Chris Green wrote:

To prove seriousness (i.e. real love of Wikipedia) and to prevent sock puppetry why not restrict the allocation of trust to those users who have edited x(500? 1000?) times?

I would think that this would resolve most problems.

You might have to make an exception for certain current sysops who don't really edit but have proved their worth to the community.

Sysop status would become automatic after x number of edits provided the user hadn't accumulated negative votes already from existing trusted users. You could keep the voting figures out of the public domain until the trigger figure is reached to prevent gamesplaying, since people would not know their voting score.

Over time sysop status could be revoked if votes against a user became weighted too negatively. For questionable cases you could call a vote.

Good behaviour conversely would inevitably lead to the regaining of trust as people change their votes and might lead to the regaining of sysop status.

Way, way too gameable. Edit-counting is by default a recipe for trouble. Adding auto-sysoping into the mix, many times moreso. Now, if we had something (perhaps excessive) where people could rate whether any given edit was an improvement, and a person had x positively-rated edits (assuming that this rating would only count in people with likewise well-rated status...), then something could happen... but you see how complicated that gets. Automatic sysopping just strikes me as something that shouldn't be in the equation. But discussion is a healthy thing... so whatever works.

-- Jake