As for "negatively impacting your ability to interact with the site", that refers to the practice of slowbanning and hellbanning. Slowbanning is what it sounds like - the site will be slower for you, sometimes just a little and sometimes a lot. The idea there is to subconsciously encourage you to visit the site less and to contribute less when you do. Hellbanning is more extreme. When you're hellbanned, nothing you contribute will be visible to anyone else, but it won't look like anything's wrong to you. (However, people with enough karma can elect to see your contributions regardless. This is why you'll sometimes see people kindly pointing out someone's hellbanned state.)