Thoughts to date

I think this is a good summary, and a good place to start. But I think it would be valuable to take a step back and get a better grip on the problem.

• Why has quality not improved at the rate that we hope it would? What are the biggest barriers to quality on Wikipedia?

I think the task force has already touched on this a bit. "Teach newbies" is implicitly linked to the idea that the problem is a lack of skilled editors. "Improve consensus mechanisms" is linked to the earlier discussion that the decision-making process makes it hard to achieve quality. (And I agree that this last one is definitely a big problem.) And you're asking good questions like "what the heck does 'quality' even mean?" But it would be good to maybe go around the circle, and ask people why they think it's so hard to make Wikimedia projects into environment of quality.

The recommendations will be much more persuasive (and effective) if they're matched with big problems.