What part did I not answer...
"What is quality in your opinion and how would you encourage its production?"
Quality to me is apparent. It's something someone put some times, energy and thought into. I can tell a quality text post because it was not just one or two paragraphs that really didn't provide any useful info.
A song that someone spent time creating, a image from an artist, painter, photographer, an article or story that shows quality. A self-portrait vs. a selfie.
I personally think it's easy to spot quality. In the terms of photography or art or music some of it will be more objective and rely on the taste of the viewer.
For example in my own work. All of my Photographic Art images are quality that I put out I feel. I put time and energy into them. I size them for the web, don't over compress. My Polaroids don't have as much time put into them, but some love them and even buy them from me because they like the raw feel of them. So Quality is in someway subjective. But even then I have Polaroids that are not good pictures so I scrap them and I used the best ones or highest quality.
I think the same can bee seen in music, painting, drawing, articles, tutorials of people all over the web.
How to encourage more. Upvotes on the quality work and people that put out consistent quality. And don't upvote on crap like stolen pictures or posts that are just some youtube link to a video the person did not create themselves.
Now of the created a post filled with good info and a youtube links as resources then I would say that might be a quality post.
That's how I look at it.
Thanks for your super detailed reply!
I have a different point of view. In my opinion quality is not defined by the time spent when creating it but by its impact onto the recipient. You made me laugh? Awesome. You made me think about something? Brilliant. You surprised me? You taught me something new? You provided me with anything beneficial?
A lot of different types of content are able to spark something. Even a link, a joke, a quick thought which came to my mind could be 'valuable' for my audience.
A quite controversial topic - I like that! :)
Steem on @nspart.