The reward complex

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.