One person's "familiar conclusion" is another's "best practices", I suppose.

The solution you're putting forth suggests that there needs to be a single person in charge of coalescing the many suggestions and edits.

Not really. Many suggestions and edits put forth by random people, e.g., here, aren't edits that I think an editor should really make. Nor do I really think a single person is necessary; again, a well-defined style guide would go a long way.

I understand how CVSes work, and I have no problem with collaborative editing. But papers are not coding projects. There are a lot of global things going on that need to happen correctly. Even open source projects tend to have lead developers, no?