Where's Steve?

 

Sure, but I can only speak for myself. It's something I did with regret and only as a last resort, and only then after considered and level-headed discussion in the AZ with our fellow Admins. 

During my time we had a rule that an Admin could not moderate on discussions he was actively involved in (this seldom applies to current Admins as they generally are not as active on the forum as we were back then), this way we could avoid being accused of misusing our authority and could freely partake in forum discussions. This had a secondary effect that we'd usually step away from any disciplinary discussions involving someone who we'd previously had a heated exchange with. So we tried to be as impartial as was humanly possible to be in a small community such as ours.

To actually be banned took a great deal of effort. The quickest way is to make a racist comment as we had (and hopefully still have) a zero tolerance for that behaviour - the moment we start tolerating racism will the day the PA dies in my opinion - I like it here because we have a high-level of acceptance of people regardless of who they are.

So... Usually there would be an official warning sent by PM to all parties involved. I would say that in the majority of cases that would be the end the situation. As Bob would have said, the person would "take a telling" - we generally would not enter into a he-said/she-said argument with the person being warned. If the person stopped doing whatever it was they were doing the matter was over as far as we were concerned. 

However, if that warning was not heeded then a temporary suspension was imposed - usually a week or a month depending on how belligerent the miscreant was and the seriousness of his misdemeanor. Contrary to popular belief, we didn't actually hold grudges or anything as petty as that. Some people like to flatter themselves that they were on an Admin's-hit list but if such a list existed I never saw it in the seven years I was an Admin. We'd also not punish someone twice for the same offence, if the second offence was the same as the first then generally they would get the same punishment as before - again, it would take a lot for someone to get progressively longer and longer suspensions.

There are some who were serial offenders - not only was their behaviour disruptive and aggressive, it got progressively worse - once two people (I guess you know of whom I refer) returned after an unprecedented one year ban only to start stirring up trouble all over again. They were given fair warning that such behaviour was not tolerated but they continued (probably for their own amusement) so after, as I have said before, considered and level-headed discussion in the AZ they were given a permaban.

Now - here's a thing - some people who claim to have been permabanned from here actually never were. There is some weird kind of kudos attached with being dealt a life-ban from an internet forum - some may have received a temporary 1-week suspension and chose never to return, and some simply ran away after receiving an official warning. I recall one member asked to be demoted then stated elsewhere that he had been demoted, leaving everyone to infer that the demotion was imposed upon him by us. People on the Internet are strange.