Regarding stable versions . . . could these be applied to non-articles as well? High-use templates are all full-protected, at least on enwiki, which is horribly anti-wiki: you have to discuss any but the most trivial changes for days, then get a sysop to institute them. It's impossible to be bold. A similar concept could be used in lieu of any protection, in fact (well, except the GFDL page and maybe main page, but including interface changes), given that a sysop has to approve the changes eventually, which would make the entire process much more wiki without actually reducing security. Too many people forget that protection is evil, and given that it seems largely unnecessary as well . . .
A related point is that in cases where this concept solely replaces protection against vandalism, it would be good to have delayed automatic approval, i.e., changes automatically go through if not reverted within a certain period. High-use templates could have edits frozen for a day or so to stop people from inserting penises into 70,000 pages at once or edit-warring and continually clearing the cache for no reason, while still allowing people to be bold and make changes, even anons.