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Hi, I'm a bit of a noob and would like to know what the general criteria is for banning someone. Could you ban someone like this guy? Look at his activity. He tends to lurk around political pages.
https://knowyourmeme.com/users/daddytype
I'm just wondering if excessive trolling is something you can ban someone for. I apologize for bothering the forum.
P.S. My old account was called Wukongbobble so if you see him mention @Wukongbobble that's me. I deleted the account so he couldn't post nasty things on my wall like he did to quite a few other commenters.

We ban based upon repeated or a severe violation of most rules.

On the whole, that means an informal warning, a formal warning, a week-long ban(s), and then a permanent ban. However, depending upon each situation and which rule is being broken, a user can be instantly permabanned (usually reserved for spambots.)

In his case, I'll look at his full activity and send him a warning of some sort. I don't think any other moderator has warned him yet, and unless he's actively uploading X-rated material or the like, then I likely won't ban him. The warning may be formal (if I think he's actually trying to troll) or informal (if I think he's just being a jerk.)

Other moderators are more and less strict, so I may warn him and then another moderator may go and ban him.

Just as a curiosity, is there any official way for strikes against an account to be shared amongst moderators? Or is that heavily reliant on communication?

Both.

Actually, we were discussing that, and we quickly came up with a way that we can tell how many times a user has caused an issue.

It's not as detailed as to have a system of strikes, as "being friendly" is a rule most users break regularly. So we don't want to say that three violations of a rule results in a ban. But it does let us know without directly contacting other moderators who has been doing what and who has warned them beforehand.

Ah, so just some collective document(s) you can use to keep track of that stuff? Makes sense.

Shush!
 
This is exactly what we do.

I was banned once. I pretended to be the resurrected messiah when I got back.

I believe the criteria for banning is repeated behaviors of a nature which would make one be considered by one's peers to be "a f***ing prick."

Overall bad contributing (whether on purpose or not), ignorance, or disrespect of other users (BNMs being no exception) or the moderation are grounds that can get you banned yes. We commonly see those as a combination of Flooding, Keep it Relevant and Be Friendly based on what you did. Although there is not really a rule that reads "Behave", you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand you did something wrong in those cases.

If you ban someone, would they disappear from someone's profile.
Like if I was following someone that was banned, would they no longer be there?

I think people who are banned appear in the profile, although I'm not sure.

Banned users stay on your profile, you can also still visit their profile when they're banned (their title is also changed to "Banned" in those cases). Complete removal only happens in cases of deactivation and permaban.

Ignorance?

As in, demonstrating a lack of intelligence or experience (speaking mainly of the forums here)?

Hmmph. I think I have to call that one into question. Regardless of one's knowledge on a given topic, if something contributes to a discussion, then I consider it to be valid, whether posted out of novelty or otherwise.

Now, in the case that a user is purposely acting this way to incite reactions out of people (trolling), then a ban is acceptable. But if it's just a bad post by a user, then I'm not so sure.

Well, RM is probably speaking to the effect of ignorance of the rules in general and not necessarily the topic of the thread. Even if the user is new and doesn't know the rules, that user breaking the rules still can upset the forum community if he or she posts enough. Now we probably wouldn't ban the user on the spot, but we might send him a PM.

For example, if a user comes into a thread and is off-topic/unreasonably rude/spamming/double posting, then we might give him or her a heads up as to what the rules are.

If they're posting obviously X-rated stuff, then that might be grounds for a ban. I'd probably delete the offending material and give a formal warning if I thought he was truly ignorant of the rules and wasn't trolling.

But the main thing is that just because a user says he doesn't know the rules doesn't mean we shouldn't enforce the rules. I probably wouldn't ban based upon it, but I would certainly make a point to ensure the user knew why a post was breaking a rule.

Thank you for all the help! I suppose then that his excessive name-calling and regular disruption of pages would be criteria for at least a warning.

Actually, I warned him. Another moderator found a racial slur afterwards from him and banned him.

As you can see. (Please do not post about his ban on his wall. That would be unnecessarily taunting another user.)

As long as users report problematic users to moderators, then we'll try to facilitate the best course of action without making too much drama. I'd rather users be mad at me for sending out warnings than users to be at odds with each other. We don't always see what goes on in the comments of images and on profile walls (we often stick to the entries, forum, or both,) which is why reporting is important (of course, reporting after you've calmly tried to steer a user in the right direction and tattling because you don't like a user are two different things.)

But if you're not sure, then feel free to ask a moderator about them.
 
I think that RM and others have sufficiently answered the question. Locking.