No, users can't see the ban list, only mods/admins can. about 95% of permabans are spambots.

We don't need to relive old forum drama to liven the place up... old permabans are permanent, for real.

it'd probably be good not to devote too much energy into dredging up the worst of gotwoot history to figure out why the shittiest people we've dealt with were deserving of the title and their fates.

Honestly, I would hope that the people we've permabanned have moved on to better ways to waste their time. It's probably giving people too much credit (as we've seen with Mage showing up on IRC again), but you'd really hope that these folks would just get over it and get on with their lives. If we unbanned them and they came back, it'd mean they hadn't grown, which is just depressing.