Time for me to make a more serious post
This whole situation is completely stupid and needs to be fixed. Let's explain why:
First of all, if Zottl has broken a rule that is punishable with a permanent ban, he should be banned from the forums, in game, and through the c-rpg website. He is, however, not. He's only banned through the forum, which is wrong. Either enforce your rules or don't, stop half heartedly enforcing them. Rules are set in stone, the job of an administrator is to enforce the rules set by the owner of the server, or, the one who has been given the job of creating said rules, your job is also deciding what punishment is suitable and what is not, it would be completely illogical and stupid to enforce a ban on someone somewhere else other than just enforcing it as a whole, it's like me finding someone has broken a rule on NA 1 so I ban him from EU 1, it makes no sense what so ever and is a very stupid and embarrassing way to administrate. I'm not saying that mistakes don't happen, this is very blatantly one of those mistakes which wasn't properly thought through. I can understand from your perspective that you don't want to go back on what has been done as you've already fought tooth and nail for it, but, to be completely honest guys, by enforcing this awfully thought out punishment, you ruin all the respect people have for you as admins, I once called you the best Admin I've ever met Uther, and you defending this form of punishment is hurting that opinion that I have of you. I'm not saying that my opinion matters at all and you may not care, but I care about C-RPG, and the one way to fuck this games revival is to lose the respect of your playerbase.
On to the main point, in terms of fixing this, I get that you guys are a small team, and I get that you guys may want to punish Zottl, that's fine, he admitted to breaking a rule, whether he meant that as a joke or not is up to him, not me. I've adminned for about 3 years on the PW module as well as managing a team of Admins years ago in another game, that however is another ballpark; in this situation, coming from an Admins perspective here, not the retarded Krems inside me, just admit you were wrong. We're not going to hate you or lose respect for you just because you admit that in this instance, the punishment handed out was wrong, if anything, I would actually GAIN respect for you. A good Admin team knows when to admit that they have made a mistake, and in this case, I think it would be highly insulting to call this anything BUT a mistake.
I'm not here to insult you guys or belittle you guys for anything here, my aim isn't to annoy you guys or piss you off, I'm here to offer a perspective. I'm not sure how much experience either of you guys have in Administration but I do think you guys need to step back and look at this from an unbias standpoint. Look at both sides, can you not see how illogical it seems for a player to be banned from the forums because of action that is in relation to the GAME itself. If I was racist in game I would be banned from the game and be left on the forum, correct? That's how this works. The forum is here to be separate from the game, not to be an alternative form of half-hearted punishment.
Whether you guys want to listen to me or not is up to you, I'm simply talking from an Administrators viewpoint from OUTSIDE the team. I might be a retard sometimes (Ok fine 99% of the time) but stuff like this just pisses me off, I expect more from an Admin team personally.
Edit: Just also realised you guys have already admitted that the punishment was a mistake, if James thought it translated to a ban in game that's fair enough, what matters now is what you choose to do with that, you guys either need to ban zottl in game or unban him. Simple as that.
Edit2: Also just realised you guys have been deleting posts because you wanted to, not because of some rule that was broken, just because you felt like it. Another great way to throw the respect of your playerbase down the drain. You guys are trying to rebuild a dead community here and are doing it by treating them like shit. If you treat one person like shit then what's going to stop you doing that to the rest of your playerbase? Decide on whether you want to ACTUALLY build a community here or if you want to abuse your power and delete posts because you found it funny. It's not funny and it's not okay to blatantly misuse your power because you want to, that's just plain disrespectful and sad.