MZMcBride <z <at> mzmcbride.com> writes:
I'm not sure if wiki bans strictly fall within security theater, but it seems fairly clear that these bans are for show and not much else. It's the Internet, after all, and anyone can edit. Under the current scheme, the best we can do is try to revert and prevent bad behavior alone. Attempting to ban individuals has proved impossible.
Users banned by the Wikimedia Foundation who continue to edit in violation of their ban may be placing themselves in possibly legally unfortunate situations, per ToU ยง12[1].
A Foundation ban would almost certainly be viewed as a stronger demand to desist than bans imposed by the community.
Regardless, the WMF is often better-positioned than the community to investigate certain types of issues, and as such it would make sense that they would be the entity to take the aforementioned action. The logic presented above, when taken to its logical conclusion, seems to be "why bother banning ANYONE, ever, since they can just sock?".
[1]: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use#12._Termination
-- LFaraone