Regarding the topic of making edits that would be accepted, I assume it was subject matter that rubbed someone the wrong way because as I said it was basically a character assassination of the article's subject. I strongly suspect the writer of the original non-neutral content had a browser extension or bot monitoring the page for any edits. I reflected on it quite a bit (I'm not sure how you concluded I've no interest in that), but I just think it creates a bit of an issue with the community being unwelcoming to newcomers. On the receiving end of it there's not really any way to know why someone decided to make unfounded accusations against you in a public place without engaging them further, which seemed unwise to me.

I agree with you that it looks like a good field for some research, I don't know how the issue of anonymous edits could be handled to productively stamp out abusive edit behavior.