Changing Signed Contributions

There is a signed work on Wiki and you want to...

...delete it: This is legit. It may or may not be moral and it may or may not cause others to be angry with you, but you have every right to do it. Don't forget to remove the signature too.
...make technical edits to it: This is perfectly fine as long as it's done in good faith. The original author will own the improved work.
...summarize it: This is almost certainly a "fair use" allowed by copyright law, and the norms of this community, and Ward's intent in creating Wiki (as I understand it). The signature should be modified to reflect that this is now a summarized quote. The signature can probably be removed safely if the summarized information is common or public knowledge.
...combine it with other works on Wiki: I believe that this is also fair use and is within the norms of this community. It is probably best to attribute quotes, opinions, and summaries to their correct authors within the body of the new work.
...use it as part of a new work: That's probably also fair use as long as it remains signed or properly attributed and as long as it remains on Wiki. It's probably not okay to publish signed material from Wiki elsewhere without permission from the author. Attributed quotation would be within fair use (see HowToCiteWiki).
...change its meaning: You can't go around putting words in someone else's mouth. It's immoral if not illegal and has no place on Wiki. That means that you can't change the meaning of a signed piece and leave the signature intact and you can't put someone else's signature on work that they did not create. See ChangingTheMeaningOfSignedContributions for more.

An ellipsis can be used to indicate what words have been deleted. Example:

: Here's a long rant that talks about lots of things including that ComIsLove, and then lots of other things and VisualBasic does COM. -- SomeGreatGuy?

Editor changes this to...

: [...] ComIsLove. [...] VisualBasic does COM. -- SomeGreatGuy?

Square brackets can be used to delineate editors notes:

: "...ComIsLove [among other things]." -- SomeGreatGuy?

these notes should generally be used to expand on the quote, summarize part of it, or provide connection between the quote and the surrounding context.

The original author will own the improved work. - Both original author and the editor will own the improved work. I don't think Ward can take copyright away from the editor. That is, as I understand the BerneConvention, the person who made the edits has an absolute right to say, "I made the edits". Nobody else has that right and it cannot be signed away.

Once you sign a work on Wiki it becomes copyrighted - Under the Berne Convention, it is copyrighted whether or not it is signed.

What we are talking about here is often not so much ownership of copyright but a non-exclusive license to use in certain ways. That license is granted implicitly, by the act of posting to the Wiki server.

Does that mean that some of the stuff written here is wrong? If so, please fix it!

CategoryWiki