As a lurker, I sort of agree. That is, I don't think that I'm a real part of the community - being more the type to hang around the edges, listening to the conv

As a lurker, I sort of agree. That is, I don't think that I'm a real part of the community - being more the type to hang around the edges, listening to the conversation - but I think that that is a valid way of figuring out community standards; watching other people try, and seeing what works. So yes, I'm sort of biased against restricting article submission based on points and comments. On the other hand, neither do I expect to submit anything very soon, so I suppose that not being able to wouldn't matter much to me (until I want to submit something, of course). It would be quite interesting to see statistics for who submits articles, and how many comments / points they have, and how long they have been a member.