This is an actual process in my group at the company I work for.
Process doesn't have to be heavy and invasive.
And what's the alternative? Zero process? Everybody has to "wing it" all the time? I can't see any possibility for a perverse environment there!
Furthermore there is a type of person who enjoys asserting power through language lawyering. That kind of person will see that policy as a golden opportunity to acquire influence, even though the cost may be unnecessary conflict to little point. If such a person manages to assert control of a process element like that, you can easily get a type of teamicide that drives away good developers who don't want to deal with the BS of figuring out whether their essay was good enough to avoid an email lecture.
As for the alternative, I thought I was clear on that. Large groups cannot work without process, small groups can mostly get by on common sense. The imperfections of processes do not change their necessity in many cases. But if you, personally, do not enjoy dealing with process, then you should find opportunities to work in more congenial small groups.
For example lets say the rule is that "C# code must be compiled before it is run." The incentives are to declare code compiled when it is not, to declare that you are not running code when you are, and to declare code to not be written in C#.