I'm going to respond to the suggestion post you made on the main section, in addition to this one. For posterity, that first post reads as follows:
My suggestion is a minimum amount of times you can break the rules before getting kicked. If you continue maybe you get a day-long ban. If the rule breaking still continues, maybe a week-long ban? This is just a suggestion. I'm new so I'm not sure if this is already a thing or not.
This community has been around for nearly ten years, so there are existing conventions for when and how long we block accounts. A tiered system like the one you suggested is simple to understand, but impractical, as different issues warrant faster and more permanent bans than others. (One example is spam accounts, which should be, and are, blocked immediately.)
At this point, bans and their durations are pretty much decided case-by-case. It's unhelpful to lock ourselves into any other policy, as two people making the same mistake could get very different reactions from us based upon their history, and what else they contribute to the community. (For example, if a new user shows up and starts posting slurs, we'll just get rid of them on the spot. But if that comes from someone who was, up to that point, a reputable member of the community, we'll probably have a chat to them about it first.)
I was thinking, "Even if people get banned, they just make more accounts." So Wynaut (sorry for the pun) find a way to track down previously banned people and ban them again for breaking rules too much if they do it on the new account? If this is impossible to do currently, at least please find a way to keep bans from previous accounts. If not, oh well.
We do have systems in place to prevent this from happening, as Hellfire Taco mentioned before me. When we ban someone's account, we can also block the public IP addresses connected to their account. This makes it difficult for people to make a new account and evade their ban.
It isn't a foolproof system, as dynamic IP addresses, cellular networks and VPNs are commonplace and can 'trick' the system. But, fortunately, we're gifted with common sense and years of experience dealing with bad people.
I should also mention here that we don't allow people to make multiple accounts at all, regardless of their original account's standing. So, as HT also mentioned, we issue bans as soon as we find different accounts using the same public IP address.
