But why is it fair for level 5's to read private messages and not for level 4's?
It's not fair for level 5+, I didn't say it was haha. In fact, I don't think level 5+ need access to PMs either. After all, the only thing access to PM is actually required is to catch players covering up ban evaders, which has only happened once in server history. So, in my honest opinion, only Jonne (or even nobody!) is more than enough personnel to deal with it.
Also, considering level 4's have access to this information, why do they (past and present level 4's) rarely appear in Top 10 statistics lists or have impressive K/D ratios?
I didn't say it was unfair enough to take you to the Top 10 haha. My point is that the cure is worse than the disease. You have a group of 13 people receiving privileged information every hour of every day for... for what? To catch a minor rule-breaker once every few months, or even years?
However, players that flame/insult/harass/scam in PMs don't necessarily need to be spamming mindlessly and therefore, the system can't recognize it as rule breaking
Why would the system recognize flame/insult/harass/scam as
rulebreaking? It is not
rulebreaking.
Also, if this isn't level 4 admins' business, why should it be level 5's business (especially considering they are not necessarily very active and are not expected to be)?
I didn't say anything about the level! I said admins. Level 5's are also admins, head of the rest of admins, but admins (someone who administrates de server, by definition)
I still don't understand why private message spam would bother you, a third person that has nothing to do. It may bother the person receiving it, and that person has all the power to stop it at any time.
According to your logic, when you get a cat and it pees on your living room carpet every morning, it will be Ok if I break into your flat and remove the cat. After all, you aren't the one who decides if you are willing to put up with the cat or not, are you, huh?
Just because it doesn't work doesn't mean that such players shouldn't be warned and monitored.
I have never seen anyone playing a /q joke on a regular player but, if I saw it, it would probably be obvious that it's happening in a friendly fashion.