... Banning someone for being a total failure at RP? *snort*
Let's not go there...
No worse than keeping someone who is a total failure at RP from getting a chance at the beast. It is no worse than penalizing someone who is bad at RPing with the "official" crowd who don't even put down their own rules (explicit, seriously, that no god-modding line is so vague in an actual fight that implementation is practically opinion based, hence why judges can possibly be bad. You can't just say "no this" and "no that" without explaining, in context, to people what this and that are without there being confusion).
No worse than penalizing a poor reader in a discussion by disregarding his/her opinion in a read-heavy setting like text roleplaying.
It is no worse than weeding out the "baddies" with a super hard IC hunt. No worse than making people conform to temperamental and variable RP rules, and then punishing them when they don't get it right (I.E, judges being judges and general RPers being general RPers).
If a host does not know how to RP, much less zone, then he/she should not be a host. Same goes for challengers. This is something that I thought most people tended to agree with in one way or another.
And if that judge totally fails, despite your hopes that he will do a good job...cause why would I back a judge I thought was an idiot...then I should not be penalized for HIS incompetence. I did my part, but he seriously dropped the ball.
Back squarely on topic though, if half of the participants agree with the ruling and half don't, then the judges' ruling is final. Tough luck, pick another judge, you can't remove that one for gross incompetence when half (be it 1 in a 2-man match or 3 in a 6-man match) of the participants agree with the judge.
The judge's opinion is treated as law in the RP, it can alone decide the fate of the RP. That opinion can be steeped in so much contradiction (shadow imitation works in no light conditions because rock considered shadow. Shikamaru becomes unable to use shadow imitation in perfectly dark room 'cause he is a canon-level scrub?) that even if it were to be wrong, as long as one participant benefits he/she has no reason to say no to it.
I am all for making an listing out, explicitly, all the things you can't do in a zone fight. Flaying out what god-modding is wikia style, so that there is no mistake, and so that a judge actually has something to go by other than personal opinion. So that participants have something to go by other than, "that's the way we been doin' it, that's how it's going down now".
This shouldn't be the backyard kiddie pool level of RP where zoners do whatever they want/can get away with, this is supposed to be "high level", "official" RP that has a set of followable guidelines and rules that are not as vague as the distance between three points in an undefined plane. Ya you know that distance is the distance between them, but how can you tell what the distance is if the plane is undefined?