WikiFeatures: PartialPageEditing

Rather than giving an entire page to the user, allow the user to edit just one small part.

This has a few benefits:

The user can be confident that, worst-case, just that one small part will be “messed up”. This might encourage timid people to make more edits, since there’s no longer any worry about mangling the entire page. (Especially if this person already knows his browser mangles spaces, tabs, etc.)
At least theoretically, it should be possible for 2 people to simultaneously edit different parts of the page without conflict, the way it is already possible for 2 people to simultaneously edit different wiki pages.
Its faster to edit really long pages – much less time scrolling through the textbox to re-find the part that I wanted to change when I saw it on the original page.
If a page has a bunch of complicated wiki formatting features elsewhere, I never see them in my textbox, so I feel less puzzled and confused by them.

Possibilities

There are lots of different “parts” to a wiki page.

Place an “edit” link in the side-bar.

Place an “edit” link next to text sections, so a person can edit that section alone. (MediaWiki)

Perhaps it would be possible to select just one row of a table (or just one column) for editing.

PmWiki (http://pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWiki) has separate “Edit Page” and “Edit Sidebar” links.

WakkaWiki has an “append comment” feature.

UseModKr has single section editing.

OddMuse has a module in order to single section editing.

MediaWiki has single section editing.

GeboGebo supports section editing, too, though it locks the whole page for other users.

Encourages make tiny, nit-picking changes rather than re-drafting the page as a whole.
Encourages additions to a bloated section of a bloated page, rather than creating a new page.