first, @ piffin -- I never saw your long post, so that's why I never answered it. I have it here now, and will read and post reply.
now, on to the shorter questions posted above. I sorted them and tried to put them in order:
@ bobl -- Kinda general, but what happened and why?
Short history here -- BT has never had any real plan other than to let people interact and occasionally we pull out info to use in the mag. That might go away, btw, not b/c we don't value the advice, but page space.
Anyways, as most of you know, when advertisers started showing up in the forums, we had to start paying attention. Certain posts/behavior caught certain peoples attention, and we got out the broom...and the broom turned into a shovel.
Getting tired of tossing people one at a time, our group of moderators put together a list of people and their offenses, and I took action. I tossed some, blocked some, and ignored some people on the list b/c I didn't think they did anything that bad...