When I ban an anonymous user's IP, my bannings are upheld. I cannot, however, ban a signed-in contributor. Only Jimbo or a developer has the physical power to ban a signed-in contributor. They have to change some setting on the server that ordinary sysops can't get to. The only time I ever threatened to ban someone, all other sysops told me I was wrong to make such a threat. Banning, they reminded me, is for (A) vandals who delete entire articles or litter words like cool "kewl" or "Mike loves Mary" into the text; or (B) contributors who obstinately and perpetually work against the ideals of the project by violating NPOV. Some better ways to deal with a person who is "too hot to handle" may include: * I'll just work on something else for an hour (like the spellchecking project) * I'll take a day or two off from Wikipedia * I'll try to figure out what's making the person so "hot under the collar" Some ways to keep working on an topic during an edit war. * Think hard about ways to phrase an addition to an article that no other contributor will want to revert it (like "Some other advocates, like A and B, said X about Y") * Create a new article. (Like "Unification Church and anti-Semitism") Ed Poor