Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is reliable
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: You can rely on Wikipedia because vandals and hoaxers will be warded off from Wikipedia until only hardworking, dedicated editors are left. |
It's really quite simple. Wikipedia is a biased implementation of the infinite monkey theorem. Given enough time, we will write everything that can (or has) been written. The bias is that each monkey is given a cattle prod and encouraged to use it on their fellows. Over time, several behaviors are noticed:
- Overly sensitive monkeys depart, although not always before a mild psychotic break.
- Erratic monkeys swiftly wise up, often after a period of intense zapping.
- Monkeys who remain and age here gather around a set of behaviors that include mutual grooming, (extremely careful) dominance/hierarchy posturing, mutual grooming, and mutual grooming.
- Thus, only the most fastidious monkeys are found in quantity, obsessively checking, rechecking, fact checking, proofreading, and copyediting the work as a whole. Vandals and grasshoppers are repeatedly zapped until even the hardiest depart, and All Is Well.
That is why you can trust Wikipedia content. Absolutely. Most of the time.