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A Wikipedia sysop is most similar to the IRCop. It may seem cool to the outsider to have the ability to block a user, but one must jump through hoops and politics to achieve the status, which is not a prize.
You should be able to comfortably answer these questions before submitting yourself for merciless dissection at RfA:
Read these graphs and the discussions on that page. We need more admins to prevent burnouts, reduce CSD backlogs, and give everyone more time to work on other things. Please help identify good candidates and nominate them!
Thank every participant, including your distractors, if any. Xiner (talk, email) 20:20, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Spam is a problem, but a bigger one is vandalism, and edit wars are even more harmful. Many inappropriate links are inserted by new users; most are reverted almost immediately. I remove most URLs and all email addresses from the help desk. I have also reinserted links under the one-fansite rule because they added to the article, so I'm no deletionist. However, we must stay vigilant because if spams degrade the quality of our encyclopedia, our editors will depart.
I do want to point out that while spams can be removed at any time, some pages are not well monitored, and vandals have deleted useful passages that are gone forever. I myself regularly chance upon errant edits that are not reversed months after the fact.
WP:IAR is something to keep in mind, because there's hardly a rule without an exception. But it must be used very carefully - there is a reason the community has adopted the policies and guidelines that it has. I don't like WP:SNOW because it is inherently subjective, and even lopsided discussions can swing as unpredictably as the NASDAQ index.
Blocks should not be preemptive.
I would block an established user if the account seems to be compromised; repeated 3RR violations; harassment; impersonating an administrator; legal threats; or heavy vandalism. If I am involved in the dispute, I would ask an independent admin to intervene.
WP:COI strongly advises against it, and as a matter of course, users should be reminded of the relevant policies, including WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:N. Special attention needs to paid regarding WP:OR, and they should be encouraged to post on the article's talk page or WP:RFC instead. Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle should be employed to resolve the situation before further steps need to be taken. If the article is patently unencyclopedic or non-notable, CSD may be necessary, but prod or AfD are safer avenues that prevent my ignorance on that topic from destroying someone else's work. Articles need to be check against a common set of standards.
I would check when the article was created, what links to it, and who made it sound so promotional. I would read it to determine if it is salvagable and notable. If I've any doubt, Rules for CSD, G11 or not, are so worded that "in most cases, reasonable editors will agree what does or does not fall under a given criterion". Each case should be investigated using Wikipedia's yardsticks tempered by admin experience.