Here's the team conversation as I imagine it.
Jeff: We have to stop these people who don't know how to edit. They're wasting people's time and just making things worse.
SO Team member: Ok, how about we give them a nasty message and don't let them edit for an hour. It will get the message across and there shouldn't be many complaints.
Jeff: A hour? Are you kidding? It's not possible for them to change, we should ban them forever.
SO Team member: Right. An hour's too short, but forever seems like a long time. After all, it probably took you a few years to learn to speak and write English. I mean if we look at your third grade homework, it's likely that we wouldn't allow you to post on SO at all. How about we give them a day to think about it instead of an hour? I think people will think that's reasonable and won't bitch about it too much.
Jeff: I don't know. A day wouldn't make much difference to a 10-year old and I don't think it would make much difference here either. They'd just be right back at it. It needs to be at least a month.
SO Team member: Wow, a month? That's pretty harsh. That's worse than the initial term in the penalty box. How about a week? That's long enough to give them pause to consider their ways. Maybe no one will complain if it's only a week. I mean they should be getting the hint that something is wrong when they have so many rejected edits.
Jeff: Ok. I suppose it's possible that if someone doesn't edit for a week they might forget how to do it. I'd still prefer a month, but we'll try a week and see if it works. You know you're going to get people complaining about it, though. That might be almost as annoying as the rejected edits. Maybe we could get the folks at http://english.stackexchange.com to do the editing for us instead...nah, they'd just screw up the code. Let's go with a week.
