Thanks for picking this up Nickleon. I read all the 124 posts and I see there were several users and GMs who actually participated in that thread. That is refreshing.
The whole point Charles was making is that these decisions are by nature subjective, the amount of time they take is not as straightforward as Perpete was trying to make it look, as many cases constitute a gray area and need solid proof. He talked about needing evidence, yet in my example a user who has been around since S3 was banned, likely for something which was well known to everybody for years. If the GMs were doing their free and unpaid job responsibly, how come the "overwhelming evidence" Charles mentioned has been overlooked for 5 actual years? It is suspicious to say the least, wouldn't you agree? Either 30+ GMs made a mistake for 5 years by not not taking action or a GM made a mistake now. I'm sorry but this completely undermines the GM near infallibility/honesty/resposibility dogma that Perpete keeps repeating like a mantra.
Charles himself did concede:
3) Some sort of feedback in response to cheating reports might be helpful, if there is a way to do it that doesn't lead to debates about what does or doesn't constitute cheating.
For the record I think the points of those who argued in favour of a pillory were significantly more credible and, out of all the people who posted in that thread, I think only RiP made a solid argument in the against camp (which consisted of a couple of users and several GMs) which is similar to what I incorrectly assumed Perpete was making. However, considering the bans (and likely reports) are 1/10 of what they were back then, I think even RiP's point becomes weaker nowadays.
Reading this coming from Perpete, who was already a GM back then, was priceless, though:
I know it's frustrating. I made cheatind report for more than 18 months without knowing what happened to the teams, but I kept doing that, because what was really frustrating was the fact that cheaters were stacking money. I was also enjoying doing my own inquiry. Not knowing if X or Y was sanctionned was a little annoying, but not that much.
As I said it's kind of pointless to beat around the bush any longer. I'll open another thread in Suggestions if I come up with something that had not been clearly proposed back then, but after what happened I just can't think it is reasonable for Perpete to expect and demand blind trust from users.