Board Thread:Site Policy/@comment-5590118-20130522164325/@comment-4295646-20130522224030

Now, without falling back onto an argument from tradition:

It's true! Edits aren't nearly a perfect way of tracking experience with all areas of the wiki. There are all-around highly competent users with very low edit counts, and lopsidedly qualified users with massive edit counts. However, we like to use edits as a partial measure because the central function of this wiki is to archive stories.

Someone who has spent a few hours categorizing, spellchecking, and especially writing articles is likely to have a better conception of quality standards and CPW culture than someone without. Now, time in chat is of course invaluable to a chatmod candidate. But we don't really have an objective way of measuring it outside of poring over the logs.

tl;dr you're right, but it does serve some function.

For the record, I don't think fifty is really so many. You can rack 'em up in a snap with a little quality patrol.