One side effect of Wikipedia, which may turn out to be bigger than the intended main effect is that tens of thousands of people have now been trained in a certain style of online interaction. You can't work on Wikipedia for very long without starting to internalize the processes, rules, and values you've learned from the community. Someday someone will perhaps address outgoing Wikipedians in a manner similar to those of a well-known Front Range university:

"You are now certified to the world at large as Alumni of Wikipedia. She is your kindly mother and you her cherished sons and daughters. This exercise denotes, not your severance from her, but your union with her. Emergence does not mean, as many wrongly think, the breaking of ties and the beginning of life apart. Rather it marks your initiation in the fullest sense into the fellowship of the Wikipedians, as bearers of her torch, as centers of her influence, as promoters of her spirit. Wikipedia is not the servers, not the software, not the policy pages, not the editors of any one time--not one of these or all of them. Wikipedia consists of all who come into and go forth from her pages, who are touched by her influence and who carry her spirit. Wherever you go, Wikipedia goes with you. Wherever you are at work there is Wikipedia at work. What Wikipedia purposes to be, what it must always strive to be, is represented by its logo, which is a shining spherical jigsaw puzzle assembled from a score of pieces. If you keep it not whole, how disintegrated it becomes! But if you hold it together, who can measure its power? With hope and faith, I welcome you into the fellowship. I bid you farewell only in the sense that I pray you may fare well. You go forth, but not from us. We remain but not severed from you. God go with you and be with you and us."