I think ultimately it's just a huge moderation headache to have a rule against tracing and have to codify every acceptable exception to that rule. That would necessitate the moderation team to be able to make uniform calls about what is and isn't allowed and when.
The thing with self-made materials is that they still can be reused, drastically increasing output time. However, if someone has a personal base, model (3d) or model (irl) and traces them only once each, without reusing, there's literally no way for the mods to know outside some hypothetical strawmen with stark quality differences between traced and untraced work. This rule is as unenforceable as the rule against beginning in advance but it is an honor system i see the point in violating unlike the advance rule.
I do hope tho that the mods find a better solution than having this grayish area, though i understand the appeal of a blanket ban's simplicity.
I agree that its not really something that is enforceable, I can only think that if someone admits or shows a speedpaint then someone could report it but I feel like thats a lot of work for a mod team. I didn't think about the references being reused and I would think that would be kinda lame. But yeah, I feel like theres a better solution or something. It's nice to have simpler rules but I also think they should consider more of what actually implementing them looks like. IDK, maybe their other honor system rules function fine so this will too, just seems like a headache waiting to happen
