I like Wikipedia. The sheer volume of information is it's greatest feature, not it's accuracy, readability, or respectability. A lot of what is on wikipedia is "niche" knowledge typed of by geeks and fanboys. This isn't meant to be derogatory. I have benefited several times from the highly specific information that can be found on wikipedia. Sometimes these articles are the most intricate, detailed articles on wikipedia.

A good example is the article on Back to the Future timelines. This type of information, wikipedia would say belongs on a personal website because Wikipedia is not indescriminate and Wikipedia does not allow original research. But on a personal website it would probably never even show up on Google's radar, which is how I find most info on wikipedia. Wikipedia has loads of relevant internal links that help Google out. They fit together perfectly.

Wikipedia should have a guideline for covering niche or pop culture material that exempts such articles from the original research guideline. A message to that effect should be at the top of the article. The {{originalresearch}} tag is not appropriate because it implies that the article should be expunged if it can not be backed up with sources. There should be a {{grainofsalt}} tag that serves as a warning for articles with original research that have been deemed useful. Wikipedia owes a lot of it's success to this type of information and it should be embraced, not extinguished.

Fortunately, there is so much crap on wikipedia and so few admins that it takes a long time to get articles deleted that are not candidates for speedy deletion.

Update: the article on the Back to the Future timelines has been integrated with the article on back to the future, but it looks like most of the information was kept.