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Wikipedia Has Become a Science Reference Source Even Though Scientists Don't Cite it (sciencenews.org)
Bethany Brookshire, writing for Science News: Wikipedia is a gold mine for science fans, science bloggers and scientists alike. But even though scientists use Wikipedia, they don't tend to admit it. The site rarely ends up in a paper's citations as the source of, say, the history of the gut-brain axis or the chemical formula for polyvinyl chloride. But scientists are browsing Wikipedia just like everyone else. A recent analysis found that Wikipedia stays up-to-date on the latest research -- and vocabulary from those Wikipedia articles finds its way into scientific papers. The results don't just reveal the Wiki-habits of the ivory tower. They also show that the free, widely available information source is playing a role in research progress, especially in poorer countries.
Not true. Wikipedia is and has always a playground for fake news, each small nation has paid writers creating Wikipedia pages on its history, introducing a lot of bias, etc. Even the existence of Wikipedia in a particular invented small nations language is a political statement. So, for social sciences like history or languages basically you might be better off trusting Zerohedge or Exiledonline.
As to the hard sciences: well, some articles are ok, but they are very basic and simplified. Books are way more accurate. That's why no one cites Wikipedia ; and if language if it made into a scholarly paper from "poor countries" it only means that the journal published the paper is corrupt.
This is so far from the truth.
The people who are writing the wiki are those who have no lives. It takes phenomenal amounts of time to do this stuff. These people collect their pet projects, their little corner of Wikipedia, and anything that conflicts with their view is removed. Since they're the ones spending all their time on wikipedia they'll know every in/out and they'll wikicrat casual editors away.
There's a very good reason contributions are at an all time low - it's not because there's no more to add, it's because no one with the expertise would want to deal with the idiocy/bureaucracy that's infested every aspect of the site.
If you're going to use something as a reference, you want the reference to be simple to use. I.e. the place you link to. Linking to the history pages is...not especially desireable.
So it's basically unusable as a reference. And it was never intended to be a reference, it's more nearly a top level index.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.