and I can honestly say the people we've let back after being banned continue (almost uniformly) to do exactly what they did before
This comment I'm not so sure about. On this site currently we have three people restored after they have been banned (please correct me if I'm wrong): Thad, Tyler and Zack. My point is that these are very important members of the community, and everytime the have 'offended' they have been brought back and continue to be an essential part of the community. Thad is a great commentator on Bios, Zack's usefull for the tech section, and Tyler's just a great guy! (Heh, and a v.good RPer as well).
I'm just saying that being banned can give a positive effect, but the real question is: was Chris as usefull to the site as these three, to be treated in the same way, or was he worse? In my actual opinion he was, since primarily most of the other people have been banned over misunderstandings or (in the case of Zacks recent one) just getting very frustrated at no one listening to reason.
With Chris the situation was very different. He was bitter in his later posts, and seemed to be arguing with Zack for no other reason than because Zack was Zack. With the problem with Neko's reproduction he was flogging a dead horse that made little sense (If ANYBODY mentions the FCP I am going to scream), and was being offensive, needlessly so. In some cases swearing can be allowed, although preferably not in a OOC context, but they way he used it wasn't acceptable, it was pointless.
That is the situation as I see it. Should Chris be banned? I don't know. He was very creative, coming up with much new stuff for the race which is known as the Fenyaro due to a bit of problems, and was a good RPer, as far as I could tell. And he seemed to be a nice guy for most of the time.
I have voted, but choose to keep my own vote a secret. I'm just sharing my views.