Gosh, I'm impressed with your diligence  I had forgotten about leaving this message!
The good news is, I quickly moved on from that page and sought other projects.  The bad news is, I subsequently discovered (as you've described) that many policy pages get "'occupied' permanently by a few editorial 'authorities'."  Between June and August, I made many many hours-long "improvements" to policy pages which were quickly reverted. It was very demoralizing, and now I only edit in the article space.
I think the best (i.e. most altruistic) account for this phenomenon came from User:SlimVirgin, who suggested that longtime editors often grow to rely on the verbatim text of policies, because (for example) they find it useful to quote the text in disputes with newbies.  So that's a legitimate reason why policy pages can become so darn resistant to improvements.
I was saddened to see that policy pages are afflicted by chronic sclerosis, but I consider it a learning experience, and I've happily returned to adding material to the article space.
Cheers,  talk/WP:Hornbook