If a post is deleted by a mod (or a sempai in the supprot area) then its due to something beyond a warning level, ie its total spam or its offensive. Since my time here I haven't see anything which I would say is heavy handed, and I find everyone here to be rather tollerent. If you really have had 5 posts deleted without anyone sending you a PM, then may I suggest you have a proper read of the rules, they are quite clear what is and what isnt allowed, and for such actiion you must have done a whopper of a rule break.
Speaking of rules.
@JCD - isn't your signature a little excessive?
QUOTE (Signature Rules)
"All links in signatures must be to safe sites. Placing images behind spoiler tags is not an acceptable solution for signatures which violate the rules stated above.
In other words if you have more content in spoiler tags then the rules allow we will remove it (exception for text only)."
Linked Here
On the file download banning, that is a different process, and it has been said time and time again, people cannot be banned by using Koushin - the whole point of it is to manage your downloads so you dont get banned, it allows 2 files to download at once as well. The only way to get a ban is to use the direct link for manual download AND use multiple connections. Its really not rocket science and I personally cant see how people manage to have such a problem. However, for the people that do, they can go in the support forum and explain the situation to a mod and if appropriate get unbanned.
Now something which is perhaps more relevant, and thinking about what Emi posted above about the recent topics, I was looking at the front page a lot the other day, and actually its not very clear what forum topics are "hot". Yes its there, but it dosnt really stand out much against all the other activity. Its basically the entire right hand side of the page, yet it dosnt seem to draw you in, I wonder if maybe something could be done there to make it a bit more eye catching?
I love the anime series pages however, with the screen caps and the forum posts under it, thats just awesome and its one of my favourite parts of the site.