Walter, perhaps it sounds rude, but else do you want? There will surely be something serious (a vandal bot with open proxies, for instance), otherwise they will not take such a rigorous step. And to be quite frank: I prefer excluding some good-willing people from editing Wikipedia to letting a maniacal nerd ravage the whole project. I quite clearly remember such an attack on li:, some time ago.
Yes Wouter I am extremely offended and disappointed by your answer and also by the lack of reactions by boardmembers such as Anthere, Angela and Jimbo. It is very simple it is the fourth time this is happening to me. And I am sick and tired of it especially because everybody is ignorong the problem. Because they have selfish reasons like yours: "I can edit wikipedia why should I care about others?" How about me putting a vandalwarning on your account in nl.wikipedia Wouter? Wouldn't you be offended? Yes you would. And it is exactly this what I read when I try to create a new account in a wiki. And ironically enough I am creating an account to get rid of vandalism.
How many vandalbotoperators are there? Maybe 30 - 40 around the world? How many people do we block from editing wikimedia projects? Well at least 500.000 in Thailand. And that is just a very small set of the IP adresses we block. We are blocking currently probably over 10 million people from potentially editing wikimedia projects. Isn't that like using a flamethrower to kill a mosquito? It is not as if li: is the only vandalized project. So far all damage has always been able to be restored manually usually within a short space of time.
Actually even though we are smuck about the closure of the LA Times wiki, we have lost already just as much as they did. Wikimedia is not open anymore, nor does it care about the "right" we actually state everybody has to edit. And why? Because a couple of handfull have dictated that. So we should actually take the free editable for all out of our mission statement as it is a lie.
Walter/Waerth