Considering the vast size of the warlock megathread, a summary like this for oft-asked questions is a useful thing, thank you.
I feel there is much room for improvement though. Just skimming it I noticed a few things.
1.) Add a section for a 0/40/21 guide.
2.) In the affliction section, emphasize SB spam between dot applications. A common noob mistake is to use drain life.
3.) Also in the affliction section, you tell people to refresh like crazy so they don't lose a tick. This will most likely cause people to refresh a dot before it expires, clipping the last tick and losing a lot of damage. You should tell them to focus on minimizing the gap between dots, but that ~1sec of downtime is normal and fine, and is better than clipping a tick.
4.) Clean up the language. This should not be a casual "this talent is cool" type of thing. Imagine you are writing a thesis. Make statements and support them. If there is a tradeoff, present the tradeoff and provide a conclusion. For example:
Shadowfury is a really nifty talent, but it doesn't shine in raids. It's usable in specific encounters and very good in those. But its use is rather limited in raids in general. That's why most people default to using 0/21/40, taking a few subpar talents to obtain Demonic Sacrifice, which boost shadow damage by 15%. I'll focus on that one here.
This build focuses primarily on Shadow Bolts with a high crit rate. At low gear levels, fire spells are viable, but they scale worse compared to their shadow counterparts. The key thing is to keep the Improved Shadow Bolt Debuff (ISB) up as much as possible, since it provides 20% extra shadow damage to the entire raid (including dots - this is a common misconception).
This spec scales best with gear, due to the high return of spelldamage and crits on Shadow Bolts. There has been some debate about what gear is needed for it to outperform affliction, and opinions are divided. Some people state it requires Hyjal/BT gear, others claim it rivals affliction dps even in early SSC.
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Would be better written in a straightforward and confident manner:
This build focuses on three key talents in demonology and destruction: demonic sacrifice (DS), ruin, and Shadow and Flame (SnF). The result is 21/40 scales with gear better than any other build. The order of priority is Hit > damage > crit. The actual coefficients can best be determined using the spreadsheet linked below, or for a rough guide, use the shadowpriest.com wiki linked below.
Q.) Fire or Shadow? Due to the following factors, shadow is always preferred for pve:
1.) ISB generation
2.) Shadowbolt's superior damage coefficient
3.) Prevalence of shadow synergy in raids including shadow weaving and ISB
Q.) When does itemization cause this build to rival or surpass affliction?
1.) Affliction gets a huge head start due to tailoring gear, hit capping with dots quickly via suppression, and the mechanics of dots putting spell damage to work while needing virtually no other stats.
2.) While crit is only important if you are the raid's ISB factory, damage and hit are both very important. You should be hit capped (202 hit rating, less if you are always partied with a Draenei or can count on wrath of air totem). Spell damage also scales very well due to shadow and flame. Consult a dps spreadsheet for exact weighting of hit, dmg, and crit for you.
3.) Generally, SSC/Tk is when the lack of affliction upgrades become apparent, and bolting specs come into their own.