The reality is that Wikipedia survives because the masses are simply not very interested in the idea of encyclopedias. They want to find out stuff, and think that whatever Google spews out is good enough. After all, take away Wikipedia and what would people accept from Google is whatever happens to be on the first page that looks vaguely plausible.
We now know that the WMF are not really very interested in making an encyclopedia, they are getting a nice living leeching off the project, such as it is.
The only way to kill it is to make being involved with it a stigma. In fact, it seems that it more or less is at the moment, people simply do not like admitting in public that they have anything to do with it. The "good altruistic idea" phase of Wikipedia seems to have passed, and it is viewed as something that many people use but apologetically.
I seriously doubt it can be killed. It cannot be replaced by something done properly, as the gerneal public do not perceive Wikipedia as being done wrongly. The fact that something like flagged revisions, the simplest attempt to add some authority to the publication of the aggregated tat that is a Wikipedia article, has failed should tell you something not just about the governance, but the audience as well - there is no sense of demand from the readership.
Wikipedia is seriously broken with regards to being a scholarly work, but the fundamental problem to solve is "Who cares?"
I think the only way to get Wikipedia fixed (and I think the time for breaking it has passed) or at least less broken, is to get political and do damage that way.
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