User blog comment:Sannse/Blocking Best Practices/@comment-452-20121010002829/@comment-452-20121013001935

Not in my experience. If they return, they get a longer ban, and usually don't come back a third time.

On the wiki I frequent, there have only been 2 vandals who have returned after a 6 month block, while almost all of the vandals who receive a 1 second "warning" block for gibberish or blanking never make a second edit. I assume they're all just children who have discovered for the first time that they can "edit" a wiki "anonymously"

I'm sure that larger wikis probably do have a higher number of each type of vandal, and have a greater number of returning vandals, so if I were an admin on one of them I'd probably start with a 1 week block instead of a 1 day block. (edit: If I found that there were too many returning vandals after a 1 day block.)

Too bad there isn't some kind of vandalism analysis tool to automatically make a report about returning vandals.