My point about consensus building was mainly the tagging of moderators – not limited to just those who happen to be moderators.
Well meaning posters will post stuff that is wrong in How To no matter what. Conveniently, it’s a wiki, and can be edited. The two posts you mentioned should probably be merged into the follow up donut chart post.
Basically, I think the only area that we disagree is that I think that authoring How To’s directly in the category is fine. How strongly do you feel about that? Is it a make or break for you?
Would the additional guideline of “don’t ask questions in How To” improve things for you? – which you didn’t have in your guidelines, but perhaps adds clarity of my “go ahead and write long form How To, but don’t use it to ask questions”.
And, of course, there still WILL be replies. Those replies can be either transcluded into the wiki of the how to – or direct edited in.
Do you have a suggestion of where I should have posted this one?
It’s an example of the long form writing I’d like to preserve. But…it’s also perilously close to something that I should perhaps PR into core documentation? Probably wouldn’t pass muster of the style guide.
How To is a wiki by default. It’s the one category where people should know that it’s not “their” post, which is why I added this:
So…no umbrage is allowed in that category 
– e.g. “posts in the How To category will be community edited for clarity and correctness, and merged and moved as needed”.