I think Chouxfleur is absolutely right in sticking to her defined rules. Once you start to make exceptions you are lost.
For example, I used to go to a "Country" open mike some years ago - the premise was that there was no other local open mike for Country music & so it was a niche evening. It was a great idea - but very quickly it became "Country/Folk" and ended up including the whole spectrum of performances exactly as seen at other local nights (with all the usual suspects). It lost its differential, and pretty much descended into mush. I think that if he had stuck to his guns he would have built something really interesting.
Then the organiser tried to implement "songwriter nights" where you were supposed to perform self-penned numbers. Great idea - and a great motivation for polishing some new songs. Too bad that he then allowed people to get away with singing songs written by close friends, then songs written by people they knew, and then songs written by famous people they had vaguely heard of - ie we were back to a mishmash of mush again.
I certainly applaud Chouxfleur's clear vision of what she wants, and her firmness in sticking to that.
Obviously it isn't true that ALL paper-readers are amateur (rank or otherwise) - but I can see that allowing one high-quality act to use paperwork as a safety net would open the floodgates for performers who use paperwork as a substitute for rehearsal.

Kris