On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Asking someone to "avoid" participating does not imply disallowing that participation. It only warns them that this sometimes leads to conflicts.
Any ordinary person reading this in a straightforward way would take an instruction to "avoid" doing something as a statement that it is not allowed.
Telling users to avoid doing something and then saying that that doesn't prevent legitimate uses because it isn't a ban, is expecting everyone who reads the policies to be a Wikilawyer. This is absurd. Policies need to be comprehensible by ordinary people.