We recently recapped the Google Minus-30 penalty discussion going on at WebmasterWorld. The topic of Google ranking penalties that seem to indicate a pattern has been revived in a new thread by Administrator Tedster, who wants to get a better handle on what people are calling the minus-950 penalty. (WebmasterWorld seems to always get to name these kinds of things).
This topic is discussed in more detail in the WMW thread, but to summarize: the question is whether the minus-950 penalty is being applied only to specific pages or keyword results, as opposed to the minus-30 penalty which seems to affect an entire site.