This is a great idea and I support it 100%.
I've already been playing a bit on the experimental Ironman server and in my opinion Ironman MAngband is the greatest thing since the first few months of MAngband - and that sure is something special.
As for live dumps I think this could work just fine, however the risk of player killing might increase dramatically if everyone can at all times see every object in the other players inventory. Of course, since you can't go up it's rather unlikely that you'll run into anyone who can kill you the bastard way we've often seen at other servers and variants, but still.
One solution, though possibly too demanding would be if every player would have to register through a web site (for dumps to work) and then the dump would be saved there in a password protected page that only the user himself could access.
Then they can post their characters to wherever they'd like, at their own risk... of course.
However, all who have played Ironman MAngband know that it's fast and mean, most likely there won't be a lot of room for player killing, unless the game becomes very popular and thus, "this dungeon is too small for the both of us!"
And btw, I'm sure you've already thought of this, Jug - Live character dumps should only show the same info that the player himself can see, or else it'd work like a cheap mass identify.
