More conversation by mods and admins is definitely good. I'm a little miffed that there are at least two separate chunks of rules aimed at keeping me muzzled, but hey, at least there are some for Lorric.
An official policy that there will be no consistency between punishments will provide grounds for real frustration. I already feel like I'm at risk of a ban for posting in good faith on several topics I'm interested in. The new rules mean that I need to make sure all edge cases are reported so I can understand when action is going to be taken and when it isn't. Is that the intent here? It does at least seem to jive with the request for more reports. Are posts by moderators safe to emulate? Can I insult someone as long as a moderator's used the same wording?
Why is there no formal rule about moderating discussions you're participating in? What kind of recourse do we have when a thread ends up locked while a couple moderators complain about how dreadful everything is?
Unfortunately I think these rules are going to push forum discussion farther along in a direction it's previously tended to go: threads dominated by stubborn, underinformed people who can repeat the same points over and over again no matter what they're told, leading to frustration, irritation, page after page of posts trying to cover the same ground, and (under these new rules) a lot of recrimination for the people most likely to bring substance to a thread. A set of forum rules that sees MP-Ryan banned and Liberator left posting is not a set of forum rules that will provide an interesting culture.
There's also one huge, inherent flaw with the moderation system as it is right now: it rewards sniping. Let's say the issue in question is India vs. Pakistan and it's something a ton of forum members care about. It's easy to slip in a line or two aside about this issue in a place where it doesn't necessarily belong. It's difficult to reply to this point without creating a derail or being accused of soapboxing. This creates incentives for political and personal statements to be made obliquely where they can't be safely or productively engaged.
I'm a member of a number of forums with really, really successful moderation and a culture of agreeable collaboration. They're a lot bigger than HLP, which may have something to do with it, but the tone at the top is also much different - there's no attempt to run moderation by a set of comprehensive rules, and the focus of the moderation team is much less on by-the-line-item enforcement and much more on ensuring that discussion is substantive and interesting. If users post a lot and contribute little, they get banned. Part of my impatience with posting on HLP lies in this difference - the pretense of impartiality and legalism is, I think, actively opposed to successful forums moderation.