senior editors and baseline quality

I think the best we can do is to have a system like this:

• A fast track for volunteers who have met some objective criteria that actually shows an understanding of quality
• An election for volunteers who meet that objective criteria, but have been blocked (e.g.: they qualify, but need to explain themselves)
• An election for volunteers who haven't met that objective criteria, but feel they have done enough other good work to skip it

The fast track is key. It avoids the popularity contest and the politics. I don't think we can eliminate the need to have the community double-check certain editors, but maybe we can use it for specific cases.

That looks like a way to combine all the weak points? I am not sure what these "objective criteria that actually shows an understanding of quality" could be. Anything that can establish a commitment-to-core-values will by definition be subjective. What would be possible is to include some of the existing (subjective) tests such as the FA-procedure.

I guess that a workable process to guarantee a minimum of what is wanted would be to require an editor to have written an FA-article and start the vetting procedure from there. - Brya 06:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, in my opinion, if we want to avoid the popularity contest, we should just PROHIBIT these stupid votes "Support" without any explanations. Only the vote "Support for the following reason: " (for instance, the editor, did not participate in edit warring, has not been blocked for disruptive behavior etc). And then make a suffrage of 500? edits in the main space (I believe a FA is too much).

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. FA's focus on the editor's contributions, rather than the editor's personality. And we'd reserve the vote to include exceptionally good editors without FAs, or bad editors who have FAs but have been blocked in the past for being jerks.

A number of edits is meaningless. I have seen editors put in 10.000 edits without adding a iota of content. Writing a FA is not meaningless, thus it is a usable criterium. It is less than ideal, somebody could be very suitable without having written an FA, and not everybody who wrote one will have all the desired qualities. Still, it does not look like too much to ask, that any candidate wrote at least a FA. - Brya 05:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

How would you define "wrote"? Our articles are written by many people. That criteria is subjective and open to being gamed.

I would not define "wrote". Firstly a strict definition is likely impossible, as probably no FA is 100% the work of a single editor, but most FA's are mainly the result of a single editor's effort.

Secondly, it is mostly irrelevant as in my view writing a FA is by itself not sufficient to qualify for senior editor. It is sort of a minimum to be up for consideration: I would like to see extra requirements added. - Brya 04:59, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There would still need to be some sort of approval process, managed by bureaucrats. And part of that approval process would be showing that you've been a major contributor to however many FAs. Maybe by having someone who worked on the article nominate you, or maybe by providing some "diffs".

And then there would be a recall process for anyone who was deceitful, and became a senior editor by lying about their contributions to a FA.

All that would make it very unlikely that someone could game the FA standard.