I hate when things get mature and enshittify.
The previous system of doing post-publish review of new articles had an even worse backlog because it let a huge volume of shit into the front door.
The root cause of this is Wikipedia’s huge influence in Google SEO and knowledge graph. As the open web is dying, it’s one of the few reliable ways to dump information straight to the top of Google SERPs. When I write new Wikipedia articles it is often indexed to the first page of results in minutes.
I don't create articles these days; it's too much like hard work.
You used to be able to create an article by making a redlink wikilink somewhere, and then clicking it - that would take you to an editor. The new article would appear in mainspace. Do you have to "volunteer" to appear in mainspace? Are all new articles deemed to be "draft", and subject to review nowadays? Or are some users allowed to create new articles in mainspace, and others not? If so, what are the criteria?