Do you really think reading more of the books would have improved things for the bad entries? A lazy author is going to be lazy (and there have definitely been some poor, lazy entries in the series of the years).
I feel that yes, if an author had read 10 of the books (ideally the early books where greater consistency existed) before diving into their own additions that for the most part, characterizations would be more on target and therefore the story would work way better. They would understand the characters, more common interactions, behaviors, and abilities better.
For me being invested in a long running series, its the characters who really carry it. When someone writes the characters way out of the norm, I have great difficulty getting into the story. I can handle some details being wrong occasionally, maybe past events arent quite right here and there, even some of the established facts or details about the world and muties (especially stickies) are terribly off. But when the characters are way off, I'm just lost, and start to read in a detached, hardly caring manner.
I am perhaps wrong, but thats my feeling on it. I understand from my readings here that you have had a lot more interaction with various authors and authorities and understand all the workings far better. So you are probably more on point that I am.
One thing I've noted too, is that sometimes an author comes in and writes what for me was a real stinker / poor read. But then the same author has a later book that was almost spot on, and the story and characters were great. That might have indicated a growing familiarity with the material ?
Things always get ugly when art collides with commerce. Some of the books are just irredeemably bad (I'm looking at you, Skydark Spawn). But there have been a surprising number of gems over the thirty year run of the series, and a more surprising number of gems in just the past few years. I would certainly count the last three books (Desolation Angels, Blood Red Tide, Polestar Omega) as classics. If nothing else, the series is going out on a high note.
Well its encouraging to know that there are a lot of great reads upcoming for me 
The last few books I've read through have been a mixed bag. I just finished Time Castaways, and though I really enjoyed most of the book, it seemed like an editor (?) got involved at the very end and just hacked it up. I was cruising along enjoying the story, then it just went of the rails it seemed. Actually there was an unusual amount of jumping about in that story that I was taking in stride at certain points, but the ending is where it got truly messy.
Doc doesn't do it so much in the newer books.
Yea Doc has had no significant lapses in the last few books I've read. Too bad no one has been able to get in and flesh out his story a bit more. At one point in the early books there was a hint that Doc knew more about Ryan and the companions than he remembered or realized. As if he not only had been trawled into Deathlands, but perhaps he had been trawled even farther into the future, lived and learned information of some sort, then time traveled back to the time Ryan found him. Which might have been part of the explanation for the extreme ravages his body has undergone. As I think about that there have a lot of really cool story lines and threads that have fallen by the wayside over the books.