Top ropes are not routes. If it doesn't have bolts and won't take gear then it is a free solo - and if it has been climbed that way ground up, onsight - then it's a route.
Throw a rope down from the top and it is "game over".
Although I agree with most of what you and Clink are saying, I think that you're being a little too extreme. There's a long history of some toprope-only routes being valid. Take, as just one example, the well known Big Moe in Joshua Tree. In Pinns, I think Lounge Lizard Arete is valid - bolting it would be a total squeeze job, and yet the moves are 90% unique from either of the routes to its sides (they only join at the top).
It's a balancing act though. I once had a first ascentionist up here hand me a topo that showed three bolted face leads, and something like seven other "toprope routes" from the same two top anchors. This on a face where one could climb almost anywhere. So where is the limit? Is it two TR routes on a face for every lead is enough? Or three. Or none?
Munge and I had this talk about Pinns and about up here. I think we came to agree that it can only be judged on a route by route basis. Naturally he didn't agree with all of my judgment calls and I didn't agree with all of his either.
In the present case I don't think the proposed "Chicken Shit Jug Haul" is adequately different, or far enough away from the lead climbs that already exist on that face to be a separate route. Mug Shot is a different story - it's all alone and it was validly climbed (although on toprope). For these reasons, I think it's a route.
I think the best/ultimate solution with Mug Shot though is for it to be made into a lead (and by Dennis's sense of style, probably by someone other than the one's who toproped it - the toproping was a rehearsal to him, and thus a taint if the same climbers were to now do the first lead). And it sounds like he's OK with that being done.
