Meh, tweaking a word here and there is not a huge problem IMO, perhaps even adding some paragraphs is OK, so long as the core message doesn't dramatically change. Or, at the very least, I think it's a separate problem from what's being discussed here.
I believe SMF's stats respond accurately to posts being deleted, so it shouldn't inflate them. There might be a slight DB size implication since deleted posts go into Quarantine, but that's also not likely to cause a major issue. The only thing I see as potentially frustrating is - yeah, if you make a new post, it's a new post. It'll show as such to everyone. If the edit function is triggering notifications (it really shouldn't, and I don't think it is), fixing it would still do nothing about Tom's not-quite-editing behaviour.
So, my proposed 2 step plan would be:
- For people to start using the edit function if they want to edit posts.
- For us to observe if the issue still persists. (I suspect the answer will be "no", but I haven't looked at the code, this is just a guess.)