Banning someone, means that someone is being removed from the community. Theymos wants to remove someone from the bitcointalk community, only as a last resort, even for people who cause problems for theymos personally.
Which is why I suggested escalating levels of temp bans first. If you've been temp banned four times already for spamming, and are still continuing to spam, then you are never going to change and banning you permanently is a suitable "last resort". Exceptions can be made as they are with the plagiarism rule for less black-and-white cases.
If there are red lines in which bans, temporary or otherwise, must be issued, moderation overall must become more strict for everyone. This means if I am relaxing and having a good time in a thread, I might have my post deleted (and risk getting banned), even if the post is borderline okay, and it is well known that I usually put a lot of effort into my posts. If rules are not enforced evenly, and strictly, those who are banned will have legitimate complaints when they do get banned.
I have seen you (I believe it was you) post a single image that says something along the lines of "don't feed the troll" in response to, well trolls creating troll threads. Do I agree with these posts, do I think these posts are necessary and do I think these posts should be removed? Yes, yes and no. Do I think these types of posts should be removed under a strict reading of forum rules? Yes, it is a low effort post. As I mentioned above, I don't think these types of posts
should be removed because their benefits outweigh the issue of it being a low-effort post. However if someone is banned the same day they see this type of post, that doesn't get deleted, they will legitimately think they are being treated unfairly. On the other hand, if individual judgment is used, and the circumstances are weighed, someone who is banned will have less of a leg to stand on.
I think it's a lack of reports that is the main issue.
Also, I do get the frustration from reporting, it is at the best of times a thankless job. However, it is absolutely vital to the community, and I know that I'm always grateful for people throwing reports my way.
I think part of the problem is the lack of readability of some sections, such as bitcoin discussion. Some sections are so bad that users who report posts won't even read certain sections. If modest improvements can be made to certain sections that result in increased readership, the number of reports may go way up as more people read these sections.
The issue with re offending users is likely because a limitation to SMF. Moderators can't see if a user has been reported or had x amount of posts deleted recently, unless they manually check via the modlog.
This should be a fairly easy fix. It should not be difficult to create a userscript that show the number of deleted posts within x timeframe. However, I think it would probably be better for this to be something displayed to moderators via the forum. The public modlog does not show when a post was made, or the reason for deletion, so a mod deleting 100 old bump posts from 5 years ago is treated the same way as 100 low effort posts made within the past two months. If these two details can be added to the modlog, any userscript will be able to provide far more context to any information it displays (ditto if the forum displays this information to the moderators). If the moderators are not currently being asked to justify their actions, a dropdown could be added to either reports, and/or to posts themselves. There could even be a default "none" option for justification for mods who (semi)automate their moderation (and have not yet updated their scripts) or otherwise don't want to justify their actions based on the available options on the list. Keeping track of the "why" moderation actions are taken can also provide additional insights to the administration in managing the forum. For example, if a certain section has a lot of posts deleted for excessive bumping, the administration might want to implement the "new" bump system for that section. Or if a lot of well-established forum members are violating a particular rule, the specifics of said rule may want to be re-evaluated.