Ergo, do these huge cliffs cause people to decrease the quality in order to meet the mission? It seems logical.
Yes, I totally agree with you John on the above point, as I have seen some people are creating documents in the their respective spaces with much less quality and trivial information just to complete missions and rack in some good chunk of points.
My suggestion would be to have separate ratings for each document published in SCN, one by mentors and the other by SCN fellow members. This would enlighten the fellow community members how these documents are rated by experts (Mentors!) in the respective spaces.
I know this would be an additional task for Mentors in each space and might be difficult to implement. But, it's just my point of view.
Br, Harish