Hi Amir,
I understand the process is different that usual research. In fact I've seen Wikipedia grown from an unknown website to the biggest encyclopedia it is now. I use it daily in multiple languages and love it. I know what crowd sourcing could achieve.
> It's also possible that the mere *finding* of these stumbling blocks by such a big, diverse, open, and active community, will itself be a contribution to the scientific knowledge around this subject.
I disagree here. It would be contribution to scientic knowledge if and only if it wasn't discovered before.
Of course. We don't actually disagree.
The content of Wikipedia is by definition secondary (or even tertiary), but its process is innovative, and it was the subject of thousands of academic papers.
The process of developing renderers for multiple languages by a large and open community of volunteers, rather than a small group of paid academics, is probably going to be of interest to researchers, too.
And the output of the process can be useful and innovative, too. Of course, there are things that a team of trained and well-read academics can do and a community of untrained amateurs cannot, no matter how large and motivated it is. But it works the other way, too: there are things that very well-trained academics cannot (or would not) do, but a large motivated community can (and would). Of course, it will work best if there is collaboration between professionals and amateurs.