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Would you class this closer to the beginning of Stan's Spider-Man ideas or the end? 

The Spider-Man marriage is precisely the kind of storyline that exemplifies a story satisfying a fannish desire but does not serve the long-term good of the character. All those involved should have known better, but to be fair, the boat had already sailed to a large degree by MJ knowing his secret identity. I think the Spider-marriage confirms Len Wein's adage as much as anything. And I think the adage applies particularly to Marvel, where the fundamental aspects of their best characters were an angsty dynamic. There's kind of a double-edged sword of fans being attracted to the interesting challenge of the dynamic and simultaneously wanting the challenge to be overcome. But the day it is overcome is the day you ruin the character.

The Thing longs to look human but fears he will lose Alicia.

Bruce Banner seeks a way to control his bestial alter-ego.

Peter Parker struggles to reconcile the responsibility of being a super-hero with the problems of being a teenager.

You can temporarily have the Thing turn human, but he can't stop worrying about Alicia and has to go back to being the Thing or you've screwed up the character. The story where he gets over his worry, turns humans and keeps Alicia is the final story. It's over, the end.

Peter Parker can have small wins as Spidey or in his private life, but if he's win-win in both every day, you've screwed the pooch. By marrying MJ, he's got the permanent personal life win. Then you have to him lose as Spidey all the time, which doesn't work. Or you have his marriage fail, which ruins him in a different way. Or you have him make a deal with the Devil...  

Once again, I think this is particularly pertinent to Marvel, where the fans want the hero to win in every way, including overcoming the feet-of-clay aspect that may give the character their unique flavour, but can be seen with other characters in other media (Rocky having to become world champion and best boxer in the universe springs to mind).

You can see it at play with the Iron Man movies. The best Iron Man movie is the first one, where he has the weakness of his heart relying on the arc reactor. as the films progress, the film-makers give into the temptation of giving fans what they think they want, which is fixing this problem. Hooray! Now he's super-duper!

I'd have preferred it in the Thor movies if he'd turn into a crippled mortal when separated from his hammer for 60 seconds. So much more interesting.

I know quite a few people are over-joyed that Peter Parker grew up with them, but I'm not sure any of them expected him to. It was simply a case of that story happening at just the right moment for them to latch onto the character in a big way. 

If we go wider, I think the number of pro written marriages and babies would far exceed the fan-turned-pro ones. I'm not the hugest comic fan, so I can only think of a handful of marriages in either the DCU or MU. Two created by Stan Lee. But they happen with regularity in other mediums. Marriage (like babies and death) are an easy way to get attention. Think of the number of wacky sit-com births you've witnessed over your life, a giant life altering event done mostly as ratings fodder. 

It's not much different from Batman semi-adopting a young boy early in his career. That could have killed Batman dead, but they had the stories to back up the idea. 

Many writers (pro or fan) simply don't. 

In comics, if you changed things as often as they do in TV, they'd be unrecognizable very quickly.

Imagine Peanuts if Schultz had aged the kids in real time, or at all?  Even South Park (17 years old!), which has nudged the age of the kids upward, has done so with glacial slowness.

In comics, if you are making a one-shot, a graphic novel or other limited series, you can age the characters if you like, but you would do it to service the limited story, not just because time passed in the real world.  In those circumstances, time is often compressed to make the characters age much faster than real time, to give the story a bit of scope.

Serial fiction comics theoretically have no expiration date, and thus far the characters have lasted just fine for many decades.  How can you make change after change without damaging the franchise?

[Edited to replace the word "actors" with "characters" in the second sentence]

Now that I think about it, the term "fanboy" seems almost exclusive to geek culture, and more specifically, comicbook geek culture. I've never heard the term used for football fans, for instance 

Really sports fans are more over the top than "fanboys" but wearing a NFL hat and jacket and wearing a jersey is considered being a real fan and applauded for their fandom. 

Geek culture not so much. Unless you are hipster being ironic. 

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I didn't call it a fan idea. I said it satisfies a fannish desire. And it was clear from my post that we were discussing an idea that came from Stan Lee, so what worth is there in you pointing out the the idea came from Stan Lee?

Edited to add:

Regardless of whom the idea came from, or who implemented it, evidently a lot of people came to think it was a mistake, and I think it's a result that stems from Peter Parker aging. When he was a highschool student or sharing a batchelor pad with Harry, being single and dating multiple girls made sense for Peter. But when the character was allowed to age into full adulthood and have a serious long-term relationship with MJ, for a character like Peter Parker marriage was sort of an inevitability.

Yes, Stan is a seasoned pro, yes he had a hand in the marriage. Does this somehow mean the marriage cannot have been desired by fans or that the idea was infallible? I think not.

As an aside, according to the (far from infallible) Jim Shooter, Stan instigated the marriage via Shooter directly at the behest of a gang of fans at Chicago Con in 1986.

I don't think the Marvel and DC characters should be treated the same.  I WANT Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing, Hawkman & Hawkwoman, Phantom Stranger, and many other DC characters to be more frozen in time.  Well, they could be aging, but I want 25 year-old Batman and 40 year-old to be pretty much the same character.  Same thing with Superman and others.  It just suits them all better.

But for Marvel, I want them to age and grow and change over time.  It suits THEM better.  I think "Marvel-time" should be maybe a little bit less than "dog years"--one year of Marvel-time for every 5 years of real time.  That's really not bad!  After 50 years of real time, 16 year-old Spider-Man would now be 26 years old.  Franklin Richards should be at least 9 years old by now.  To keep drawing him as 5 years old is a big mistake to me.

And that's the thing--Stan Lee and friends put growth and aging and change into the very DNA of the characters!  Peter Parker graduated high school under the watch of the original creators.  Reed and Sue got married and had a child under Stan and Jack.  And under Stan and Jack, that child grew up to walk and talk and have a personality.

Over 50 years of stories, it was not a mistake to have Mary Jane and Peter get married.  It WAS a mistake to have "the Devil make them forget" their marriage!  Why couldn't they get be married for a few years, explore all those stories, and then just get divorced?  THAT seems like something that would happen to Peter.  A little on the realistic side, a little on the sad side.  But the end result would be the same--single Spider-Man.  (Actually, aren't Peter and Mary Jane STILL married?  Just because the Devil makes you forget you're married doesn't mean you're no longer married!)  To have no change, or at least no change that mattered, makes Peter the same as Archie or Richie Rich, and that's not what made Spider-Man interesting to me from childhood.

And as a fan of Spider-Girl, I wouldn't mind if they had a little daughter named May before they got divorced.  I think Spider-Man racing from a battle with a super-villain to pick up his little girl from pre-school or get her (when sick) to the emergency room is at least as interesting and endearing as when high school Peter had to duck out on the Green Goblin because Aunt May was sick and needed her medicine.