List
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Has the list been published? How do people know if they are on it or not?
It'd be great if I could make a user group that isn't allowed to edit this page, but I realize that's asking way too much.
You could write a Mediawiki extension or two to do that, i.e. allow people to create/manage their own groups, and pick which groups get read/edit permission in their userspace.
You'd want to introduce the notion of a "Group owner", and allow users to create groups with themselves as owner, and then add/remove members and delete groups they own, but not groups owned by others or groups owned by the system.
Go buy yourself a book on PHP and give it a go. Even if this site never accepts the end product, you could learn a valuable skill.