1. Take the neverwinter nights world editor thing.
2. Take some of those 2D-UO world editor things.
3. Even take a peek at this freaky Second Life thingy with its scriptability and item creation from simples.
With those editors it is possible to create maps, items like walls/trees/buildings, item functions/scripts, NPCs, and with that ->FULL CONTENT. In one editor window.
One can create a map, place the items on it, place doors and switches on it, open properties of items to fill in basic functions and even complex scripts.
The Content is directly viewable and checkable directly by those people making it. They see what they made, send the whole to one of the admins, they build it in or into a test place.
People can experiment, people can play around, people can see their results at work, plus these tools are mostly freely available.
In illarion, a quester person has to :
1. make the tile map
2. fill it with content of the fixed items type (trees,walls,stones,etc)
3. go through the item list and note down item IDs of items you want to have a scripted function, then note down the coordinates where you want these on the map
4. send the map to one of our map masters and wait a few months until it can be built in
5. log into your map and check the corner points to get the coordinates of your map in the world map
6. translate all "local" map positions you noted down in 3. into world coordinates (it's not actually hard, but can be annoying)
7. send that calculated data and item list along with a list of functions to some script master
8. do the same with NPCs and spawn points
9. have to wait some more until all scripts are properly tested ( to avoid crashes ) and built in
to get a functioning dungeon.
And in the end, listen to complaints of all the noobs who's groups died on the map because single players wanted to "scout" and ran directly through all spawn points, luring the monsters back to overrun their comrades, and instead of being backed up by the rest of the staff be flamed by them as well.
Logical effect : People get inactive.
If compensating for that effect by motivating people from the community by giving them toys to play around with so they can develop an interest to develop stuff for the game and to see their work in effect is not a possible way to go;
And if there is no easier / broader available way for fixed/automated ingame content creation;
Perhaps it would help a bit if the staff would support its active questers a bit better in public, at least as long until there is enough ingame content to keep players active from that alone.
) and give them the .npc