People are not being "penalised"; if you are referring to the 28 day limit, that's something we need to discuss as we've not yet decided what the limit should be (though my initial thoughts are to agree with others that 7 days sounds sensible), but as a general principle this system is not "penalising" people and is simply a return to the way the forum was until relatively recently.
Couple of things that jumped out at me here. Firstly, I am intrigued about your claim that 'others' have suggested that 7 days sounds sensible as I can't seem to see anyone who has made such a suggestion in this thread. Here are some examples of people's thoughts on what is sensible:
Personally, I think 24 hours should be the maximum.
I'm agreeing with
@507021 in that 24 hours would probably be long enough.
But, I think 24 hours seems a much fairer period of time.
24 hours would seem to me to be an appropriate time-scale for new posts.
I agree with the majority of other posters here that it should be 24 hours.
The only posts I can see offering alternative timescales to the above are below:
I think changing it to a few days (at a push) would be appropriate. 28 days is far too excessive.
I would argue the maximum time limit for this should be 7 days as an absolute maximum.
Even the last quoted post which mentions 7 days doesn't seem to suggest 7 days is a sensible timescale. I don't want to put words into the posters mouth but, in my opinion, the use of terms such as 'absolute maximum' would suggest they are slightly compromising on what they actually see as sensible.
Secondly, on the 2nd part of your post that I have highlighted, with regards to this being a feature until 'relatively recently', I have been a member of this forum for over 2 years now and can safely say that this is the first time I have seen it. I would argue that over 2 years ago is not all that recent - I mean I last visited Reading in 2018 but if someone asked if I had ever been I wouldn't say 'yeah I visited recently'
At the end of the day, it is your forum to do as you please and in the main it is run very well but to dismiss all of this feedback in this thread and claim that 7 days being sensible has been suggested, when it clearly hasn't, isn't great - especially as I have seen users referred to as 'customers' (which I thought was slightly strange in itself) and surely customer feedback is important to all sorts of businesses and organisations?
All that said, if there is a way to get any merged posts to still show up as a new post and to notify relevant users (ie those you are replying to or those who watch the thread you are posting in) then I feel that timescale discussion becomes irrelevant as I am sure that is the key issue people are facing when it comes to this change.