Just to clarify things: I was perfectly happy with the
temporary
ban. Both the human and software systems worked fine, and I got a
message saying why my bot was IP-banned. I'm not upset at all:
things like this tend to happen when you unleash automated tools,
which is why they should be tested before they are run and
monitored as they run: both of which I did - but no-one was to
know that.
By the way--you can always try things like that on
http://www.piclab.com/newwiki/wiki.phtml
if you like.