I will say this much: Frank does occasionally misinterpret posts and can come off rather harshly. I recall one instance where the discussion was based on spellbook size. Now keep in mind my sig there proclaims quite clearly that I am a B/X Enthusiast (meaning Moldvay/Cook Basic & Expert, not to be confused with Mentzer's BECMI edition that followed afterwards). The discussion wasn't edition specific, and when I dropped a comment regarding how I didn't see the need for a spellbook to be the same size and mass as what can be held in a horse saddlebag, he interjected with something to the effect of "Well I wrote the rulebook, it's not my fault you can't read or interpret it". I don't caree who you are, I can dish crap out at the same level it gets served to me and I don't care who is doing the serving, so my response was a simple "It's not my fault you can't read or interpret my signature". 

Which was followed by a mod post of "play nice". You know how it goes, don't speak out when royalty does it but wait until it gets returned to the royalty before taking action. Why be proactive when it's so much easier to be reactive...

Which isn't to say that Frank is entirely dickish either, as there have been numerous other times where he has praised my posts --- most memorable was when I stated that despite being a B/X Enthusiast that I love the Companion dragons, because they make AD&D dragons look like HD:1 orcs by comparison, to which his response was along the lines of "That was the idea, glad you love the lethality of Companion dragons".

My guess is following the "Village of DF" post (which I thought was beautifully written by the way, and honestly can not find any fault in it) there was a bit of back and forth PM sessions that went south...I've challenged each and every lame ban I earned and they can be pretty hostile about their pettiness when others are permitted to speak freely in a similar fashion. Perhaps when royalty started taking shots at their fickle-factor they didn't like it and acted accordingly.

There's the full thread. You can see where Frank was getting hammered early on and when the hammer wielder realized that one of the project writers was a member of DF he backpedaled, but the general trolling still continued unchecked.

I rarely post in the general forum discussions there anymore because that's where all the fence-straddling drama ends up taking place. About the only issue where the mods are universal would regard political discusiions, but religion bashing is apparently okay as long as religion defending is not invoked. Believe me, with a "cleric" class as a part of the core discussions this happens quite frequently.

Sounds like a happy community. I'll be sure to rush over there and register a log in.