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