Banning

Banning is the exclusion of a user from the privilege of editing a wiki. It is not a technical measure, rather an administrative decision, resulting in technical longer-term measures like the blocking of an user account.

On WIKIMEDIA the standard offer allows users to get unbanned after six months of not socking; on the English Wikipedia, in which the Arbitration Committee has taken a more active role in imposing bans (often for off-wiki activity), the standard offer is granted more rarely than when the community was in charge of making the decision.