I kind of disagree with your assessment of the situation but I do appreciate the effort to propose constructive ideas to solve the issue.
So, as I see it, over the past few months, some moderators have indeed voiced their concerns about the moderation process that, according to them leads to a moderation rush battle over XP.
I don’t believe this battle over XP really happens (it has happened in some cases). To me, it’s rather enthusiasm for some and lack of knowledge of the guidelines (or lack of proper guidelines) for the others that lead to some hasty approval decisions.
I agree that the current moderation process favors quick shallow reviews of contributions more than carefully reviewed ones. This is a shame indeed because some of you spend a lot of time to help creators improve their puzzles.
That’s why I have started to work on the guidelines two months ago (and asked everyone’s help on it). Meanwhile, we thought that the automatic rejecting bot will handle the already approved contributions that don’t get an approval from the players (according to their ratings).
Idea 1) doesn’t solve the problem indeed.
Idea 2) is interesting and I personally like it the most. Combined with a freezing of the approval process after a contribution is published, we could have a decent voting system.
Idea 3) is dangerous. It doesn’t seem healthy to me that some members’ votes could be valued more than some others’. I prefer to keep to having or not having the rights to moderate. In that sense, we could review the current criteria to become an approver.
Idea 4) seems complex to me.