I think something that everyone seems to forget is that there's a certain point where banlists start to collapse under their own weight. If a list is too large, are you still even playing the same game anymore? The smaller the list, the less there is to keep track of, and the less headaches it causes. No one likes banning things. The real problem is that the power creep is so large that things that would have been immediately labeled "Uber" in earlier gens are now everywhere, blurring that line that used to be very clear-cut. Those standards have to be flexible. Gamefreak does what they can to try to balance out their own metagame, which isn't too different from ours.
This paragraph may cause a flame war, and I'd rather not start one, but this needs to be said. Another thing I'd like to point out is that the general community is not privy to making these decisions. As bad as you think something like VoltTurn or Stealth Rock might be for the game, there's a certain skill level that is required to vote on these sorts of things. This means that anyone who isn't among the best of the current ladder has no real right to complain about these decisions. There's ways to play around moves. Entry Hazards also mess with VoltTurn. Rapid Spin exists for entry hazards. Ghost types exist for Rapid Spin. If you can't deal with these things, you lose, and everyone loses sometimes. How often you lose is based on how good you are with the tools available to you. The banlist only exists because some things are impossible to fairly play against, but not everything falls into this category and a lot of players can't tell the difference between "impossible to deal with" and "I don't like dealing with".
Gamefreak also changes up mechanics and rules if they feel that something's getting abused too hard in the VGC metagame. I wouldn't be surprised if they nerf permanent weather based on the VGC meta, which is essentially Rain/Sand/Trick Room. They also flat-out banned most legendaries, including Keldeo. While our meta is 1v1 and theirs is 2v2, there's enough similarities between the two metas for comparisons to be made. While we don't have Victini, Celebi, Mew, or Jirachi in Uber, they're certainly strong contenders in their respective tiers. I think that moving forward, some of the VGC decisions should be considered when we make our banlist.
My only complaint with the current system is that the process feels too long. Personally, I think Keldeo is bannable, but we won't actually see that happen for at LEAST a month. That's most of my summer spent playing games, anticipating a ban, and yet having to sit and wait for the Lanodorus-I decision to finish first, THEN the Keldeo suspect can START. I would be supportive of at least 2 suspect tests happening at once. But I understand why the current system exists (see first paragraph), and I'm largely content with how Smogon handles the banlist.
TL;DR Version: Bad players don't get to make decisions, and a lot of the proposed bans/suspects are from bad players. There's a reason you need to be good to vote on bans, as that's a big decision. Things will not be banned just because you don't like them. However, I think that looking at the VGC banlist is a good place to start for the future. The suspect process takes a long time, and that can be a pain, but its necessary to prevent trigger-happy people from unneeded bans to make sure the list is no bigger than it needs to be.
