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Wikipedia Is Basically a Corporate Bureaucracy, Says Study (gizmodo.com)
Jennifer Ouellette, reporting for Gizmodo: Wikipedia is a voluntary organization dedicated to the noble goal of decentralized knowledge creation. But as the community has evolved over time, it has wandered further and further from its early egalitarian ideals, according to a new paper published in the journal Future Internet. In fact, such systems usually end up looking a lot like 20th-century bureaucracies. [...] This may seem surprising, since there is no policing authority on Wikipedia -- no established top-down means of control. The community is self-governing, relying primarily on social pressure to enforce the established core norms, according to co-author Simon DeDeo, a complexity scientist at Indiana University. [...] "You start with a decentralized democratic system, but over time you get the emergence of a leadership class with privileged access to information and social networks," DeDeo explained. "Their interests begin to diverge from the rest of the group. They no longer have the same needs and goals. So not only do they come to gain the most power within the system, but they may use it in ways that conflict with the needs of everybody else.""The Iron Law of Oligarchy, demonstrated by Wikipedia," wrote Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at Caltech. "Rebel all you want, ultimately you become The Establishment."
What you describe is not vandalism at all. It is simply called "attention to detail" and "being thorough."
Any disputable statement of fact should require a legitimate citation. For example, there is a growing body of research that demonstrates that the statement "the sky is blue" is not always true. According to the Jeppesen Private Pilot Manual, the sky is sometimes filled with water vapor in a way that makes it appear gray. And, according to the same book, the sky can appear pitch black for several hours a day in some places.
So, the categorical statement that "the sky is blue" is demonstrably false. "The sky is sometimes blue" would be more accurate. "The sky sometimes appears blue to persons with unimpaired perception of colors" would be even more accurate.
Actually, can you link me to the article that says the sky is blue? I think I would like to go correct this misinformation.