This is a hard question:
- It makes me crazy when I see an obvious typo in the question header and can't fix it, especially when we're trying to put our best face on for the public beta's influx of new experts
- That said, a simply lowering the threshold for editing on betas/public betas to an easily attainable number strikes me as dangerous. To paraphrase Grandma Parker/Sam Raimi, the ability to change someone else's words represents great power, and it oughtn't come without first demonstrating great responsibility (by earning a lot of rep)
While certain rights being based on your rep on other sites on an ongoing basis, as is suggested here seems like a nice compromise, implementation would be a mess- it's a lot more complex than the one-time award for association. Aside from any tech complexity:
- It would make it close to impossible for others to follow who's allowed to do what where
- More importantly, rep isn't just (hopefully) suggestive of responsible behavior. It (hopefully) represents expertise in the site's topic.
One problem with granting editing power to the coding expert on the cooking site is that despite being an infallibly accurate expert on C++, he may be changing others' answers to reflect the cooking knowledge he dutifully accumulated reading The Old Wives' Guide to Poisoning Guests
. And there's not much more dangerous to an experts' community than a sense that the experts are at risk to be "corrected" by neophytes.
For now, I think polite suggestions in the comments specifically indicating the item that needs changing are the way to go.