My 2cts, I think the file-based system is pretty flexible. And we can create technical solutions for many of the drawbacks if needed.
- Custom editor for the Initiatives config format.
- Automatic pull request systems to make GitHub more accessible (@anon60584824 worked on one).
- Custom Discourse plugin to include the most recent Initiative data in a topic.
etc…
However that takes some development time, so I think it’s important we find a mean-time solution that works for us without many special tools.
For example, I think it’s worth realizing, maintaining the GitHub repository requires very high trust as it directly impacts what happens to the payouts. Currently TBD @decentralion maintains our canonical cred instance. https://github.com/sourcecred/cred Compared to the wiki setup, this is much less permissionless.
Personally I’m OK with using this model, so long as there is consensus on that in the community 
If not, similar to what I described in Discourse Admin trust model, maintaining the canonical cred instance requires very high trust. So I wouldn’t advocate for giving everyone merge rights. If this is something to address, a 2-out-of-3 approval process with high trust maintainers would be my suggestion.
TL;DR
I 
switching to config files.