Consider all of the people who engage in activities in the Wikimedia platforms. The Wikimedia community values some activities more than others. I want to share my own view of what I think are the community assessments for most valuable engagement.
The most valuable contribution, according to community esteem, is sharing mainspace general encyclopedic content, which is in the most popular article, and also in an article which has existed for the longest time but been the poorest quality. The edit is more impressive when a large number of other editors have been trying to edit that article but failing to find consensus. The contribution should cite the most authoritative reliable source, and is more useful in a situation where that source was not previously identified in the article. Perhaps this editing contribution in this one article solves a challenge in an entire field of articles, for example, perhaps lots of other articles have attempted to describe some specific issue, but now that there is a summary of the general concept in a higher level article, all of those other articles can forego explaining the issue in favor of linking to the general article for the centralized explanation.
I personally am attracted to a variation on this theme, which is topic discovery of some topic in high demand, but for which there is currently no Wikipedia article. This situation occurs when people are discussing a concept which either the media and sources call by various names, or for which there is no name at all. Some articles which I created for odd topics which were popular but had no names include Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, 2G spectrum case, Antibiotic use in livestock, Health information on Wikipedia, and Pollution of the Hudson River. What all these topics have in common is that they all needed the Wikipedia editorial process to give a name to the concept. Topic discovery is one of the forms of original research which is appropriate to publish first in Wikipedia. I get impressed when I see popular articles with these kinds of arbitrary titles which someone had to create. In the case of the 2G spectrum case and the Facebook scandal, before I created those articles, the media discourse was directing much of the blame to the victims rather than the perpetrators. Any journalist feels pride at rerouting popular discourse, and in Wikipedia, many Wikipedia editors have a shared culture experience of both being hobbyists and also pulling the levers of power which enable them to direct some conversation. Sharing stories like these to share is part of of wiki community culture.
Among people who follow Wikimedia administration the most commonly checked value rank is whether a user has ever been involved in wiki negativity. From this perspective, brilliant feats are much less valuable except on a foundation of exclusively positive social interactions with others. To get special userrights in Wikimedia projects, like administrator rights, two things get checked: has the person had diverse experience in the various basic processes, and in the course of experimenting with those functions, was the person conflict prone. A person who can travel around being a slight net positive gets more community respect than someone who makes exceptionally good contributions but who also has negative exchanges. Someone for everyone it is easier to get into conflict online or in Wikipedia than it is away from devices. I try to be forgiving to anyone who makes a commitment to being positive and avoiding negativity. I can only pray and hope that I retain and grow whatever ability I have to stay positive myself. There is always a way to collaborate and discuss with positivity so that everyone involved enjoys, feels enthusiastic, and gets respect.
Once a user establishes positivity in administration, then actual wiki-specific activities come into view. People who make popular proposals, such as for policy changes or new processes, make themselves prominent as to enact a proposal many people must read it, see the proposer’s name, then sign onto it.
Similarly, after there is a debate someone has to declare consensus. At any given time in English Wikipedia there are at least 5 raging debates where 100 people are arguing some point, typically with about half people on each side. People get enthusiastic about Wikipedia debates because they establish a discourse, so once someone makes a point, that point can become part of the corpus of discussion without needing to be made again. Because of this arguing in Wikipedia necessarily advances toward some end. Social and technological infrastructure continuously improve the efficiency of arguments. When the time comes to end one, typically in 2-4 weeks, often one person does the close and drafts the result. Everyone who participates in that discussion watches that person doing the close, so that person is keen to issue a result which will get them respect from both sides of the mob in the argument.
Some under-respected Wikimedia contributions are those which are quieter and do not attract attention. Many volunteer software developers use extensive training and experience to introduce new tools to Wikimedia projects, and for whatever social reasons, software developers tend to socialize in a way that passes through the attention of non-software developers. Tools routinely appear, and they might be entirely volunteer generated and save the Wikimedia community thousands or tens of thousands of labor hours, and yet the intervention leaves no media trace and gives no credit. The situation can be as if fire has fallen from the sky to primitive man, and suddenly society completely changes, but no one remarks on the instantaneous universal adoption of new technology and radical behavior changes.
A huge number of people contribute Wikimedia content, whether Wikipedia prose, Commons media, Wikidata data, or whatever, and they decline to socialize in the forums. Of course this is the primary function of the Wikimedia platform, to enable people to share general reference media, but when people do this outside the context of socializing they might not get recognition. Some contributors may not even notice when other people thank them or seek them out to discuss their contributions. The people who make their contributions visible are necessarily the people who want to talk with others in Wikimedia projects, so this social class gets more esteem than the non-social class.