No, We were always obliged to ban someone with 7 recents sometimes even 6. So your statement makes zero sense.
not always, when i first became staff here we were literally taught to ban people when they had 10/11+ recents and that would get them a 1 day ban (presuming it was their first), 2 days at most. So 7 recents here is definitely warranting of a ban, however i’d probably disagree with it being permanent, but apparently bans from however long ago can be took into consideration now.
i remember getting brought onto teamspeak once and spoken about banning someone for a longer time while taking a ban from a long time ago into consideration, and i was told i shouldn’t do that as it’s too excessive, kind of ironic who actually gave me that speaking to but hey that’s a different story.
i’d say appeal it and you have may the chance of, of course not removing the ban as it’s more than valid, but possibly having a lower than permanent ban.