I think everything you said basically makes sense, but I should clarify (if only for the purpose of making sure the feedback I provided is as useful to you as possible) that I was told that the reason for the silencing was the flags, not any replies. If that is not correct, then at minimum the explanation for my silencing I think should have been clearer. I also just reviewed the messages between myself and the moderators again while collecting links I’ll be sending to you in DMs and while I can’t see all my posts from the thread anymore I might have overstated in my first post here any amounts of replying I did to the off topic messages, because I specifically mention in those DMs that I was careful not to reply to those and just flag them, with no one correcting me on that point, so I now do think it’s more likely I didn’t reply to the posts I flagged.
That said, I am certainly much more sympathetic to concerns about individual members replying to off topic posts to in their view (but probably often not successfully) “help” stop a thread from being derailed, that just wasn’t what I was told the issue was, doesn’t seem to have been what happened going off my memory and the conversation in DMs with the mods about it, and even if I had I also don’t think a first offense there on my part (as far as I know) warranted much more than a warning TBH. A global silencing for almost two weeks was just not proportional if that was my mistake.
I appreciate you taking the time to hear me and everyone else out. I can’t speak for everyone but for me personally even just that helps restore a decent amount of confidence in the moderation here.
Edit: I tried to DM you as you asked but I am not able to apparently.