Looking at Nodes To Consider and Editor requests, I wonder if the amount of work cut out for the editor deities could be substantially reduced by allowing editing of root nodes by the author.

I believe that Everything2 works this way, and is running the same software. You might want to restrict it, to exclude anonymonks and initiates, for example. This would increase the sense of community, encouraging mentoring from senior monks via the chatterbox.

Possibly there might be an issue with the author trying to cover up obscenity, defamation or blasphemy, after the event, but its worth considering having an audit trail available to nodes that have been edited (view original, view previous version, diffs), as is available on many Wiki sites.