Wow.
I used to be totally addicted to Wikipedia, both reading and contributing. Probably the contributions I'm most proud of are starting the articles on traditional animation and Tank Man (the Tiananmen Square protester with balls the size of station wagons). Nowadays, I don't spend as much time there, but I still hit it up for quick info on stuff at least once a week and I'll sometimes edit typos and formatting and such.
Winston Churchill said "...democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." (Thanks, WikiQuote!) I think Wikipedia's operation model is the same; it has its problems, but really, can you come up with a better model that wouldn't hinder the fundamental concept of allowing anyone and everyone to be a contributor? Most of the time, it works just fine. Really, the "problems" are just such a minor piece of the site as a whole. I really think that, if you had to pick one site on the web to point out as an example of the potential for collaboration and information seeking capabilities of the internet, Wikipedia would be a natural choice.
I do agree, though, that there's a good deal of article bloat with respect to things like pages for every single episode of Star Trek and such.