The leaders seem to have the self-awareness to realize that writing "we are punishing a contributor for disagreeing with us on a forum thread, an act we found p

The leaders seem to have the self-awareness to realize that writing "we are punishing a contributor for disagreeing with us on a forum thread, an act we found personally annoying" would not be ideal. Yet, they don't have the awareness to realize saying "actually, we are punishing them for writing too many comments" and directly referencing that exact thread is precisely the same thing.