I feel as though the amount of RDM bans is more closely correlated to the nature of the map rotation rather than the vanilla aspect.
I think the staff currently struggle to staff the 5 servers we had and I know you'll say, "well add more staff." That's what was said about vanilla when it started.
I think saying that we struggle to staff the servers we have currently is a bit of an exaggeration. Anyways, I personally would prefer a low population server (perhaps 16-20 players) before a Vanilla 2. Just my opinion, however. A low population server would bring a new experience to our community, I think.
Since Vanilla has no downloads, it would defeat the purpose What you're essentially suggesting is regular servers minus the skins and other weapons, along with adding a download time for the maps
Please God no. I'd be more in favor of another USA based server Perhaps a 16 player server for those who prefer lower population servers
If it had the whole map rotation, it wouldn't be friendly to people who had just bought gmod. The reason why minecraft maps are used are because they only use dev textures and has no need for css
Id personally like to see a smaller server that runs new guns/maps/models etc before they get on the main servers. Similar to a test server but this could be updated every 2 weeks with a feedback section on the forums. It would require a bit more maintaining but would help with server variety and people complainting at no new stuff.