Hey there hyper, thanks for posting. Couple thoughts on what you have here.
Donators:
there are heavy restrictions on how donations can affect the player experience. a big one of those restrictions would be no tangible in-game benefit to donating, and a relaxed ban list would definitely count as an in-game advantage. another thing to consider, is the chunk loaded and quarry are really not needed since we have ender quarries and personal anchors.
Players:
adding some sort of ranking system for hours played does sound cool, but I suspect it would require another plugin, introducing yet 1 more thing to cause lag and/or not interact properly with the modpack. so maybe, but doubtful.
Spawn:
to be honest, I have yet to see a well laid-out spawn that people actually take the time to see everything. could ours be better? maybe, but not going to happen until the next server reset. as for the banned item lists, most servers don't even gives reasons why they ban what they ban. fact is, 95% is banned for griefing or lag, and the rest is for stability. a book given to new players with a list of what is banned is a nice idea, but becomes 1 more thing that has to be updated every time something is added. maybe if some many people were not ass-hats and trying to ruin other peoples fun, we could have less stuff banned. oh well.