<a name> tags are missing that I can see ... thus IMHO a suitable mechanism should be provided...

That was discussed, and I think rather authoritatively answered by tye, in Problem with id:// shortcuts and anchors.

I personally believe that that one is a completely different matter, and I know because I asked the question in the first place! So perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly here and I need to clarify: there, I was after a quick / easy way to hyperlink to anchors when do they exist already, in terms of PM's existing shortcuts or more precisely, an enhancement of them. Here, I'm "complaining" that individual entries in Tidings do not provide a any hyperlinking method that I know of, either by means of <a name> tags or not, either quick or not.

For example now I can refer to the piece of news that inspired this thread as the to "the one at the top there" but in a year or so it won't mean much. The node type is supposed to be "wiki" and indeed "recent edits" are available (but then what does "recent" mean? Older ones will disappear firts or later?) so perhaps what comes closest is the link to the single edit. But then that displays the source of the edit, while it would be much preferrable to display the rendered thingie as well...

such a change appears to have been done

What do you mean? Appears where? If you mean in RAT, that was written entirely from scratch; techniques done there have no bearing on what would need to be done to things like The Monastery Gates and the sections.

It may well be that I misunderstood completely. As I had read it, it was "once" impossible to display in posting sections the number of direct replies, due to... err well... "significantly non trivial changes," right? So I've read that it is now possible to display it and I had inferred that those changes had been applied: now you're telling me that my understanding is wrong. I can cope with that: worse luck!

customized header to be defined in terms of a user supplied string along with some placeholder variables

Sounds like a great idea. But in case you didn't guess — it would require a substantial amount of work. :-)

Unfortunately, I guessed, and I realize. It would be nice if I had the technical expertise, the time, and hubris enough to hack that thing, in which case I would contribute personally, but sadly enough I lack all three of them.