User blog comment:Sannse/Don't Feed the Trolls/@comment-5913830-20120924180301/@comment-961279-20121106153259

I have seen trolls and vandals cause problems for over a year. Those are the extreme cases, but eventually, even people like this fade away and stop because it stops being fun for them.

As Sannse and others have said, keep it factual and leave your personal opinions and emotions out of dealing with them. If they keep at it, it actually becomes a little easier to deal with them because you don't have to provide as extensive a reason of why you're taking a particular action. You have their previous edit history to refer to, so "Sockpuppet of a returning vandal" or "IP/IP range of a returning troll" is all you need to say a lot of times.

Vandals and trolls usually have a specific type of behavior that they stick to. The more they do it, the easier it becomes to recognize them even if they show up under different accounts, and the faster you can apply a block that will continue the process of not making it fun for them any more.