Grief is grief, whether the build looks "abandoned" or not, whether someone else has griefed or not. This is largely the reason why the old guest world got to be in the state it was in; people griefing where they thought it wouldn't be noticed.
Funnily enough, yesterday evening I was working on trying to fix up the old spawns; thats when you walked up and started griefing right in front of me and would not respond to me. So no, you weren't trying to escape a hole (at which point you should have done /home or /spawn).
I don't think you feel any real remorse beyond not wanting to be banned... Hopefully when your ban is up you'll stop making excuses for grief, and play fair. Otherwise, you're running out of chances. This appeal is denied.