Ok, if that is the case you should submit a bug report about it by clicking here. It's better to report bugs that way since they will be looked into faster usually than making a thread on the forums.
People won't always be banned right away after they do something suspicious, or else they would easily be able to tell that their hack is bad and could go try to find/make a better, less suspicious one. With this info, you likely got banned for something suspicious that you have done before...
I disagree with having more than 1 weekly and 2 daily quests displayed at a time. The daily quests usually are not very demanding, so you can do most in a matter of minutes with the right setup. Even if you don't have the right setup I'm sure you can find (ex. public grinders for mob killing...
What you did is a forum post, and yes it does count towards the requirements for staff. However, if you want to apply for staff right after you get the 20 forum posts, they should all aim to be good quality posts.
I think crafting books and quills was disabled a while back due to people being able to exploit with them somehow, not just on Survival but on all servers. Whether the bug still hasn't been fixed or the crafting recipe was forgotten to be enabled again I don't know.
This isn't the proper place or format to post an appeal. The correct place to do so is in the "Appeal Your Ban/Mute" sub-forum, which can be found by clicking here. There you will find a guide on the format to use. Good luck!
Maybe you were doing the same action much longer, more suspiciously, etc. than your friend was, so that is why they didn't get banned like you did. If you feel your ban was wrong then you should submit an appeal here.