&gt;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>I thought that the goal was to represent &quot;the sum of all human knowledge&quot;?<p>I will agree that if you accept Wikipedia as a summary of contemporary news reports, then it&#x27;s probably not that bad  (but many articles will need to be dumbed down significantly to meet this standard). That&#x27;s not my understanding of what an encyclopedia is supposed to be.<p>&gt;Wikipedia specifically does NOT attempt to get to the truth<p>If that policy were followed, it would be fine; we wouldn&#x27;t hear &quot;oh, well, we can&#x27;t trust <i>Local County News</i>, they&#x27;re probably not big enough&quot; or &quot;Well, you can&#x27;t trust $ARTICLE_SUBJECT to provide an accurate account&quot; because it wouldn&#x27;t matter. It would only matter that the account could be verified as authentic-ish with reasonable confidence. IMO that&#x27;s a pretty low bar, but most Wikipedia source nazis seem to insist on a major <i>mainstream</i> publication like the NYT. This works out conveniently if you find yourself philosophically or politically aligned with NYT.<p>&gt;A single google search informed me that a wiki-PR company had been systematically investigated and then banned.<p>This is really just intentional ignorance. It&#x27;s like insisting there is no astroturfing on HN, reddit, or Facebook. WP is actively manipulated as a routine part of brand management and public relations. The first hit for &quot;wikipedia page management&quot; is <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.prnewsonline.com&#x2F;topics&#x2F;pr-insiders&#x2F;2013&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;why-wikipedia-matters-and-how-to-follow-their-rules" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.prnewsonline.com&#x2F;topics&#x2F;pr-insiders&#x2F;2013&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;wh...</a> ; literally a howto on manipulating Wikipedia for brand managers. While this one repeats the rule not to edit directly, other hits on the first page interpret that for us to &quot;never edit directly <i>from your company&#x27;s IP address</i>&quot;, which I&#x27;m 100% confident is the method of 95% of WP-aware brand managers out there.