I thought that one of the reasons Plan B was created was to get rid of admins that enforced their own rules that weren't written anywhere. It would be sad to find out everything has remained the same. I hope I have misunderstood you.
In extreme cases, scamming and begging can have elements of serial spamming of players' PMs and the main chat, which is what happened with those players (I wasn't a part of the admin team then, but I support the staff's actions). Behavior like this doesn't need to be a punishable offense by itself, but it may still have wider implications. For example, asking if there are admins online in the main chat or in PMs is obviously a perfectly legal thing to do. However, it may imply that that particular player could try to hack/cheat or generally break the rules.
As for the supposed in-game advantage this may give admins - I believe it is being exaggerated. Firstly, players discuss their movements/playing strategies in team-chat (or even using clients, such as TeamSpeak or Discord) much more often than in PMs. Secondly, even if players suddenly decided to use PMs for discussing their gaming strategies, the only real advantage an admin could acquire would be if that admin participated in massive chases and clashes with another group of players. Those chases/clashes are usually a result of clan wars in PTP - something responsible and diligent admins have absolutely no time for or interest in.
Exactly. But that's up to you, as you are the owner of the cat and you are the one who suffers the consequences of its behavior. It's not up to me, that I'm a stranger and whatever happens to your living room carpet doesn't affect me in any sort of way.
The thing is, is that you don't necessarily need to remove the cat since I'm responsible for it and I have the power to remove it. However, if you're responsible for the well-being of the people in the neighborhood and you're aware that this cat has urinated in my house, you can prevent the cat from doing it (or even worse things) in other people's houses. Yes, I may have to sacrifice a part of my privacy, but it's for the well-being of the whole neighborhood.
TL;DR, to sum up (since my fingers are getting tired from replying here
): My impression is that the most common reason for the players to support the restrictions is that they feel that admins have particular devious benefits or even pleasure from reading their PMs. I fully understand that since there have been cases of misuse of the information gathered in PMs in the past. However, none of the current admins have a history of such behavior. Furthermore, this server is very open to suggestions/complaints. Hell, you can even
insult the whole staff and ask them to participate in collective coprophagia while you're at it and your opinion will still be heard and considered. That goes double for the players' privacy. As i have mentioned, leaking private information is not something that is forgiven here.
