Unfortunately, bureaucracy is the only way we know to synthesize a kind of homogeneous, approximately unbiased store of knowledge like Wikipedia wants to presen

Unfortunately, bureaucracy is the only way we know to synthesize a kind of homogeneous, approximately unbiased store of knowledge like Wikipedia wants to present. Stack Overflow's gamification seems to work well--or at least better compared to Wikipedia's--so it makes sense they would try it. I bet few people can write in an unbiased way about topics they're passionate about and have achieved a great depth of knowledge in. Are you going to get a higher quality encyclopedia by taking raw, highly biased, unsourced, "bad" content and coaxing it into shape through a very contributor-affirming hand-holding process, or by simply turning away the "bad" content and the people who created it? I don't think anybody knows which method works better, but it's clear that Wikipedia's method falls into the second camp and its shortcomings are only becoming more obvious as time goes on.