Hi Elian,
I agree with much of what you said. I think people with an "agenda" *do* have a place on Wikipedia, though, and if they believe that presenting verifiable facts about that agenda in a balanced form will further it, that's perfectly acceptable. I'm fairly anti-religious, for example, and Ed is quite fundamentalist. Both of us would like more people to share our entirely subjective POV. Both of us believe that we can make this happen by showing the facts.
That's one reason why I think it's possible to convince at least some of the regular "annoying users": Eventually they will have to realize that if they want people to take their position seriously, they have to back it up instead of censoring and vandalizing what their opponents say and replacing it with their own opinions. Many of them will not be able to do that, so they will eventually go away. Others might actually add useful information.
There are key mechanisms for working together: attributing disputed claims properly, not deleting other points of view, and presenting only verifiable statements of fact and not irrelevant personal opinions. These are basic rules that I believe can be enforced if necessary.
I think the [[anti-Americanism]] page (NOT the recent discussion, the Wikipedia article) is a good example for people with different agendas working together.
As for the decision making process, I agree entirely, we need to find something better than the approach we have now, and again I think open voting is the only viable option, both for the wiki itself and the lists and policy decisions. What else is there but voting? Do we want Jimbo to approve everything? Or do we want an elected "government", just because that's what's used in the real world? Or do we want to use Cunctator's "consensus for everything" approach, for which he himself guarantees that it cannot succeed? Or do we want to use Larry's randomized trusted users who get "decision duty" on rotation?
I have not seen a single plausible argument against open voting other than that it doesn't produce perfect results (like all decision making processes).
Regards,
Erik