Since anything (however stupid it might be) can be patented, I am gonna patent the following:
Title: SYSTEM and METHOD for TROLL CONTROL in open-source projects mailing lists, via Contribution-Points based eMail Limits
Certain mailing lists are more troll-prone than others. For instance, foundation-list, project-list etc. are more troll-prone and attract a lot of noisy crowd than other useful mailing lists like performance-improvement, research, product-XYZ-users-support-list, etc.
These points should be awarded based on people's contribution. Say, for every 2 bugs fixed, you get 1 point. For every 3 queries resolved in user-support mailing list, you get 1 point. For every new software you package for your distribution, you get 1 point etc. Since not many look after support forums, every issue resolved in forums will give you 2 points. (Note: not "every comment in a forum", it is "every issue resolved")
People who have made zero contributions to a project in vital activities like packaging, bug-fixing, documenting, testing, bug-triaging etc. should not be allowed to start a thread in these troll-prone mailing lists. There are no restrictions on questions on legal, technology aspects. But the restrictions apply for questions on abstract areas like Vision, Strategy, Corporate-affiliation etc. where one can talk without making meaning.
known-limitation: Sometimes, even a good contributor will behave child-like and will involve in pointless trolling. Sadly, There is no cure for it :(
I need to hire a patent-writer so that I can get the above crappy, non-sensical idea, written in abstract words with diagrams, flow-chart etc. so that the stupid, lame proposal becomes patent-worthy.
In proprietary software development, corporate people waste time in Meetings. In open-source, we waste time in mailing-list trolls. Atleast, in the latter, we can choose to not-participate and there is a handy option of "Mark all as read".
This really lame post is written in an insomniac night in about 10 minutes, Thanks to Independence.