The search engines are supposed to reward authoritative, expert content.

No, she wants them to. And they arguably should. But that’s a different thing from what they’re supposed(as in were designed) to do. The reality is they’re doing precisely what they’re supposed to do, which is rewarding sites that are heavily linked. The fact WP is so heavily linked does give it an overall boost, which is why it’s high even for topics that may not be as fleshed out as they could be.
Google has no idea whether the information there is good. It just knows that lots of people point at it, and infers that it’s therefore good/definitive. This is why Tom’s Hardware and MySpace Tom are seemingly more “important” than Toms Cruise or even Sawyer. (This is also why searching for “tom” is just stupid and meaningless when you’re actually looking for “Tom Sawyer,” but different discussion.)
This is a loophole in the entire concept of links, and part of the reason the vote-links microformat was created. Arguably it’s not a loophole, either, as links are simply neutral connections. It’s the engines making the assumption that all links are positive votes, not that they really have the intelligence yet to be able to tell otherwise on their own.

#2 is linked to the same misunderstanding. Wikipedia pushes down other references which are less heavily linked to; that is all. This is not really about who’s more of an expert.
Also, the expert information is only being “hidden” from people too lazy to use more than one resource, and frankly, they get what they deserve.

Oddly enough, she explains the problems with complaint #3 herself(frequent updates, etc.), but doesn’t seem to realize(or admit?) that the real problem isn’t with the result but that she just doesn’t like the result, which is the underlying issue with the whole rant.

Which leads to this in an update:
I thought it was Google’s job to track down the primary source of information as a way to provide searchers with the most expert information?

…which is just plain wrong. At best, this is what human-edited index sites are for. (Does Yahoo even do this anymore? I haven’t used them in ages.)
Google is nothing more than a fairly smart machine, and doesn’t hunt anything down with nearly that much intent; it just keeps track of all of it and the connections between the pieces.

Also, I don’t fully agree with the “The search engines are supposed to reward authoritative, expert content.” statement.

Wake up.

For a start, most experts couldn’t explain their way out of a paper bag. Secondly Google can’t tell the difference between a clear explanation and a hopelessly convoluted piece of ‘expert-certified’ obfuscation.