Mike said,

"Which brings me to your comment that "such a collective work is likely far more accurate than the sole work of a single researcher".

That may be true, but I don't know how you would arrive at that conclusion logically."

Actually, it was not my conclusion, but I accepted as I found it reasonable. I do not recall where I read it.

But it's comes from the idea of emergent properties of complex systems. For example, a single neuron can't do much, but get 100 billion of them together....and a lot of damage can be done . The point is, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Certainly there are errors, and biases. I have seen both. But I am sufficiently aware of such problems and have learned to recognize the fallacies that lead to those biases that I am reasonably confident that I can recognize them.

But there in lies the problem. Not everyone can. And from that, I can see your point.

There are those who don't know any better an may take a Wikipedia article at it's word not realize they are being led down the garden path.

Fortunately, at least in my limited experiences with the system, that seems to be a risk that's greatly minimized on most topics as there are sufficient safeguards already in place and people watching the topics. For instance, I see many articles tagged for not having sufficient cited references. That's a clue right there to look deeper if there aren't any cites.

BTW, I have been known to kill a few hours using the "random article" feature.

Brian