My two cents on the issue: - The edit link on the far right, as at present, is actually probably the worst of all possibilities. It's hard to see, it constantly gets mangled by infoboxes and images, and it's the least intuitively connected with the correct paragraph. It caused me a lot of problems as a newbie. - Edit link on the far left is good from every perspective except that it pushes the heading out, which is bad for reading and general visuals. If it could be placed in the margin, that would be great. - Arrows would really help with connecting the edit link to the right paragraph. I think either edit link above section heading (with down arrow) or after section text (with up arrow) could work. A fairly big change from the current situation but probably more intuitive. Placing it *after* the section would also work well for the lead section, and is very intuitive when you want to add text to the end of a section. - Of the suggestions that have been mocked up, the "German" model is my preferred one, as it has the least disadvantages. Maybe add a downarrow to make even clearer that you're editing the whole section, not just the heading?
Steve