I'm terribly sorry, but I am often guilty of beating dead horses... because I'm not sure I understand if its dead or how we are beating it.
You are quite guilty. I will answer the date question through. RC is 08/2007 and the FAQ entry is marked red (thus new) in the final 06/2008 release.
It is also worth noting that the quoted section in the previous discussion stems from the Attacks & Damage entry, a topic that in overall discusses how to attack, the differences between melee and ranged, the entry on touch attacks, what a Full-Attack is, and the natural 1 & 20s rules on Attack Rules. It so happens to also contain three paragraphs on damage as the result of an attack. The quote is found in the
description of this area which then goes on to to give a vague idea on damage modifiers (basically, stuff mods it), minimum damage (1 point min), and damage multiplication (extra dice ignored, see page 42), and specifying if the damage dealt is lethal or not (see page 72).
It is not the entry on Ability Damage, Energy Drain, or even Lethal/Nonlethal damage. In all truth, it's addressing the Attack side of combat. After all,
"other sorts of harm" and it's following unquoted sentence
"When you hit with such an attack, apply the effects of the attack as that attack’s description dictates." can be used to accurately describe how to handle effects like Antimagic Ray or Dimensional Anchor. Both of which require you to Attack even through you deal no damage. Which certainly the over empathized forum quote would decree as "damage".
[sarcasm]Because Weapon Specialization should give +2 to turning people into Stone![/sarcasm]. As descriptive text, would have correctly fulfilled it's job if it attempt to explain it's intent as such was done a little more clearly but this is D&D, and not MtG, we're discussing. It's almost to be expected.
