Real talk from an admin here--
I agree that minimodding, and overall sensitivity have gotten way out of hand.
I had like 4 paragraphs typed up before the internet commited suicide, so I'm just going to keep this brief to save my nerves.
IMO it's better to PM an auth with rulebreaking than it is to call someone out on your own. It just causes conflict and eats at the barrier between auth and members.
Also, as far as rule 1 is concerned, it is NOT the business of people outside of auth and the two individuals involved, for many reasons. One being the most important-- when someone says "hark sucksss", it's not (I'll use you as an example,) Owen's job to say "Rule one. Stop being disrespectful." It's mine. And really, we're all people here, we joke around. Chances are it's my friend from Treehouse.
I think it would be more fun if we didn't have some of the rules we do, but we'd be devolving from our higher standards and practically inviting the kind of people we ban to come back.