It's my turn to write an essay i guess. I haven't read the other posts yet before posting.
It's time to drop some criticisms concerning the current system, from someone that saw from an external view the evolution of the QAT since their creation, and the older system with BAT.
Note that i don't generalize, so if you don't feel targeted by reading this, you are not targeted.
I've noticed that today, the QAT are just called to press the DQ button on maps when the QAH, BNs or other person make a post in "report a qualified map" thread. This was initially an idea that came from me in 2015, the main goal of this thread was to help the QAT doing their job faster and particularly avoiding a map's disqualification in day 6. It seems now they don't take anymore initiatives to check by themselves the qualified section, searching for overall quality issues according to their own quality standards, like it was done in the past (I am just talking about std by the way). It seems they rely too much on a thread, like a mapper relies on aimod to check if his map is safe or not.
In my opinion this current team should not be called "Quality Assurance Team", it must be called "Press DQ button team" instead, few exceptions come when we see that they decide to create and apply new rules like the time in Qualified section after being Disqualified....
We don't ask them to bring us miracles and sort out good maps from the bad ones in terms of quality, we just ask them to be engaged actively in maps overall, not only "controversal" ones, by giving their own opinion as a mapper and a "guardian" of the overall quality in official osu! ranked beatmaps, like you can see explained in this post concerning an "old" controversial map
https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/p/3619207. I won't mention any names, but a lot of current mappers need to get this kind of post in their maps, and these kind of posts should be given by the QAT. Some members of the QAT just lack of serious engagement towards the controversal maps.
Concerning accessibility, this is probably the biggest thing you should rework, because it currently looks like a bad joke in my opinion. I don't want to mention any name nor critisize. More than half of the QAT currently look more like showcases than engaged staff members in the mapping community that cares about overall quality. There has been always favoritism or circle groups since the beginning, nothing new, and i don't really care that you promote your friend as staff, the only thing i care is that there must be a good reason. Does he fit this position ? is he enough experienced ? and most importantly is he impartial ?
It looks like being impartial is a too-serious thing, disqualifying your friend's map for subjective reasons is difficult to handle, i admit it. I've seen in the past some real facts which ended like "i thought we were friends" after a unrank (qualified section wasn't born yet), but if the QAT are doing favoritism towards their friends, we won't improve anything.
I hope some QATs don't see their title as an achievement or a promotion from BNG, and should consider it as a difficult "position" with many responsibilities. And i hope they realize that they have the "ability" to drive the mapping community, including quality standards. The fact that many "controversial" maps passed the ranking process easily, without having not so much serious discussions and criticisms, may be the fault of some QATs that were too passive, and that didn't realize the impact they have towards the mapping community. Or they just let things go on, and don't care about mapping because they think someone else can report the map or because the mapper is their friend. If some QAT members don't have what i said in mind, in my opinion they have nothing to do there.