My view on banning people (assuming we're talking about real posters and not bots or trolls) is that it should be an absolute last resort after other measures have failed.

Particuarly in a business setting, if you speak to someone calmly and rationally over private message or ICQ and explain why the behavior is disruptive to the community, and then get agreement from the person that the offending behavior will change, in most of the cases, that solves the problem. On the other hand, labeling them as a "blubbercunt" or calling them "asshat of the month" is unlikely to either encourage more positive behavior, or help them understand why their behavior is inappropriate.

If after multiple conversations it's clear that the poster simply isn't interested in following whatever guidelines have been established for the community, and the person won't voluntarily leave when asked, then sometimes the only choice left is to ban them. But if the community is well moderated, that should be a very rare occurrence.

I remember when some decisions were made here at GWW (such as what Holly was referring to) that were most likely done either in haste, out of anger/frustration, or for other reasons; I think many boards have gone through those sort of growing pains. I'm just glad that *this* community seems to have matured beyond that sort of thing so we can stay focused on helping each other and sharing interesting and humorous things together.