Wik complains that he's been banned 5 times, twice by RickK, twice by
Hephaestos, once by Ed Poor.
Raul654 banned Plautus Satire.
Erik banned Antony DiPierro.
Unless there's an actual emergency, this is not the way to handle
these situations. Even if the offense is a bannable offense, it is
not right for sysops to make these decisions outside of our
established process.
Admitttedly, there is some gray area around the term "emergency", so
I'm not upset with any particular case. In each of the cases in
question, the contributor in question who was banned was acting badly,
and the sysops in question were acting out of good faith.
However, we're going down a dangerous path here if we aren't careful.
So I ask, please, that sysop vigilantism come to a close. Let's chill
out and let the process work. There is a process, and it is a bit
slow, but let's try to make it work.
Alternatively, we should make a conscious decision, with debates and
probably even a system-wide vote, to change our traditional reluctance
to have "cops" policing wikipedia by banning people for bad behavior.
Perhaps we could formally expand the set of circumstances where sysops
are allowed to ban problem users temporarily. Or perhaps not.
But, we certainly should not do it by creeping precedent, but by open
agreement.
--Jimbo