There are some younger and less entrenched projects where one could make a difference without wasting time on BS (like Wikidata or Wiktionary) and there are less popular areas which aren't controlled by wikifeudals, but changing something otherwise requires too much effort for what it's worth, IMHO.
And yes, if there's any conflict of interest (usually political or ideological), the only thing you can trust is the links, and even those should be presumed to be selected in a biased manner. Of course, this also applies to any random article in 99.999% of the press, so it goes... It's still a valuable resource for topics not consumed with public controversy.