It's always difficult to really be sure but I think the standard form is to put demo scripts and their config files in /usr/share/doc/<package-name>/demo and /usr/share/doc/<package-name>/demo/conf directories. I think tucked away with the default config in /etc would be the wrong place - not even exim4, spamassassin or clamav do that.

I think that /etc or /usr/local/etc is the right place for an active config or set of configs for an installed system. (My /usr/local/etc happens to be empty on two systems.)

Pod could always point out the existence of the /usr/share/doc/<package-name>/demo directories and even discuss their contents as well as that of the default install

I think that is fairly general Linux behaviour - at least what I have seen of Debian, SuSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu - and so not entirely limited to Debian. The FHS says /usr/local/etc is for host specific configuration files for local binaries. I don't know if your application falls into that category.

Nightmare with all the different possibilities, though -- I can't imagine where things go in Windows... or a Mac .

Good luck