User name crossed out meaning?

[Gerald H]

A user name has been crossed out & membership Status is "Banned" - What does this mean? [This post has been edited by a moderator to make it more general.]

[Mark Hardman]

Could we please lock this thread? Or better, take it down completely?

[Dave Hicks]

Yes, let's retry this thread in a shorter form. My apologies for deleting much of it. While I do like things to be open, openness sometimes seems to cause more drama in itself and doesn’t seem to be helping here.

When a user's name is crossed out and the status is "Banned". This means that an account exists but this user is currently not allowed to post here. In most cases (~99%), this is simply a spam account. In a few cases a non-spam account gets banned temporarily or permanently. So far, spam accounts have always been permanently banned, and non-spam accounts have only been temporarily banned - typically only for a few days - so far. Accounts that are created to get around temp bans have so far been permanently banned and additional temp ban time has been added to the main account. (I say "so far" because we've only had one person do this so we don't have a lot of history/experience in this area.)

[Dave Hicks]

Oops - I was in in a rush before leaving this morning and forgot to close the thread.