For creation of sidebars we specify before_widget, before_title, after_title and after_widget parameters. Is it possible to have something for before_content and after_content as well?
Justification:
Some theme authors (like myself) use docking boxes in the theme. To enable features like expand and collapse in docking boxes we use the header as a "handle" and the rest of the widget text as "content" - using the handle we can collapse the content. Note that the entire body (including the header) cannot be designated as "content", because then minimizing will cause the whole widget to disappear. To differentiate the content from the rest of the widget we start div class='content' in the after_title parameter and close the div in the after_widget parameter.
But there are widgets that do not print the before_title and after_title parameters. The standard text widget, for example doesn't print them if you don't specify a title. And there are tons of custom widgets that do the same. Not displaying the after_title tag in these widgets effectively causes it to drop the start div tag and creates an extra closing div tag. This causes the document to become malformed and it fails validation.