I ran it for about 6 months iirc. It never got to the size where sockpuppets were a legitimate threat or IP bans insufficient. Occasionally people would switch wifi to ban the person who banned them, but I leveraged cookies where I could to try to detect that behavior. This was before browser fingerprinting and "evercookies" were widespread, or I probably would have used those too.
In your example, the person would have to have posted recently in order for you to ban them, since bans only worked on quasi-recent posts. But yes, if you made yourself into a target, someone would ban you, and it was accepted in the culture because it was fun. It was acceptable that everyone got banned frequently, but far less frequently than the trolls. I should probably have mentioned that all users were anonymous to each other.
In your example, the person would have to have posted recently in order for you to ban them, since bans only worked on quasi-recent posts. But yes, if you made yourself into a target, someone would ban you, and it was accepted in the culture because it was fun. It was acceptable that everyone got banned frequently, but far less frequently than the trolls. I should probably have mentioned that all users were anonymous to each other.