I have very conflicting views about this whole suggestion. While yes it would be a nice reward to players who spend a lot of time on the server that just don't want to staff, it can also cause a lot of problems. I understand all your points and I would agree that, if I wasn't currently staff, I would be in somewhat support of this. But their are issues that would obviously entail on the whole project all together.
It is very easy for someone to say on an application that they had previous experience. Even if they had some, favoritism from the person's friends/peers would widely sway the argument on if they should be accepted or not. I'll use myself as an example. I had previous experience on two servers (this and Icefuse) as game master, but resigned or left shortly after and never done any events. Yet, when I came back, and made my app again, It had positive feedback for me being a "good game master" or "made great events", keeping in mind that I never had made any events prior.
And for the person to be just known by the community to be allowed to apply would cause massive amounts of issues for new players who are serious about that kind of stuff but are subjected away from it as people "don't know them". Which would discourage many players who bought VIP alike.
Having over 500 hours on the server and being able to tell can be weird as play time has only been recorded since we got the D3A admin system. Someone could be lying or again the favoritism or friends/peers factor waives the person on the decision of being allowed to or not.
The whole point about staff is for entertaining the players of the community on the server. If players were to be able to create events it wouldn't categorise them as players anymore as such. People mostly join the staff team to entertain and help alike. If any person could just make events at will it would get very messy too quickly. The staff members that currently are game masters would feel discouraged or feel unneeded and become lazy in the job and role they so wished to get and put tons of work and weeks into getting the chance to explore their mind and create new ideas.
Being active is very easy, all people need to do is sit AFK on the server to get their hours up, and checking their recent activity on steam would be extremely biased for the sole fact of people standing afk for hours every day.
I get that not everybody wishes to be staff, but "listening to people bitch about their problems", never really happens. If that is bought up in an argument then that person is not capable or deserving of their game master rights as a game master. Again like I said before, staffing is all about the player's entertainment. Game masters/Staff members provide that entertainment through the game master system.
Again, an app to get at least 10 +1's, is very easy to achieve. Through friends/peers.
If only game masters could give feedback and they had to get permission from game master officers to do an event, it would better the argument for this, but again, bias and favoritism would exist to the holy grail.
The high staff vote would be fine but again could include swaying odds towards bias.
In conclusion, it is a nice idea and all, but I have to - 1. This could all lead to too many events, which would wear players out and make them burnt out or just bored of events very quickly. Sorry.
Also, players can get a Senior Admin+ to do and event idea a player has. They are literally a poke or private message away.