Personally, I've never bothered with the exp/obs grind - though it is annoying knowing that others who do it then have an edge (pardon the pun) over my chars - I just try to grab the exp/obs if/when I go the area for other reasons.

In general edges are a neat part of the game, because they allow for character customization regardless of class/race. I'd say everyone agrees about that, right?

Now, as long as there is a way to grind exp/obs for edges, some people will do it, and of course they´ll get annoyed and complain when the grind gets even worse. So personally I think it'd be best if there was no way to mindlessly grind edges with each character, but you'd receive edge points in other ways, roughly in order of importance:

1) (linearly) based on level
2) (linearly) based on character hours (I think Daev especially has said that people will then idle for 100s of hours to get edges, but like said above, if some poor schmuck actually did that, who cares?)
3) taking down difficult/unique mobs
4) commerce XP
5) imm XP
6) role XP
7) PK wins, AND PK losses too (equally)

I think that's about it? Obs/exp XP would still count for gaining access to the secondary skills like legendary awareness etc., and of course as a way to gain XP without killing mobs.