You are quite right about the "grumbling" -- putting any sort of free-form text content into a database will tend to create a barrier for people who need to maintain and update that content. If there isn't a simple procedure in place to do that, it's a killer.

Even when there is a "simple" procedure in place, the problem can be that it's the only procedure available. Editing text files and storing/updating them on disk really has become analogous to writing on paper: any number of utensils can be used, from the pencil stub invariably found on the floor to the $250 Cartier Fountain Pen. But the typical approach to maintaining text fields in a database is more like the old days of Ma Bell: this is the telephone that you get, it's black, you don't actually own it, and there's nothing you can do to change how it works.

Maybe a better approach would be to perfect a system for maintaining the database by "importing" from all these little files -- let the files be updated by whatever means are considered suitable, then just fold the new version into the database by some simple process, about which the content authors are blissfully ignorant.