First the current process...
Users PM and email the page owner and ask for page ownership if they want to work on a page. Sometimes the owner denies the request, sometimes the ower offers the page up, and often the request is ignored (usually because the owner is inactive). If the request is ignored for a month and the owner appears inactive, the elves give the requester the page.
Givens: The process works (I've done it a few times myself, and have gotten all three of the above results) and the process is not a burden for the elves (this doesn't happen a lot and takes very little time). Also a given... the process needs improvement and should work better. I think the biggest burden here is that members are often reluctant to request a page because they don't want to intrude, especially if the page is weak (rather than horrid).
Matt has a couple of good ideas here. The exact mechanisms haven't been worked out. Any other ideas? Or thoughts on the details?
1) Allow users to apply to get update permissions.
2) Pages come up for adoption if not up to date (as voted on by the community -- this would require adding a way to vote whether or not a page is sufficiently up to date).
EDIT:
Also... feel free to comment or vote on the idea here:
http://summitpost.uservoice.com/forums/ ... or-adoptio