Hear! Hear! Using a 24-character passphrase that is all lower-case letters and spaces is still more secure than and eight-character monstrosity, mainly for the reason that it's easier to remember (and probably easier to type).

Furthermore, long passphrases are known to be workarounds for known vulnerabilities in security systems. Passphrases 20 characters or longer are significantly harder to crack in WPA-PSK. Passphrases longer than 14 characters have no LANMAN has in Windows (MUCH MUCH harder to crack).

Enforcing a larger minimum length is more important than making stern complexity requirements.

Simple proof: You care how long your encryption keys are, not how complex they are.

--J