[ghaff]

Maybe it's not a debate so much as a tension--and it's a real one. Personally, I haven't contributed anything to Wikipedia in years. It's useful, I see its flaws, but I certainly don't care enough to push on it for the most part.

[tptacek]

I'm exactly the same way. For instance: I did some writing about macOS security in the macOS articles, way back when, and most of it got struck because I couldn't cite it properly. It was frustrating to write a straightforward statement, like "the macOS Seatbelt sandboxing mechanism uses s-expressions", and have it get struck.

But I came quickly to realize the project was right. Without a reliable secondary source, I was effectively conducting research in the pages of the encyclopedia. What I learned from that was: I shouldn't be writing encyclopedia articles; the technical writing I do tends not to be tertiary.

It's fine – good, in fact – if most people don't write much in Wikipedia. It's its own special thing. You can't argue with its success: it might be the most successful project in the history of the Internet, and a long-term contender for one of the most successful volunteer knowledge projects ever.