> The wikipedia community disagreed with you there. The consensus was in favor of sending this to the arbitration committee, with the topic ban being a temporary first fix. And it did go to arbcom, and arbcom did take action.

You miss the point. You wrote "if Philip Cross's alleged conflict of interest were to be examined and dealt with, ultimately it would need to be looked at by the arbitration committee." I was pointing out that that is not in fact true. The Wikipedia community can make decisions without referring everything to the arbitration committee. I wasn't expressing an opinion about whether this case should or should not have gone to the committee.