Then why not go there and oppose the ones with bad writing? I'm sure your comments would be appreciated, and will easily kill any chances of 90% of the FAs there from passing. As for review-based - what's the alternative?
I think Tony's point is that we need to recognise well written work entirely apart from the FA process. I think of FAs as Wikipedia 1.0 articles. It makes sense to recognise and reward good writing. Bringing an article up to FA status is something that people are willing to inves time and effort in. Improving the writing is something that people may be willing to do, but without a specific end-goal to work towards, it's likely to be one of the things that just gets put off. If I had to make a guess at the things that get my attention it would be
1. Vandalism 2. Content-related discussion on pages that I watch (think [[Evolution]], etc.) 3. AN/I and other disputes including RFAr, RFCs 4. Articles that I am expanding 5. Articles that I would like to bring to FA status 6. Everything else
The first three, the boring and mundane stuff, tends to consume most of my time. Which encyclopaedia-related tasks get done depends on how easy they are to do, and whether I am working towards some goal or other. Stylistic improvements just aren't a goal - they're something you do when you find something that's so horribly written that it makes you wince. If it were a goal, if I were to say "I want to bring [[An Article]] to "Great Writing" staus", then it might get done. As is, it will get done the day after I finish writing featured articles on every village in Trinidad :)
Ian