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The first mud you mentioned was, despite whatever it claimed to be, "Enforced" - it "enforced" roleplaying on players, and punished those who didn't do so. The fact that the staff violated their own policies is a separate issue.
However Enforced and Encouraged are both "RP muds", they just have different approaches. As long as "Encouraged" doesn't allow the players to spoil the fun of those who ARE trying to roleplay, I don't see how that makes it any less of an RPG. That would like arguing that D&D isn't a roleplaying game, because lots of powergamers play it.
"Roleplaying" is a fairly loose term. Take an RPI mud for example - no global channels, no way to see who is online, no way to see the names of other characters, no form of OOC communication, etc. That's fairly hardcore, and many of the players consider that to be the only "true" type of RP mud. Take the typical RP TinyMUD derivative - no hardcoded combat or skills, everything is "roleplayed". Once again, many of the players consider that to be the only "true" type of RP mud.
I think the important thing to remember is that we all have a different idea of what makes up a good RP mud, and we should try to remember that many other people don't share our view. So rather than talking about "pure-RP" and "stepping stones", let's instead try to focus on what we as individuals look for in the way of an immersive roleplaying environment, and not try to be too judgemental of what we consider to be "inferior" muds.
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