The top stop thing is interesting -- I've never seen or heard of that over here.

I'm weirded out by the idea of belaying hand-over-hand, though, because it does mean that holding your partner in a fall is dependent on your grip strength versus their weight, even if it's only 10% of their weight. Whereas with a belay device, it's not significantly harder to keep the rope locked off with a heavier person than a light one.

And eeesh, yeah, that incident's really scary. But AFAIK, that's more to do with standing too far from the wall than with the weight disparity.