FWIW including Misc/ACKS in the doc will probably break the generation of the pdf version of the doc, since it contains non-latin1 characters (see msg166408).  I don't think it's necessary to include the names in the doc.

> I don't know how Doc ACKS is maintained, but I think the devguide is
> fine as it stands, whether or not Doc ACKS is preserved or not. 
> People should put themselves into Misc/ACKS if they made a 
> contribution, period.

In my experience Doc/ACKS.txt is mostly ignored/unmaintained.  I did a lot of work on the docs and my name is not in there, and I don't think I ever added anyone there.

> If people need to be acknowledged separately for contributing to the
> documentation, I think only major contributions (such as writing the 
> documentation for a yet-undocumented module) should be explicitly 
> acknowledged.

It's already possible to give credit directly in the docs using directives like "sectionauthor".