as a whole) comes from stirring it up anything past that.