I don't get why the top comment on all vim threads is always recommending using poor defaults your whole life so you can avoid learning to configure it or avoid a second of confusion when you're ssh'd somewhere.
Maybe everyone else besides me spends all their time ssh'd into random servers.
But, it may not be for everyone.
Where I work, we are in the process of reaching some compliance targets, and all this downloading unknown stuff from unknown servers is out the window. For the best, I think.
Incidentally one can mount a remote filesystem via ssh and edit the files as if they were local with any editor.
With Emacs you can skip a step and directly point your editor to the remote file via tramp.
But I'm not really familiar with netrw other than just:
:e scp://host/path/file
On vanilla vim if you :e scp://host// you should get the built in netrw browser working over scp.
Making 1% of 1/10 of 1% more effecient seems like a curious optimization.