My suggestion to root all the unecessary sysops is to create two eschelons of "elevated" users.
The "writers" and the "sysops".
A sysop would be just like an ordinary sysop; delete, protect, block, and reverse all those.
But a writer would be more of an honorific and would not have some of the capabilities. The only capabilities a writer would have would be to delete OR protect (haven't decided yet).
What benefit would that have? If someone wants to concentrate on writing articles, they don't need any extra tools. Your idea creates an elevated level for the sake of it, rather than to fulfil a purpose. Wikipedia doesn't exist to satisfy people's egos.