  Community norm violations can impair constructive communication and
collaboration online. As a defense mechanism, community moderators often
address such transgressions by temporarily blocking the perpetrator. Such
actions, however, come with the cost of potentially alienating community
members. Given this tradeoff, it is essential to understand to what extent, and
in which situations, this common moderation practice is effective in
reinforcing community rules.
  In this work, we introduce a computational framework for studying the future
behavior of blocked users on Wikipedia. After their block expires, they can
take several distinct paths: they can reform and adhere to the rules, but they
can also recidivate, or straight-out abandon the community. We reveal that
these trajectories are tied to factors rooted both in the characteristics of
the blocked individual and in whether they perceived the block to be fair and
justified. Based on these insights, we formulate a series of prediction tasks
aiming to determine which of these paths a user is likely to take after being
blocked for their first offense, and demonstrate the feasibility of these new
tasks. Overall, this work builds towards a more nuanced approach to moderation
by highlighting the tradeoffs that are in play.
