Avira,
> how a “reader” can see that the rishonim didn’t have a mesorah, because I’m not a reader
the joke is that academics spend a semester on the hakdomos, while learners skip it and go straight for lomdus. There is a good value for meta-learning – what is motivation, what is general approach or knowledge of the author. When you learn from someone in person (or on zoom :), you know the character of the speaker and it helps understanding what he is saying.
> academic mentality would not see anything wrong with annuling yom tov sheni,
I am not advocating academic paskening at all, but this is a bad example, as it is simple Gemorah that you need a better beis din to annul YT2. So, someone advocating such is definitely a ball gaavah as you are saying!
Side note: if we want to have such a sanhedrin, we would definitely need to bring together people with different opinions and let them argue with each other directly rather than through humble proxies like us.
> This is why steinsaltz, who had no formal education, is so off base with his pshatim
In general, R Steinsaltz had yeshiva-educated people working for him. I have no insights on the Gemora editing process per se, but I think there are names listed, I did not open it for a long time. I read R Feldman’s critique of early volumes, I presume it is valid as I do not know better, although there was a response. Even with that, it opened Gemora for a lot of Israelis. I use Artscroll and it also has a lot of problems that can be seen with a naked eye, usually trying to smooth the text and avoid thinking outside the box. No translation is perfect.