Not sure if it's funny or sad, good or bad, that the bar for editing a wiki is higher than contributing to a git repo. Wiki: the no-longer-quite-so-quick-web. I do agree that requiring people to send an email shouldn't be considered "difficult", though.

Contributing to awesome-go is more expensive than just having a git repo: you need a github account, which means having to click some buttons, wait for the confirmation, fork remotely, get a clone locally, add content, push, send a pull-request, ...

Fair enough, but the (probably valid) assumption is that most developers already have a github account (much like most people have an email account) -- and you can then make all your changes without waiting for approval. True, your pull-request can still be refused, but even so you still have the product of your work sitting in your repo, and you can share it with others.

I'm not really a great fan of github, but it's hard to deny that it is one easy way to facilitate and mediate contributions.

Also, the permission request to edit the wiki is a one time request. Once you have permission, you are free to edit the project page or any other page on the community wiki.