[dkhar]

> ...Reading the article, I think some of it is more of a "why?" than a "why not?", since the articles are factually correct but are mostly just lists of facts and not really something you couldn't find in any number of other resources.

The argument I'd make for "why?" is that Wikipedia is more accessible and more reliably available than most other resources. I mean, if the government of the Philippines had a web-based, up-to-date list of towns with some basic information, it might make sense to offload the effort of maintaining that information to them. As it stands, though, not even the US has such a directory -- so Wikipedia picks up the slack (or at least it does for towns in the US).