Although I definitely don't want to inherit the snobbery of CGSociety, I think that Lobster's idea ain't bad. It would really help remove from our galleries those users who are uploading massive quantities of very easily made content with almost no artistic qualities, while at the same time still allowing them to upload on the site, and those items will be available in their "portfolios" (as we currently call it... which is essentially a list of their files... we're going to have *real* portfolios soon).
The idea would be that being in our galleries is a priviledge, while uploading to the site is a right (well, unless it's [censored], copyright, etc).
One problem is that it's a huge moderation issue--and who moderates? We'll have to give it more thought, but I think this is actually a pretty good idea.
-Jake