Dante-
My objection to the suspension of 172's sysop status is mainly that I don't think he overstepped the bounds of good conduct any more than various other sysops do on a not infrequent basis. We all go a bit past the realm of "good ideas" once in awhile, and I think that suspension of sysop status should be reserved for more substantive (especially REPEATED) violations than 172's single instance of "questionable" protected page behavior.
For the record, I suspended 172's status primarily because he reprotected the talk page after I told him that it was against our policy to do so. This was to prevent any protection wars on the page from occurring until the policy questions raised by this would be settled satisfactorily. I explicitly noticed that the suspension was temporary and immediately posted a notice to the wikien-l mailing list.
Regards,
Erik