Jimmy-
Tragically, I don't remember the exact circumstances of User:Kils, even though it was fairly recent. :-(
Well, Kils deleted his own user talk page and did some strange stuff regarding pages which he considered inappropriate. But there was no immediate threat in that case either -- it could have gone through the Jimbottleneck as well ;-).
There's something of an irony or paradox here. Should developers be an elite cabal acting to prevent the formation of an elite cabal of sysops? :-) Probably that's overstating it, but it does sum up the essence of the policy tensions here, I think.
Anytime I try to get Brion interested in joining my cabal, he goes on vacation. And the people I've hired to dispose of a certain benevolent dictator say they won't accept my WikiMoney. Hopefully the cabal will be in place soon, so we can hold the world hostage by refusing to release access to the database until we get .. 1 MILLION DOLLARS.
Seriously, though, it's always the same question: who watches the watchers? I think all in all our process is reasonably open, and even if you yourself abused your privileges to an unreasonable degree, there would always be the possibility of forking. We subject each other to constant supervision, and if I compare Wikipedia with other projects like Slashdot, H2G2 and Everything2, I think we're a long way from falling victim to this kind of elitism.
Regards,
Erik