>Anyone know if it is possible to distribute user-editable help in a .chm file when that file was created using wwhelp? (or when it was created with the Microsoft .chm builder anyway).

Not that I know. When we were trying to figure out what help to use for our app, I made users and support rank some features, and having an edittable help system was the least needed functionality, so I didn't pursue it any further.

>I would like to provide a "skeleton" help system, but leave it to the users (who are the business experts) actually using the system to augment the help files on their own.

Why not give them the source files and teh compiler so they can modify it and build the CHM themselves? You coudl write a little app based on DBFs to do this too.