Rules are pinned at the top of the board you're posting on right now. While it would make a lot of sense to also give a link to new users (and theymos did consider that a while ago), it still depends on users actually reading it. If you're posting an appeal and don't read the sticky, and don't read it even after being explicitly pointed to it (as evidenced by multi-posting in this thread) - it doesn't seem like not being asked to read the rules is the real issue here.