Hi John, You have always been so thoughtful.
The long note/short note approach works well for static pages/publication data, but we "hope" there will be on-going collaboration from a multitude of users. Any one of these contributors might unknowingly remove or restate a "long note," and then it's gone. Poof.
And, if someone opts to consolidate notes/short notes, there is a pretty good chance we'll lose any notice of the important underlying historical records relied upon by authors of otherwise secondary sources (ala, proper record of the source of the source).
I realize my comments would be more helpful if I could point to specific examples. Perhaps with time, I'll be able to add that kind of detail here.
Thanks again for all you have done in support of WikiTree.--Gene