There is a raised lip which is grooved on the head. It is the sealing surface. Taco is advocating not removing this surface. My position on the matter is that if the head is warped some of the surface must be machined off until the sealing surface is flat or else the clamping force will be uneven and the seal potentially compromised. Some people machine the lip off altogether like Paul to raise the compression.
Hence we come to the phrase "you are the mechanic in charge." I stole this phrase shamelessly from a man named Bob Hoover who is a talented mechanic and machinist very well known in the vw and homebuilt airplane worlds. His vw sermons are a very very good read.
His point is that when on the internet you get faced with a barrage of faceless names. It seems a natural phenom that people become instant experts after reading a few forums or building an engine for the first time. If you frequent forums you can watch the progression from asking how to change their oil to a few short months later giving a recommendation on cam shafts and engine combo's with the casual assurance of a long time pro.
They have either read enough posts to consider themselves experts, or have entered enough numbers into desktop dyno to assure themselves they are right.
So, who do you trust?
Yourself, of course. It's your motor. You are modifyiing it from it's original configuration. You are the mechanic and engineer in charge.
I personally think you should have flat sealing surfaces and verify through claying the piston or whatever your favorite method is of measuring the clearance at TDC whenever changing heads on an engine. Of course, I tend to take the time to cc and match my chambers on my vw heads and adjust them to meet my target compression ratio while maintaining a tight deck. Many do not. Their engines run well enough for them.
I outlined an issue I have found, and my solution. I have found that very few engine parts in life are truly ready to install out of the box. The time you take measuring, correcting, and improving the pieces as well as rejecting outright some of the unusable out of spec parts sold as new is what separates an engine assembler from and engine builder.
Hopefully that clears things up, and assures everyone that I was not in any way attempting to single anyone out but simply offering my experiences and opinions.