You're suggesting publishing an article *about* Wikipedia, rather than *from* Wikipedia. That's quite a different suggestion. I don't think that's the kind of thing an academic journal would be interested in, but it's worth having on Wikipedia itself somewhere.
Well, there aren't many things that are hotter these days than research on Wikipedia itself, which typically includes some explanation of how Wikipedia works.
I did an academically citable interview on "how and why Wikipedia works" a while back: http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview....
I wouldn't worry at all about getting the word out to academia.
Dirk