"no discussion of moderation" (like the rule on not discussing downvotes) seems to handle the first part.
Often, but not consistently AFAICT, a moderator (such as yourself Dang) will add a comment to the effect that a title was changed or a link was rewritten, it's just hidden in the comments; that's a strange thing to do if you fear discussions devolving towards meta topics.
Problems arise when people comment on a story when the substantive parts of the story then have been changed.
As for the second part, surely optional features (as there are already, eg "display dead") don't _compromise_ minimalism.