This sort of thing seems to be a hacker answer to user problems. On the upside, it accomplishes the goal of the forum: To be left the hell alone by people deemed to be troublemakers, and it does it for a minimum of effort and hassle on the part of the moderators. You don't have to listen to these folks whine, harass you, etc. It's ruthless but effective. On the downside, it has other unintended community (and reputation) effects that some folks seem to fail to recognize. If you either don't see those effects or believe that tolerating them is "the lesser evil" compared to what you would have to do for some other solution, well, then silent banning is apparently convenient for the moderators/forum owners.

I'm not suggesting it is wrong or that doing things some other way would be "better". I have difficulty imagining that it's something I would choose to do. What I do has its upside but the downside is that it is labor intensive and emotionally wearing. And my approach has never been tested (at least not by me) as a moderator method for a large, high-traffic forum like this. So I don't know if it is even practical, much less if it would really accomplish the goal(s) behind current moderation policy here. So it is possible that my approach to social conflict doesn't scale well...etc... Which means I'm not terribly interested in judging this as "right" or "wrong" for this forum, much less in some absolute sense. <shrug>