You're all hung up on auditors and certification. The documented system is there to be used by the people implementing and developing the process and should be designed as such. For the sake of efficiency and clarity, the best place for the change history is in the document to which it refers, not in the Quality Manual and not in a separate document. Regards the ECN record; Well my preference is not to use an ECN to make a document change but we are still using a hard copy through the development/change stage. Maybe if we were fully paperless, then the ECN would be the best way, though I think I would still go for a brief change description on a history page. It's the easiest to use, which encourages it's use.
An unnecessary document is waste, and so is the time spent maintaining, retrieving and handling it. All waste should be eradicated from the system.
Also; Auditors come in all shapes and sizes, just like other people, and about one in 400 is going to be totally insufferable. The rest are struggling human beings like the rest of us and will respond in kind to kindliness and consideration, with resultant benefits all round. Why butt up against them over something which is, at worst, a debatable issue? Why risk a critical observation and bad feeling? By all means, be prepared to draw a line in the sand, but why draw it here?
rgds,
John C