Several things are wrong with Wikipedia, but a much bigger and worser problem
is that the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF for short) is forgetting that it is an
offspring of Wikipedia, not the other way, and that it's task (of the WMF) is
to keep Wikipedia and some other projects running, not to be their
government. They are getting used to use Wikipedia as their soapbox (a tool
they can use to push their political agenda, which breaks neutrality). On the
other hand, they never forget to ask for donations yearly with banners which
get more misleading each year. People donate to them because they think that
their donations are supporting Wikipedia, but only a tiny fraction is. The
WMF has too much money, and the decision markers are rewarded excessively for
working to put forward their unilateral ideas about Wikipedia governance
(which they should leave in hands of the community that actually builds the
encyclopedia). The people that build Wikipedia are us, the editors. Despite
living off our work, the Wikimedia Foundation has several times acted against
consensus of the Wikipedia editors.
I use Wikipedia, and I have contributed as a way to help the society progress
but Wikipedia is very inefficient. An unavoidable part of contributing
(unless you limit yourself to change punctuation and little more) is
eventually (the likehood is mostly a function of the topic) having to argue
with obstinate editors who revert one's work or other editor's work without a
good reason. The central discussion venues and noticeboards are always full
with discussions that have escalated from talk pages. In contrast, vandalism
is an almost insignificant problem; it's easy to recognize, a lot of people
already watch for it, and reverting it is almost always uncontroversial and
harmless.
Neutrality (According to Wikipedia's understanding of neutrality) is an
acceptable compromise, so that more people will contribute given the promise
that no one's viewpoint will stand above that of others. It's not perfect,
it's a pragmatic device. I'm not willing to put work into helping people
understand informatics if I'm not allowed to also make them aware of the
associated problems of proprietary software and centralization, and ask them
to take action. I'm not willing to put effort into improving resources that
will help people to program computers if I'm not allowed to educate them on
why and how they should make the resulting work free software. In these
areas, I don't contribute to Wikipedia; society doesn't needs neutrality
here; a neutral resource promotes the indolence that has allowed proprietary
software developers to suceed commercially abusing their users. I have
contributed some technical information about informatics in this forum and in
the Libre Game Wiki because it's not neutral, it raises awareness of the
issue of user freedom.
To have a better idea of the problems with Wikipedia and the Wikimedia
foundation, read critical journalism of Wikipedia (Wikipediocracy specializes
in this, but they aren't the only source) or contribute substantially (not
just changing punctuation or wording, but adding whole sections to articles
and such) to Wikipedia for some months.
