I can understahnd your point cutty. The admins also regret the good old period when we were able to discuss endless topics for ages. The main problem today is that we have a lot of new members (kids mainly) that don't get second degree, forcing us to control a little bit more the forum.
Still, we don't bann people for the pleasure of doing it (or do we ? :D ) but in the case of dark1, he was a troll, annoying little kid and his posts were in no way ment to be funny. This guy would have been able to discuss with himself.
Now I don't think the fact that we are more present as admins and mods is such a problem. We are only here to keep the forum troll-free. As for the off topic, I don't think you'll ever see an admin warning you for being off topic or keeping a thread going on (the great war has now more than 50 pages).
Hope that helps, if you have any question, feel free to ask