But the LW wiki is supposed to be (as I understand it) a place where people explain and combine academic work in certain fields.

The original purpose of the wiki was to describe the state of discussion or consensus on the blog. SingInst's recent edits (this year) might have shifted that a bit by adding some less LW-specific content to the wiki.

From the wiki's User Guide (linked from the sidebar on all pages):

The default workflow for putting content on this wiki is as follows:

• Idea for posting -> write post on the blog
• Notice something generally accepted on LW without a wiki page -> write wiki page