Maybe if such comments were heavily moderated (or edited in-place a la the exile) -- cooking is one of the things where even otherwise very reasonable people I've known have gone off the deep end over what seems absurdly trivial to me.

Things like a bagel "toasted" vs "just warmed," dishes that have a variety of regional variations (e.g. a lot of slavic dishes like borsch or stuffed cabbage rolls where I've gotten yelled at by people for pronouncing it the Russian way or making it the Slovak way instead of their own nationality's style) seem to bring up far more intensity than I'd have thought possible, but, you know, I learn more about my friends that way and we've remained friends...

in an internet comments section? Tough to maintain that kind of civility, I think. possible, but tough.

Yeah the authenticity thing especially gets a lot of people going online. I check in and catch up on r/cooking once or twice a week and there are some very strongly held opinions. The funny thing is, the one that gains traction in a post can be either side of the issue depending on the time of day that it's posted. Reddit's voting system carries so much momentum.

And if you decide that the edit made it worse after trying it?

Its better to have each post be owned by someone and then have a ranking system to sort the most liked versions.

Yes, I don't think a wiki is really appropriate for most recipes at all for this reason. There are many different ways to do a recipe each at least close enough to equally valid that you'll have those people arguing over nitpicks for weeks while everyone else steers clear.

You could rank them or something, but the reason I like YouTube is that I can generally get a sense of a person and what they like. If they like similar things to me, I'll probably like their versions of recipes. Inauthentic adjustments or weird herb profiles included.