I have three wikipedia stories.
One time I was curious to learn who first discovered silicon (possible I’ve forgotten the element but if it wasn’t silicon, it was related). So, I looked it up and found whoever Wikipedia said at the time. Huh. Never heard of that guy. I go over to his page and do some quick math. He apparently discovered it when he was 12. Not impossible but certainly noteworthy if true. And not noted. I hop into the talk page and find out that someone else noted the same oddity and asked about it. The other observant smartass alluded to the problem but didn’t state it outright if I recall correctly. The heavy hitter on the page at the time basically said “What’s your point?”
Second story. I stumble upon a really stubbish page on the page of a John Updike book. I was pretty surprised that the article was a stub because seriously. Anyway, aside from its stubbishness, it was pretty horrible grammar-wise to the point where I had to fuss at it for a few minutes to figure out what it meant. Jumped into talk and suggested some edits. Someone eventually started caring about the page and took it over I guess.
Third story. I ran into the biographical page of a Lumbee hero (might have been Henry Berry Lowrie but I can’t find my notes in the Talk page so perhaps not?) which was at the time about 50% stub and about 50% made by some folks trying to establish themselves as said hero’s descendants.
I put a note in Talk about the problem and probably added a Cite Source tag. Checked up on it a few months later and the page had been fixed. Checked up on it a bit after that and it had been mangled by the descendants again. This time they cited a source!
Which was a video they recorded of themselves saying they were descendants of the hero. Well, that was just brilliant but I was done at that point. If Henry Berry Lowrie isn’t the guy, some supposed descendants of his are up to similar shit on his page now. I should go put a bunch of Cites in there.
Out of three, we’ve got one example of obtuse culture making for shitty Wikipedia. And two examples of the amateurishness WP Rules Lawyers use as an argument in favor of the obtuse culture. And that’s not counting the one example (me) of someone who would love to contribute but never did because WP Rules Lawyers are terrifying and love to delete things you love and were reading.
I don’t know why the editor count has gone down. I’d like to think it’s because the WP Rules Lawyers have found something I don’t care about to be pedantic over. I suspect it’s more burnout.
Bonus: After more than a year of not using my WP account for anything, I got a “welcome to WP” note on my talk page. 
ETA: Haha. It was Henry Berry Lowrie. XD
