Future damage limitation strategies?

So the first couple of weeks the wiki novel was plagued by porn, now it's plagued by silliness, especially of the banal banana variety. I've genuinely enjoyed some of the surreal humour in the wiki, but the banana stuff bores me stiff. Want a comic fruit? Choose a banana. It's too obvious. Now, if they'd explored the comic potential of a kumquat...

Actually, I wonder if some of the dissatisfactions and perceived problems with the current wiki novel could be addressed in future by enhancements to the project and software design (assuming anyone's mad enough to repeat this experiment... and I hope they are).

As it stands, it's pretty much a straightforward open wiki. Anyone can register and contribute, and that's its strength - but it's also its weakness, anyone can register and vandalise. Restricting entry would be counter to the ethos of the project and I wouldn't want to advocate that, but what if there was a way to limit the scope of destruction by vandals? For example, I think it would make quite a difference if there was some mechanism in the software that prevented contributors pasting the same word or phrase repeatedly, ad nauseum. If YellowBanana had to type banana over and over, they'd probably tire of it much sooner. Not so much damage would be done.

The collaborative art project Drawball takes this approach. It's a kind of visual-based equivalent of the wiki novel, anyone can enter and start drawing in the communal art space. However, first you've got to pass a simple test and complete a puzzle, then you're given a finite quantity of virtual drawing ink, which effectively limits the amount of destruction you can do. If you draw well (i.e. considerately, show commitment) you're allocated infinite ink, but you have to earn that privilege. In theory good drawings, if spotted, are protected by admin, but in practice its up to each artist (or group) to maintain their own. It's not a perfect system and it doesn't stop the vandalism, but it does restrict its scope, so good drawings can and do survive. I think a future wiki novel could really benefit from similar kinds of strategies.

You can find a fuller discussion of Drawball here.