Ultimately, giving any character any kind of reward or punishment is one of those areas where the staff just can't win by the players. It honestly is.

For every punishment, there's someone who felt it was unwarranted.

For every punishment we don't hand out, there's someone who feels wronged that it wasn't.

For every reward, there's someone who didn't get it who thinks they deserved it more.

Even if it were possible to come up with a completely non-circumstantial non-opinion-based set of criteria for my own judgements (and, let it be said, it's not), there's always going to be the guy who got a negative title for something from someone who's no longer on staff five years ago. (e.g., Phaelim and that dude in Vargraye's BF thread.)

At some point you give up on trying to please others there and just try to make what you think are the best choices you can, and the ones that are fairest to everyone, both those who are wronged and those doing the wronging.