That's the argument I've always used for not wanting to change the configs. I don't believe it's right to wildly differentiate between other ranked servers.
However, with certain things like reducing the RS's damage a little, I felt that that had to be done in order to make the game less of a ragefest, and I don't believe the damage reduction will contribute to that large of a skew in the stats.
It's not just the configs, the three servers have a few fundamentally different settings. Our server has propmenu enabled for anyone who's donated in the past month while GM has it only enabled for "clan members", and as far as I know FFN has it only enabled for admins. On PH hell and FFN you can nominate and vote for maps (30 minute time limit) while on GM you can only vote - no nominations; the maps are also limited to 20 minutes. these small things might not seem like much but someone who has donated can attempt to run our server through a circuit of small "point-farming" maps while giving themselves the best props - a combination of advantages that you cannot get on either of the other two servers. The only other differences that I could think of is PH hell attempts to block players from joining spectator while GM doesn't and GM limits red dead, spectator, and blue dead chat from being seen to living players on the other team.
The minigun damage decrease might seem like a large change but in effect it wouldn't be - heavy is limited to two hunters at a time and often times one of them is playing a "troll" loadout such as taunt heavy or holiday punch. However, the current damage that one competent (read: not brain-dead) heavy can do while sitting on the control point or one good (read: knows how to find props even if they can't do much else) heavy can do roaming limits your options of survival to "don't be near the heavy," which is not always something you can do. Even at 50% damage dropoff range a heavy with average to above-average tracking can kill a scout in roughly a second which isn't much especially after you take into account the large amount of knockback that all heavy primaries do.
There are other differences - while Voided has been keeping the PH config updated with the updates, the new botkillers have not been blacklisted yet - and I think the old ones and AWPer hand haven't been either. Hell, I'm not even sure if the strange festives have been blocked yet - they weren't last time I went festive sniping over there. Another difference is that the speed boosts on a fully boosted heavy apply to his spun up speed as well as his normal walking speed (good on you for fixing that here
). While these changes have - arguably - had a bigger effect on the game than small changes, like a minigun, flare gun, or axetinguisher rebalance would, the configs are already different and I see no reason not to change them more if a significant portion of the community thinks it is a good idea - the only arguments I've heard from you are "we shouldn't change from GM" and "I have no problem dealing with these things so you shouldn't either," but we all know you're probably the best prop hunter there is, and if I might add: one of the best scouts I've had the pleasure of playing with.
Also, Voided, even although this is somewhat off topic for the OP weapons thread, would you consider making a trial admin for the prop hunt server (much like Pho on the jump server) so we don't always have to come crying to you every time there's one person ghosting or something?
Finally, if you must have the vanilla GM prop hunt experience, you could always go play a few round on GM, isn't that right, box?