I might be asking too much at this early stage …
* We need *all* user registrations to be approved by admin or a moderator.
* New users should have posting permissions in BBPress, but not the WordPress it is integrated with (unless those permissions have been explicitly granted by admin).
* Posting permissions in WordPress are granted by admin only after seeing evidence that the user is both responsible and competent to do so.
* It is easy to require admin approval of new WordPress users, but we would prefer all registrations to be through BBPress (there is no ‘register’ link on our WordPress).
Right now we are using WordPress 2.7, so we don’t have full integration yet. But it would be nice to think we might be able to work with our users in this way eventually.