These things run in cycles. I remember when kwaad got banned for starting a slightly silly thread, and then all kinds of people spoke up and mentioned that they thought that this bannation was a bit too aggressive, and thus, he was invited back. Now, we seem to have a few more trouble-makers that people are complaining about.
While I think that the mods have gotten a little bit lax lately, it would be a mistake to go back to the non-sensical banning like what happened to kwaad.