The best part about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it, anyone can run it, and nobody can lock up its content (for whatever reason). Look no further to Mozilla to see what happens when a non profit fails to meet it's mandate and is stuck with "peacocks" (folks who prioritize status or signaling > substance) instead of practitioners.
This is true in the same sense that anyone can track down and fix bugs in the Linux kernel.
Now, I have certainly done so, but I've done it as an employee for a big and profitable company who had plenty of time to spend on it. Wikipedia is similar - it is superficially open to everyone, and sure, you can probably add some detail to an article about William of Normandy's first cousin once removed just fine, but if you're trying to document, say, whether or not there was a death camp in Warsaw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...), you're up against people who have more time and resources than you do.
Which in practise also requires skill and effort. Even importing the xml dump file into a mysql database in reasonable time requires special skill when we are talking data in the 100 gb range before decompressing.
Non profit dollars are hard to come by, and the greater issue and frustration is watching orgs like Mozilla and Wikimedia incinerate them on causes that are not their mission (in stark contrast to efficient, nimble orgs like Let's Encrypt and the Free Law Project).
Wikipedia Foundation exec: Yes, we've been wasting your money Editors should get dosh, bureaucrats get too much, says outgoing fundraising chief
https://www.theregister.com/2013/10/08/wikipedia_foundation_...
Notice how you're the one suggesting `diversity requirements' and then proceed by going on a tirade about it. There are many things to be done about diversity and not all of them requires coercion.
EDIT: @TheNorthman I cannot reply to your comment as I'm throttled by HN. Put bluntly, the gender of contributors does not matter and shouldn't even be considered. Let contributions stand on their own merit.
Why?
Male editing culture tends to work differently to female editing culture.
How?
One tends to be hierarchical. The other tends to be cooperative.
It's possible to develop a system that uses both of these modes to sharpen the editorial process, but that doesn't happen through self organisation when the starting point is a large gender imbalance.
Resolving this conflict is one of the biggest challenges faced by Wikipedia.
The difficulty is, however, that WMF isn't directly involved with Wikipedia content, which comes from the community. WMF is just a software company responsible for the tools the community uses for publishing.
