One thing that slowed down WP was the suddenly perceived need for adding references ... unrequired for years. So a lot of effort got turned into improving the q

One thing that slowed down WP was the suddenly perceived need for adding references ... unrequired for years. So a lot of effort got turned into improving the quality and reliability of millions of already-existing articles. A lot of people didn't have the know-how or time to do that. Locating reliable and authoritative references can be very time-consuming. (Google Books has helped a lot!) Despite that, and despite many articles being combined with others , millions of articles have been added in the meantime. I don't understand any concern about this process: it's all healthy. For the subjects I dig into, it's reliable 90% of the time when I check it out.