And, of course, we have the usual nonsense that this user is the little boy with his finger in the dike and everything would go to hell without him.
And there is some truth in it, as I have pointed out. A campaign against nastiness has its own nasty disruptive effects.
Tim reminds me of this whole long drawn-out affair:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&pag...
That guy is a great bot programmer, but as is too common his programming skills are inversely proportional to his social skills (He was eventually unbanned and now edits under another name).
Daniel Case