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Most are anonymous and not all do it for free. There are hints of various governments and corporations "helping" edit Wikipedia for example. Wikipedia itself has an article on that with examples.
Holy crap there is already a Wikipedia article about the earthquake, and it's huge!
Wikipedians are insane >

They are those people that would have been scribes and chroniclers in the past. They would have lived their days recording censuses, documenting significant events in a kingdom, or record the lives of great individuals. To them information is something that needs to be recorded accurately as possible and done as quickly as one can do so. In a weird way they do the world a service by being ready to jump in and add such information at a moments notice.