I have pretty much stopped contributing to E2, due to lack of time and the fact that most of what I add gets nuked sooner or later - usually for good reasons, too. (A humbling experience.)
The E2 editors were trying to turn it more and more into an objective encyclopedia. It's good to have one, but for me, the specific value of E2's content is the subjective edge, as dwyn explained.
E2 got better and better (even though it's also lost a lot of great content over time). It started out as the radically simple and beautiful Everything 1. It then went through spectacular growing pains: at one point its policies, software and help files were so horribly deficient that I was considering legal action. In the course of many months, the issues were addressed with busloads of small improvements. We now have clear policies, great software features and excellent help documents. I found the process very interesting, but it's hard to retrace due to the no noding about noding embargo.
(see also the update)