As the (main) author of the new software, I'd like to contribute some things to this debate:
- Watching the actions of a signed-up user will be very simple, even if he/she logs in from different machines. - Counting edits/new articles will be as simple. - After each "karma point" addition, the status could be checked and basic rights could be given. - All pages can be locked to give write access only to people with the necessary user rights.
So, no technical problem with that. But, think about what I originally had in mind (I mentioned that somewhere already) :
- Have about a dozen "sysops"/administrators. Larry, Jimbo, a few others (and currently myself, for maintnance;) - Sysops can do everything: edit other user's rights, delete pages (and I mean delete, not just remove the contents), mess directly with the database etc. - Sysops can create "editors", which have less rights, but of whom there are many. - *Everybody* can edit pages in the normal wikipedia namespace - Good articles can be advanced into an "approved" namespace (by everybody, or by a special "reviewer" class) - Editors can advance articles from the "approved" namespace to the "stable" namespace, or remove it from "approved" - The "stable" namespace can only be edited by sysops
"Reviewers" and maybe "editors" could also be generated by karma points, or by LSD ;)
Additionally, central pages could still be protected, and my new variables will change the date and the number of articles on the HomePage automatically.
A word to "blocked IPs": Almost everyone who goes online via an ISP gets a random IP from the ISP every time he/she dials in. Blocking such an IP would not stop trolls, but it would stop other harmless people who come in through the same ISP at a later time. We don't want "wikipedia colateral damage", now do we?
Magnus