This is all true, except the bolded. It's gotten to the point where it's ridiculously hard to be charged with an error. Anything on the edge of anyone's range is going to be ruled a hit, not an error. I seriously doubt anyone is racking up errors because they're diving for balls that are passed other fielders, and not coming up with the play cleanly. There are occasionally errors charged to outfielders that really aren't their fault...they make a good throw, the ball kicks off the runner, and runner(s) advance. Error charged, but no real misplay was made. Outside of that, charged errors, particularly to infielders, can be reasonably assumed to be legit. An out should have been recorded, and wasn't, or an extra base(s) gained that shouldn't have been. And so errors are one of the things that need to be considered. I also find it ironic that people often scoff at errors because "it's just a judgement call, made by a human," but then turn around and swear by advanced defensive metrics, which rely on humans making judgement calls based on taped replays.