If no config file exists in the user's home directory, we currently create one. We also have logic to check if the config file is still the default one and update it if astropy is updated. However, having a config file, even set to defaults, can cause issues with concurrency, e.g. #7290

One solution would be to never write a default config file to the user's home directory but instead show the default config file in the docs, like Matplotlib does for the matplotlibrc:

https://matplotlib.org/users/customizing.html

This would make the use of config files opt-in. Changing to do this wouldn't affect any existing user, so if we switched to simply showing the default config in the docs, nothing would break, it just would prevent config files from being re-created or created in future.