BJörn Lindqvist said:
I even witnessed first-hand a user trying the ArbCom route and failing because he/she could not get a second user involved in the dispute to back him/her up. Which wasn't very strange because there really only was he/she and the admin involved..
I strongly doubt that, since that's not part of the Arbitration Committee procedure. Which case are you referring to?
Ok. It was a Request for Comments. But it is the route you are supposed to go if you have been threatened badly by an admin.
In the case of threatening or abusive behavior, a post on [[WP:AN/I]] should be enough. Although it seems to me that administrator abuse is often a fallback claim by people who are behaving in a problematic manner, I don't dismiss it out of hand and I think it would be most extraordinary if administrators didn't occasionally act in a heavy-handed, unjust and sometimes even vindictive manner. We should take such things seriously.
I don't think the RFC process is especially onerous. Just slap together a few diffs showing what has been done and the actions you have taken to try to resolve the problem and how the other party has reacted (or not reacted). Get your co-complainant, who has tried and failed to resolve the same problem, to certify with you, along with his own evidence. Move the RFC to certified status, notify the subject, and await responses. It's really just a formalization of third party dispute resolution.
Non-administrator complainants tend to be hobbled, however, by their lack of knowledge of how Wikipedia works. Administrators tend to know better than other editors just how much discretion they're allowed (it's quite extensive, and arguably has to be so).
Successful arbitration cases have been brought against administrators, some of them resulting in loss of administrator powers. Usually in such cases there has been consensus amongst other administrators that a particular admin has gone too far.