Is Article Quality Overrated? Should We Care?

Plenty of people here talk about the importance of quality.

Quality articles, quality blog posts, any kind of content should be of high quality.

But some of the same people that continue to make these statements can also be found giving thanks and supporting those threads and posts that say there is no difference between written, rewritten, and spun content.

I always thought there was. At least when it comes to quality.

Now I am not trying to say that spinning or rewriting are bad or that there is anything wrong with articles written that way but surely there is a big difference between a writer sitting down for an hour or so to write a high quality article and me taking some PLR article and spinning it.

But if enough writers that are adamant about the quality of an article can stand behind and support the quality of a "spun" article then maybe I need to get a better understanding of the general definition of "quality" and how to tell the difference.

It could be that quality in the IM sense means the ability to get accepted in a directory, get listed on a search engine, and have clickthroughs from the resource box.

If that is the definition of quality then I can see why I thought there were inconsistencies with the writer's views on the subject.

If you can get accepted and listed and make money from an article that is rewritten from PLR then would you say that "quality" is overrated.

That the ability to get listed and have clickthroughs is more important?

If Herta Muller, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature wrote an article on literature and submitted it to Manny's Article Emporium and I submitted my rewritten PLR article on the same subject to EzineArtilces, which article would get a better ranking?

Obviously, when it comes to quality writing Herta's would be the highest.

If mine did better than Herta's does that mean that I had a better "quality" article in the sense of quality meaning "more effective"?

How would you define quality?