That was the fastest way to level up a guild before this change as well. The only differnce is you started kicking them sooner, as soon has the decay started to slow you down significantly. And you graduated it so that the least active got kicked first and it was spread out enough so that the cost of kicking didn't hurt you much. But it is essentially the same strategy. Guild leaders have gone to the forums and admitted they did it that way and said it was very effective.
I agree they have done nothing substantial to address this but, again, neither did the old system really.