Does this mean that at the end of the week, he comes
back unbanned?
Note that, in the unlikely event that Wik returns after his ban expires, the other
components of the arbitration ruling will still apply. However, there is a broader point.
There are roughly three schools of thought:
A) A ban of one month lasts one month, regardless of attempts at evasion.
B) A ban of one month requires one month of uninterrupted absence from Wikipedia -
any attempt to evade that ban automatically resets the ban timer. Banned users with
poor self-control may end up banning themselves indefinately.
C) Evading a ban is itself a bannable offence - doing so automatically triples the ban
length (after which, (B) applies).
(B) has precedent in that it's how we dealt with Cantus when he evaded a quickpoll
ban.
I'm unaware of any other precedents on the matter, so I intend to write this into
[[wikipedia:banning policy]], and copy this post to the Talk page. Those who favour a
different approach are welcome there.
Another issue that has come up in this case is dealing with known users who go on a
"vandalism spree", which I believe may apply to at least two people in this
case. In the
past this has been a quickpoll matter leading to a one day ban, but that process was
suspended for 30 days, owing largely to disputes over its application to revert wars, but
a sufficiently bold member of the cabal may wish to ressurect it for dealing with
vandalism sprees. There may also be an option for sysops to make unilateral
judgements to temp-ban following vandalism sprees, even for users who have made a
few non-vandalising edits, but I'm not clear on this, so perhaps someone more
experienced in vandalism-defence could clue us in?
-Martin