IMHO your summary obscured the link's point as much as it clarified it, because when you said "if you advertise a rule, and then don't enforce it" the context I thought of was "Employee car park speed limit 10mph" and the rest of the post made no sense in that light.

The example given in the link - asking people to e-mail a slow-to-respond team instead of their fast-to-respond boss - makes the idea of a filter that means the boss only talks to rulebreakers a lot more logical.

I do agree the article uses far too many words to say this though...