The past is the past. You are stuck on an era where l2 private servers was on their peak, where we had 5-7 new topics per refresh, where 20+ mods weren't enough so extreme measures were taken (at least from my part). They who remember me I'd ban in an instant and move on. I've banned people for even being idiots. Repeatedly. I've banned mods. I've banned close friends of mine. No exceptions. I've trashed more topics than anyone can even imagine, seconds after they were made for not following forum's guidelines until they got it almost right and I'd fix it for them. I've had people searching for where I live and had death threats even thought none showed in my neighborhood. That was the peak of that time.
But now things are more simple. Manageable. Only thing I would change is a more readable front page and focus on a couple things that are active rather having a ton of unused ones and deal with the load times. Also mods correcting people's threads from a wrong title or section. It was necessary in the past but now it's not needed. It makes the new topics look bad. Just fix the damn title and send them a pm.
About tryskell; I don't know why he even got mentioned in something like this, he's teaching rather giving the solution which makes it even better. He has helped me through other people's topics passively and that's awesome.
About scammers; I don't give a shit, ban with the proper proof. I'd usually range ban so they wouldn't even be able to refresh their router and create another account to trash talk.