just to clarify a few things:
1) you will NOT be auto-banned if you have 18 points and 3 expire so you go back down to exactly 15. what i meant was if you had, say, 17 points and 3 expired (leaving you at 14) and then you got a new 3-point infraction before any more expired (putting you back at 17, which is above the new 15-point threshold), then you will be banned.
2) as for minimodding, part of the reason why it's against the rules is because it's annoying and just makes more work for the staff to clean up. if someone posts in a totally wrong thread asking for help and you say "wrong thread, go here" we have to delete more posts. then there's also the issue that often times people are wrong in their replies and are giving newbies false information. there's a pretty simple way to get around minimodding: don't reply to it. it's just like replying to spam. resist the urge.
3) as for people saying "why isn't there an infraction for xyz" we have a lot of generic infractions like spamming and flaming that are meant to cover a variety of situations. if there is truly a situation that does not fall under one of the standard infractions (which rarely happens), that's why smods and admins have the ability to custom infract. if people try to get around things with "loopholes" in these infractions it won't work because we can give custom ones. the point of these new infractions was not meant to catch every single thing that could possibly happen but to standardize the given punishment in some situations where we didn't really have a standard procedure.
and for those of you saying it's too strict, like people already said, this board is the most lenient one i have ever been on. no other forum gives you 5 chances before you get even a tiny week-long ban, and it is very hard to get removed from this forum permanently or for a long time unless you are trying to be an annoying troll on purpose. the rules really aren't that difficult to follow, and people who actually pay attention to the rules and learn from their mistakes won't get in trouble.