It seems that many people need this feature. Since I published this patch (http://conseil-recherche-innovation.net/index.php/1974/04/11/41-restrict-pag...), we have 25% of visits on this single article. Generaly people need restriction feature to manage small wikis, private intranets. I guess they choose mediawiki for the syntax, templates, and reliabilty/community support, and not for the ability to manage projects as big as wikipedia nor encyclopedies.
From a wikipedia point of view, I think nobody wants more restriction features (protect is enough). We cannot polute the core of MW with features not useful for WP, it's difficult to maintain patches for ages, and it's not necessary to carry WP specific features in a forked project. So my choice would be a fifth... E. To write some specifications from needs, abstract the problem, and start a new project :) Any ideas ?!...
Read you, Jej
Asking again...
If someone were to get gung-ho about implementing access control measures in MediaWiki that go way beyond the immediate needs of Wikipedia, would you prefer that that person/group:
A. Submit patches for inclusion in mainline MediaWiki B. Submit patches to extend the MediaWiki core to allow for a security layer C. Submit patches to modularize/wrap some MediaWiki components (e.g. the parser) in a way that they can be used as libraries for an otherwise forked/rewritten wiki product D. Fork MediaWiki
Curious Robla