I will just add that the absolute worst thing one Staff member can do, acting unilaterally, to a non-spammer/non-identified sock is to abstain from deliberation and voting. Anything else can and most likely will be reversed by the Staff as a body, and the rogue cannon brought to book. This needs to be taken into account when charges of bias and unfairness are flying around.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'