I wonder where we are, right now?
A) Wikipedia prominence
If what WP in its collective wisdom decides to do is prima facie news, to other media, then we have all the prominence we need for practical purposes. A word-of-mouth strategy has worked, basically. Which web sites can match that? A mere handful, I suppose.
B) Wikipedia integrity
This is a basic, clearly. We want to think
(i) the data is safe
(ii) the vandals are just contemptible and bounce off
(iii) soft security works because the community is of one mind about making it work
(iv) the community is no more factionally riven than the world outside, and in fact rather less when it comes to the shared mission
(v) forks are not a big threat to the project.
This is mostly true. The webcomics fracas surely counts as a genuine forking moment, though. As for
(vi) POV pushing gets shown up for what it is
there is much less room for complacency.
C) Wikipedia standards
I was away while the Siegenthaler thing blew up. Like other high-profile WP issues, it could have been a lot worse. (Journalists seem to have a model of media power that makes them the most reactive, don't they?) I know from my own experience that more and more people are looking themselves up and requiring page corrections; which is going to help accuracy, rather than hinder.
My own view is that it is always possible to squeeze nonsense out of a given set of pages, eventually. The fact is that there will always be more nonsense introduced elsewhere. We probably do more patrolling of 'orphans', 'uncategorised pages', and also pages untouched for long periods. 'Churn rate' matters
Writing standards - ah, well that's a sore point. Internet authors are no stylists, in general. Puffing (press-release stuff, academic institutions promoting themselves) seems to be more of an issue than straight spam.
D) Community and frictions
If not us, who? I don't know whether the average Wikipedian is any more foolish or anti-social than in the past (weighted average over contributions). Younger, if I'm any judge. Civility seems to be taking something of a battering, except between those who know each other where it is pretty good. The problems appear principally to be about scaling, but the pessimist versions of 'laws' on scaling are I think refuted by the daily advance of the content on the site.
I feel this is where clear sight is most needed, right now. Do the partially-broken things need the radical fix or the tweak? The trouble with assenting to the radical solution is that it smacks of subjective burnout. There have always been the 'dark side' issues: the trolls, know-nothing and slasher and frivolous editors, those who really can't leave their agenda at the door. The history of the site actually shows that they can inflict damage, but that's about it. This appears to be a time to point to WP's resilience, and also the _patient_ way successful innovation has been taking place. The good physician needs to have a six-month time scale, rather than six days; and so should we.
E) Wikipedia hardware
Aaagh! Ouch! That stings!
Charles