Since I doubt I can add anything to this topic that someone else probably hasn't said beter than me, I'd like to ask if this is the consensus that is emerging from the discussion on this mailing list:
1. RK had been rude & obnoxious.
2. The act of banning him, however, sets a disturbing president.
The banning tool could be abused quite easily, e.g. two Sysops get into an edit war, which escalates to where one bans the other.
3. To prevent abuses, we need to establish -- or acknowledge -- some kind of due process. (A few people have indicated that this was followed in RK's case.)
To this, I'd like to add a following point:
4. This process should not rely on Jimbo. That's for the simple reason eventually he won't be involved as closely with Wikipedia, & may be replaced by someone who is not as ``hands-off" or ``wise" or ``lazy" as Jimbo has been, & starts to push her/his own POV onto all of us.
Geoff