I'd agree that the overall quality of Wikipedia is not high. In particular, very few FAs meet the nominal FA prose requirement of "engaging, even brilliant" (mine don't). The de facto prose standard for FAs is "competent, free of easily noticable technical faults and without any really terrible stylistic decisions." But for many subjects - including almost all of those that FAs - Wikipedia provides the clearest, most accessible, free online treatment.
Wikipedia is most useful not when it's a substitute for other sources, but when it's a substitute for ignorance.
As for GBG's original point, there's a segment of article writers for whom smugness is endemic. But there's an observer bias there, just as there is for admins: the article writers you notice are the ones prancing around ANI shrieking that the Wikipolitician caste is ruining the encyclopedia, and that everybody should actually be more like them (the article writers).
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