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Darwin was never actually banned here. When we moved off of reddit, everyone started with a clean slate. Darwin and Hlynka and everyone else had a blanket amnesty.
While we will sometimes let someone we suspect of being an alt stick around if they are behaving themselves, we're still going to whack ban evaders when it's obvious, because we don't want people to think they can just spin up a new account and carry on like before. (Some people do this anyway, but they at least suffer the minor inconvenience of having to keep creating new accounts and being unable to establish any kind of reputation or history.)
Also worth noting that Hylnka did not exactly come back "reformed"; @TequilaMockingbird was temp-banned three times and warned many times even before I clocked him (and this was not his first, second, or third alt).
And it's also worth noting that you did not ban TequilaMockingbird for past posts, or even any rule breaking aspect of this post.
It's fine if we have abandoned the 'Mission fucking Accomplished' paradigm on this site, as long as we're clear of the change of paradigm.
No. In order for the mission to be fucking accomplished, you have to accomplish the fucking mission, which is to reform sufficiently to go unnoticed.
TequilaMockingbird had already drawn attention repeatedly for being antagonistic and obnoxious. If Hylnka actually managed to create a new account, behave himself for a year, not get repeatedly modded for being his usual jerk-ass self, and then say "By the way, it's me," well... we (mods) would probably discuss it.
Same for any past troublemaker who actually comes back and shows better behavior. It is not (as @The_Nybbler keeps dishonestly claiming) that we want to see someone "hat in hand" and begging, but that we'd want to see evidence of change.
You can't create a new account, be your old antagonistic self, and then make a pikachu face when you're banned as soon as we realize who you are.
Quoting this because this was what was present and being responded to before your edit.
Heavens no. The Mission fucking Accomplished paradigm was established precisely to defend not banning recognized ban evaders who were noticed, but weren't breaking the rules on decorum to the degree to warrant another ban on those grounds. It was the returnees compliance with the decorum, not their ability to not be detected, which was the accomplishment. Were it the later, the defense of non-moderation wouldn't have had to be made in the first place.
To be honest, I don't actually recall any instances in which someone we knew to be a previously permabanned member came back, was identified, but was behaving well enough that the mods decided not to ban the new account for ban evasion. Possibly it happened before I became a mod, but as far as I know, it's kind of like the case of "We'd consider it if a permabanned member petitioned us to unban him": to date an entirely theoretical policy.
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