"Moreover, Wikipedia's coverage of topics that would actually be useful to those lacking access to good education is often inadequate."
Really dunno about that... Surely there are scientific articles with less than ideal clarity or content, but the Ars article's main bugbear of complicated things like quantum mechanics not being explained in kidergarten-compatible language just sounds ridiculous - yes, guess what, science is hard, and whether or not an intelligible summary can be prepended, you simply can't sum up the entire symbolism, conventions and tools (including all the underlying knowledge) of a field in a single page about a specific subject.
Yes, to treat that subject meaningfully even on an introductory level you WILL have to read up on all the underlying notions, and the ones supporting those (and the ones supporting those) if you are not well versed in that field. Yes, there will be scary-looking formulae. What else were they expecting - "science light" for dummies in ten simple sentences, buzzfeed-style?!? "Up goer five" or something...? Wikipedia in NOT a free ticket to knowledge - you still have to do all the legwork yourself if you want to understand complicated concepts, there are no shortcuts...