What is the point of glicko?

I've asked this before.  If you haven't played in awhile, naturally you're probably going to lose more than if you're really on top of your game.  Why punish the player even more for losses?  

Which federations use this, and which don't?  Maybe I'm cynical, but this just seems like a cheap gimmick to get players to chase after the ratings points they just lost.

Glicko is trying to put a measure of accuracy into the rating. New players don't have a history, so any rating generated is going to have a high level of uncertainty, so the magnitude of the rating changes will be larger until more games have been played and the rating starts to settle down. When that uncertainty value, RD, gets low enough, the rating is more stable and the rating is more reflective of recent performance. With new players, this method should get them closer to their real strength quickly.

If a player doesn't play for a while, their rating is less certain, since there aren't recent games, and the RD value will have increased as a measure of that uncertainty. If the player has lost/gained chess chess skill/knowledge, the increased value will quickly help the rating adjust to one more reflective of current strength.

But, he's likely to lose more than usual anyway.  Thus his rating will go down.  Why make it so punishing? Aren't there tournaments, leagues, clubs, etc. that don't use it?

I don't think this analogy answers my questions.  I understand the basic idea of Glicko.  I just don't see how it's superior?  And, almost none of my questions have been answered.  Which federations, tournament, leagues, etc. use it?  If they don't use it, why not?  

More importantly, the unpracticed player is going to lose more games as it is, therefore his rating will go down.  Why punish him extra.  The problem is already solved.  And, as for new players, yeah it will take longer without Glicko for them to get an established rating, but why are we implementing an entire rating system just to sort out new players?

1) You keep calling it punishment, but the reality is that if someone has not been playing in a year or more their current accurate rating is most likely lower that it used to be and the sooner the rating is corrected the sooner they are back to playing appropriately rated opponents. 

2) You seem to be ignoring the flip side of this - what if instead of playing rated tournaments, your hypothetical player has been taking every lesson on chess.com and playing tons of unrated games with local high-rated club players. Isn't it also fair in that case to allow for them to gain points quickly to a higher rating representative of the work they have put in outside of tournament play? 

For each player, there is probably an ideal rating or rating range, plus or minus some points. Glicko diminishes the time for someone to grind between rating classes when there is a large difference between their current rating and their ideal rating. Sandbagging and overrating are real problems that Glicko attempts to address. 

Ah, Australia...a country entirely populated by criminals.  Makes sense.  I wonder why FIDE and USCF don't use it?  The sandbagging comment by @minnesota... was insightful.  But, again, I don't know why the focus is on being in a rush to put people in their little box.  They're going to end up there anyway.  

Australians are proud of their ancestors.  

As you should be.  For sure.  But...are you proud of Glicko?  Your country helped legitimize Glicko.

Fischer didn't play official games for two years and then came back and crushed Taimanov and Larsen with 6-0 each (no draws!), and these games were part of his streak of 20 consecutive wins which is the second best in history

I like the explanation in post #4. But personally, I don't particularly care either way.