Last modified: 2013-09-04 11:47:14 UTC
It is not possible to generally turn off section edit links by setting the respective preference. Setting $wgDefaultUserOptions['editsection'] to whatever value has no effect at all for anon users. Same goes for the respective user preference for logged-in users, it is simply ignored. This happens on a freshly installed MW 1.17.0.
$wgDefaultUserOptions['editsection'] = '0'; works as expected on trunk (1.19) I can confirm the user pref not working is present on 1.17.0 and is _not_ present on 1.17wmf1. Since this appears to be working on trunk and the wmf branch - I'm going to close this worksforme. Please re-open if the issue is still present on 1.18 once its released