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Some editors are blocked or banned, sometimes indefinitely, due to their own disruptive behaviour or other reasons. Others may retire from the project, either explicitly by declaring themselves retired, or implicitly by simply discontinuing their editing. These editors may have edited Wikipedia only for a short time and simply engaged in vandalism, or they may have made a significant, valuable contribution to the project.
In certain circumstances there may be bad feeling amongst other editors against the blocked, banned or retired editor, possibly caused by perceived disruptive editing behaviour on their part. At its most extreme, this antipathy manifests itself as vandalism of the blocked/banned/retired editor's user and talk page in the user space, and personal attacks against them in discussions about the blocked/banned/retired user. This phenomenon is commonly referred to on Wikipedia as "gravedancing", and can be a form of disruptive editing.
In other circumstances, the perceived disruptive and untrustworthy behaviour of the blocked/banned/retired editor may bring suspicion on their previous contributions to the project. This suspicion may be justifiable, particularly where the editor in question has been involved in copyright violations or other undesirable editing behaviour related to content. However, particularly where the editor may have been blocked or banned following disruptive behaviour unrelated to article-space content (e.g., sock-puppeting on RFCs), suspicion about the quality of their work may be no more justified than towards that of any other editor.
The basis of this is the idea that the blocked/banned/retired editor owns the content they created, and that this content was invalidated at the same time they were blocked, banned or decided to retire. This is incorrect, since the editor may originally have meant very well, and done good work, before they eventually flamed out.