&gt;The problem with only accepting &quot;reliable sources&quot; is that that leads, essentially, to only parroting what is frequently heard in the mainstream media<p>That is the whole point of wikipedia...it parrots the sources without trying to determine what the truth is. If you accept that limitation, wikipedia works very well.<p>&gt; I think it&#x27;s a mistake to claim mainstream publications are de-facto sources of truth<p>Wikipedia specifically does NOT attempt to get to the truth:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_truth" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Verifiability,_not_t...</a><p>&gt;A single Google search will bring you face-to-face with the evidence<p>A single google search informed me that a wiki-PR company had been systematically investigated and then banned. Looking at the individual edits (e.g. on Naomi Campbell&#x27;s page) shows that most of them have been reverted, proving that wikipedia works. (There will always be way more wikipedia editors than PR people for any particular article).