While I agree on your methods for setting sharpness, I have to disagree on the correct setting. Every consumer set I have seen (and I admit that you have probably seen more than I) sharpness should be set to zero. Anything above zero adds ringing and other artifacts. This is true for all the current Samsung and Panasonic displays I have seen.

Displays come in three general grades:

Broadcast/Production Reference display ($20,000-40,000+)
Professional (used in the AV industry)
Consumer

The broadcast displays don't even have such settings. The Professional displays fortunately are good about this too. Out of the box, they are usually reasonably close to a broadcast reference standard. Annoyingly, the consumer displays are bloated with picture ruining "features" and are usually terrible out of the box. The good news is that with some effort, a $1,000 consumer display will be about 90% (or better) the quality of a broadcast reference display.

The only exception I have run across are a line of Sony professional displays that had a baseline setting about 3/4 of the way down.

I can say that I have calibrated many consumer displays next to broadcast reference displays to come to this conclusion.