I think it's inevitable that given the high profile Wikipedia is increasingly having, more people are getting involved - and a smaller proportion of them are highly interested in developing an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is in one of the "top sites" spots now, like it or not.
It's interesting to consider that perhaps one of the reasons WHY Wikipedia has been successful is that it doesn't encourage and facilitate too much inter-user interaction outside of working on articles. It's possibly a good thing that we don't have inter-user mail, a chat system, or a bulletin board built in to the site.
-Matt