I think the main issue here is not so much in choosing between including every prerequisite in every page or not, but in adding a meta-level of information that

I think the main issue here is not so much in choosing between including every prerequisite in every page or not, but in adding a meta-level of information that allows people to consume the prerequisites more easily. When you open a Wikipedia article about a complex subject, it's expected that you're going to do a lot of background reading. The problem is that you start surfing Wikipedia with a BFS/DFS approach, when it would be a lot more efficient if the articles were organized more systematically to lead to a gradual understanding of the subject.