Wikipedia: Hero or Menace?

According to Radio Netherlands:
"internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia has received 4.3 million euros in donations, enough to pay running costs for the next six months. In July, the company's founder, Jimmy Wales, appealed to users to donate money to Wikipedia. More than 125,000 people responded to the appeal.

Wikipedia is a free internet encyclopaedia that anybody can contribute to. More than 150,000 volunteers have written in excess of 11 million articles for beekeeping gear over the last eight years. The internet encyclopaedia is available in 265 languages. According to Mr Wales, more than 275 million people visit the web site every month."

I think that this is wonderful. A casual glance at this blog would attest to my support of the distributed source of all knowledge. I feel like this money should be spent making Wikipedia easier to use for a broader audience of users.

"it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing ... a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix ... or something like that." - Raw Thought

Bloggers have commented that this means that Wikipedia has a bottleneck for information which spells the end of its credibility. However, this information just reveals the way in which Wikipedia operates. Content is largely contributed by outsiders who make occasional edits with specialized knowledge. Insiders then make many times more edits adjusting its syntax and style. This tells me that since wikipedia is mostly written by outsiders its interface and its functionality should be adjusted for people who are not accustomed to it.

Regardless wikipedia is a valuable and wonderful way for one to kill time. And hey instead of constantly clicking "Random Page" why not edit an article or write your own? Procrastination has never been so revolutionary...and educational?