When I speak of edit count, this is metaphorical. I do not mean so much the actual edit count, but more so a hypothetical value, to force MMORPG terminology on this, we could call it "experience points", XP, that are probably better described as the number of people in your social network, as well as their individual "XPs". And admin privileges are just (massive) bonus points, that by themselves already require a large amount of "XP".
Consider the process of becoming an administrator: You simply need a lot of people vouching for you, and other people will follow the lead. People who you have fought in edit wars will seldomly vouch for you, but instead call against this. This could be described as "negative" XP. So a good strategy (for becoming an administrator) may be to keep out of controversial articles and instead make many small and large improvements to various articles while building up this social network. People don't become sysop or anything for quality work, but for networking.
Of course trying to display the administrative System as a single faction would be false. It is much more cliquish, but every admin has his network. Once gained adminship, one is relatively free to abuse people at controversial articles - regardless of scholastic merit, since there is the clique to protect him and decry anyone attacking him.
Consider barnstars - by themselves a nice gesture and so on, it can be interpreted as scratching each other's back, making each other look more well respected. This concept of "Wikilove" has become increasingly creepy to me over the years, to be honest. Eventually the administrators turn out to be an old boys network scratching each other's backs every opportunity by inflating each other's apparent XPs.
And not disciplining administrative abuses is just obvious - anything else would award both parties massive negative XP.
Compared to these XP, "being a great writer" or "being a good scholar" regarding a topic completely fade when it comes to a content dispute.