I'm not completely versed in the Byzantine system of Wikipedia, but the whole thing is based (somehow) on seniority, right? It would seem, then, that the system would self-select for people who spend more time on Wikipedia than doing useful research, right?
The WP admin community is a shark tank. Admins could try to use their status to thump people around article talk pages, but --- and this isn't an exaggeration --- there are at least 2 other admins watching commit-by-commit what any given admin does, looking for some policy slip-up they can use to incite drama.
In practice, in the vast majority of articles, there is no seniority. At best, a person with a demonstrated history of building and grooming an article over a year or so might expect some deference when newcomer attempts a dramatic change. That deference is a good thing, and has nothing to do with adminship.
The wording of many articles seems to be the result of a carefully applied 'truce' between long-standing edit warriors. Once applied, they tend to unite using terms like 'stable' or 'consensus'. These editors do effectively have "seniority" on that article and the ability to reject changes.
Then a random newcomer bumbles in and unwittingly disturbs the balance, and everyone unites against him. This is what I suspect happened to the author of the piece more so than goofing his citations.
I understand it is the current tradeoff for something as great as wikipedia. But that doesn't mean the criticism is invalid.
What does matter is if you can source everything you write to a 'reliable' source; and if you can write clearly.
Obviously, in practice this is not the case. Anon editors are often treated like dirt; people making 15,000 twinkle edits feel as if they should have some extra power or consideration. And there's a bunch of meta stuff which is, frankly, toxic and probably doing a lot of harm.
