Oh I agree completely that it isn't a nice assumption; it is just a simplifying one (like the proverbial spherical cow) that's mostly wrong. But I don't think it is entirely wrong, and the ways that it is right may be useful, as an experiment.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word bad. But new users may not know the established traditions of a group, maybe they haven't even bothered to read the FAQ. The articles that got me thinking along these lines were: http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html and http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2001/cs6470_fall/LTAND.ht... . The gist is that an important group function is to defend itself against (new) users.

But I think that what it'll do is to make votes matter because they cost something. Mostly, I'm interested to see what the implications would be.