Presumably they don't want to put themselves in the business of determining if a primary source is legitimate or if some random pseudonymous writer's original r

Presumably they don't want to put themselves in the business of determining if a primary source is legitimate or if some random pseudonymous writer's original research is accurate. Not an unreasonable desire! Except instead they've put themselves in the business of determining if a secondary source is legitimate, which isn't fundamentally better. Wikipedia has to come to terms with the fact that if you claim you're making an encyclopedia that comes with certain expectations, namely, that you've verified the facts you are printing. They try to obfuscate this with endless layers of rules and procedure, but that no more eliminates the need to check facts than credit default swaps eliminated the need to pay back debt.