If you were banned and got back on that easily then I would say the moderators didn't want to go through the trouble. Believe me, I could ban you so the only way you could get on the board were to dial up a long distance number. And yes, I know about proxy servers, but you can ban them as well. I used to have a board for 10 years and you can certainly make it difficult for trouble makers to get on the board. No system is perfect, and you can get around any system, but you can also make it so it becomes so much trouble for someone that its no longer worth the effort.