what do 3 warnings take away from you i have read about them but they dont specify what they take away
It's not 3 warnings, it's no more than 3 warnings. Generally, after your first warning then no problem, after your second warning your posts will have to be approved by a moderator and if you still break the rules you will be banned. This means you won't be able to view the site any more.
But if you manage to get that many then you buggered up big time. It also really depends on the type of warnings, some are worse than others, we don't define it too rigidly because having wiggle room in these kind of decisions is always best. Generally we don't like to ban people, so follow the rules, be polite and if you get a warning then stop doing that and you should be good.
From what I've seen of the system in practice, it actually works very well. As Seph has said, a warning will definitely be a prompt to analyse your behaviour on the forum and find what went wrong. So if the system works as it should it's not like it all happens at once, without warning.
