senior editors and baseline quality

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.