Setting user restriction on those who can comment is currently done through a parser tag. This isn't ideal as someone can easily add their name to the list so they can comment. While technically this can be prevented by protecting the page that contains <comments />, this isn't ideal since it should not be required to protect the entire page only for protecting comments user restriction.

My proposed solution is to introduce:

• A new user right along the lines of comment-user-restrict
• A new special page that can only be accessed with the above mentioned user right. This means introducing a new user interface, so Design input is needed as well :-) A similar ticket that required a similar interface was in T131492, with a mockup available in F5241851 made by @Phantom42. The mockup shown uses chips, where chip is also mentioned in T154855