I am not really a critic, but then if I criticized the world's biggest encyclopaedia for its shortcommings, I should also mention some of its features that has made it to stand the test of time and opposition from teachers who considered this unauthentic.
By the way wiki is still not considered an authentic source to quote out and due its nature it'll never be but then still it provies you accurate and precise information most of the time and that I should say is its success. it has been able to successfully manage the inflowing content marking out that which is old and that which may not be accurate. At so many places you would have seen tags like citation needed, old, needs updation, etc. There is a proper team of people who at their free times go to wikipaedia to read and edit and help maintain this enormous project. And the greatest part is that its successful.
Reasons for the maintainance of wiki or some tricks that worked have been discussed a lot but I write out the tricks that made it pass the test of time.
Internationalization: An article written by say in India is viewed and analysed by a person far off say somewhere in Africa. So he is neither familiar of the concept and in many cases might not have even heard of it. With such kind of people viewing who have no sort of attachment with the subject whatsoever, no connection most probably, you can expect proper judgement.Atleast the grammar, the feel of the issue and the emotions of the author can easily be understood by the third person who can then make sure it is successful.
No Registration: Registration is not compulsory for little editting. What that makes sure is that it hardly takes time for the people to modify it. Of course, the modification is monitored.
User Page: Never thought of it when i did not have an account, but I see it now, user page is an aspect of wikipaedia that has affected it the most. Everyone want's to tell the world what he has done. So if you have a user page as a wiki user, you will atleast know that your contributions are counted and there is a place where people can come to you. Its better than sending emails and keeping problems private. There is supposed to be all open matter on wiki and so is the user page.
Openness of templates: The templates of wiki are all open and the source code free enough to be modified. So the users can come up with new ideas to decorate it.
Support for Review: The most important aspect of maintainace is to check whether false facts do not come up. And that has been maintained by the neormous support for the reviewers or those people who take responsibility to help and maintain. They will normally ahve the WIkiEd installed so no issue of editor for them. Then the task is made simple - every fact requires a direct citation, not present mark it. Marking is just two letters or three letters of typing, not at all time confusing. the links are understandable and so you don't have to explain in detail what you have marked. Plus we can discuss each topic. This means there is a proper page for topic reviews and comments to the original author to use. The editting history is saved and can always be rolled back to. There are options of locking your articles from free editors to rgistered ones so that you atleast have their track.
Unity of theme: one good thing that has come up with the bad editor is the maintainance of the look and the theme. Every page on wikipedia is similar in font, font size, heading style. this makes it look formal and presentable. It looks like a set rather than just a collection.
Culture: wikipaedia has maintained its own culture of openess and helfulness. All code is available. Peopel are ready to show how to work, and maintain the read posts for help recent. The postings form a proper forum where there is everthing a person want ( maybe not proper topics).
I accept that some of the things are really great. Cheers to them!!!