I'm against Ashersky's Plan #1 - I've seen mass flavor claim help town one time, I've seen it hurt town far more. I've also seen it fought both for and against in the same game, with half the town in favor claiming, and half the town against refusing - and this has ended in disaster 100% of the time. It's the sort of thing that, if it's going to work and help, has to be completed willingly by all participants.
As for plan #2 - it has merits... but it's not really useful to anybody with no knowledge of the flavor. And more, it has the potential to end up causing a lengthy debate amongst the players that DO have flavor knowledge about what a better representation of a character would be - which could clutter up the thread endlessly. Just look at the speculation around Bart alone. In addition, it could clue scum in to which players have which characters, and what their powers might be, based solely on how those players react towards seeing their character name come up (or even in how they present their personal character to the thread as a whole).
So consider me a "nay" for both plans - which shouldn't surprise anyone, as I've rarely seen a plan I like. I DO generally like the attempts to think outside the box however to come up with plans - it isn't something I see scum do all that often, and while I fully expect Ashersky to come up with stuff as either alignment (he almost has to - it's so ingrained in his meta), I still think he's slightly, slightly leaning town-ish here.