My only two (minor) suggestions for improvement:
1. When a post gets removed, the poster should receive some sort of automatic notification in FreepMail. Currently it's too easy for people to never even know that their post(s) were over the line. Since removed posts still show up in the "My Comments" page, the only way someone will notice is if they actually go back and reread the earlier parts of the thread and spot a "removed by moderator" notice, and correlate it with the spot that their own post used to occupy.
2. I think it would help if moderators would apply short "time-out" suspensions on an as-needed basis. There currently seems to be a "severity gap" in the range of responses, between the mild "your post has been removed", and the severe "you're outa here". I know some folks have been suspended for several weeks at a time, but I'm talking more about something like a 2-3 day suspension, just long enough to let tempers cool and a hot-headed thread to wind down. Being a somewhat mild response, moderators could use it more liberally (no pun intended) as needed -- a few days in the "penalty box" wouldn't kill anyone. Perhaps there could even be a system for "repeat offenders", whereby the first offense (for less than outright bannable offenses) would merit one day in the "penalty box", second offense would receive two days, etc.
Point 1 would require software changes and I do not know if anything like it is currently in John Robinson's 'to do' list
Point 2. We have such system, and use it as appropriate