Opinions?
How about banned members with negative trust?
Lauda also had negative trust even before he left the forum and got banned, other members found some cases when he did plagiarism in his early days, but I think we have several sticky topics from him.
Some of them can be found in Beginners & Help, others in our local board, and maybe there are other stickies I didn't notice.
I have nothing against members you mentioned in your example, but maybe it's time to check again all sticky topics and update what is needed.
It's not only issue with negative trust, but I think some topics are really outdated and others need to be deleted.
I think another reason why a banned user can have a chances of creating an appeal on the the ban placed is for the community to look into the case at first, access the whole situation if or not a second chance can be given after considering the role such user had played in the past to the forum growth, i user can get banned and his threads created that has significant taughts can still be use, as a matter of fact the thread can also be active if the discussion is what should be on a continuous follow-up, any member that violate the rules faces the consequence no matter who he is and that doesn't renders his past thread less important.