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Anti-elitism at Wikipedia is at the root of both its biggest problems and its greatest strengths.
The negative effects of anti-Elitism are obvious:
The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: “Experts are scum.” For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War — and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge — get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.
The positive effects are perhaps less predictable, but are demonstrated in effect by the success of Wikipedia's anti-elitist model, compared to more restrictively "elitist" projects like Nupedia or Citizendium.