The reward complex

If I recall, the English Wikipedia had something like this, called the Award Center where anyone could post goals with rewards of barnstars or other virtual kudos, but it was deleted in a MFD because it was thought to emphasize quantity over quality for edits and new articles, so if we were to do this, then we would have to find a way to make sure that quality was also key and not just quantity or it could very well meet the same fate (maybe the example of the English Wikipedia's Wikicup could serve as a basis for other competitions). Best, Mifter 18:50, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the quantity over quality thing is a red herring, or an argument that is basically deletionist in its assumptions. Of course articles start out lower quality; at least, I hope later edits don't generally reduce quality, though sometimes I'm not so sure.

IMHO, there's nothing wrong with that, unless the new material is exceptionally bad - which I'd define as _significantly_ worse than material which is not being contested, either because it's grandfathered, because its authors are autopatrolled, or because its topic fits the systemic biases of a majority of reviewers.