There are a lot of arbitrary rules baked into the code to theoretically improve the quality, as the original designers (particularly Jeff Atwood) believed that overall site quality was crucial to the long-term viability of the site. Unfortunately there's a lot of collateral damage.

It seems to me that most rules will stop applying after some amounts of points. The founders and early users are never subjected to them, while it's a major hassle for everyone else.

Not always true, I have every privilege available on the site and I still ran into the minimum number of changes for an edit. I spent far too much time looking for innocuous changes just so I could push an essential edit through. I don't deny that some rules are like that though.

Another example on edits then, you must be familiar with the "edit queue is full" bug? You can clean the edit queue if you have enough points.

If you have enough points your edits don't even enter the queue, they're applied immediately.

Wow. Privileges in action.