That's a bit harsh, dbd. Wikipedia is as good as the people who contribute to it.
No it isn't as good as the people who contribute. People with good intent have different viewpoints, applications and vocabularies for the same concepts and Wikipedia lacks an adequate method to resolve this. This is like the Blind Men and the Elephant problem:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-blind-man-and-the-elephant/ Yes, it is a crowd-sourced information source, but I have found it extremely useful a number of times. I'll take a Wikipedia article over most other sources. So much so that I personally contribute $ to it every year.
I find it very useful too, but not to be trusted. Wikipedia itself requires citations for information sources. This allows a user to verify the quality, viewpoint and vocabulary represented by wiki content and interpret it correctly. As someone who follows these chains of reference, it is amazing how often the citation conflicts with or fails to contain the wiki content. Some contributers seem to prepare their content and then shop for a citation when required by Wikipedia. That Wikipedia has no ability to recognize these cases doesn't make Wikipedia useless, just a tool that needs to be used with caution. It does make me concerned to know when Wikipedia has been used as a source. I don't suggest not using it, just using it carefully
Maybe, Bob could have identified his source, but this is not a peer-reviewed or even a high school level term paper. Information shared here, no matter where it comes from, improves everyone's knowledge.
I'm not concerned with where it comes from as much as with accuracy, correctness and completeness and how to determine them. That's what decides whether everyone's knowledge has been improved or not.
Shooting the messenger is poor form.
The "shooting the messenger" meme refers to a time when literate nobles sent messages to other literate nobles in the hands of illiterate serfs. When you play with crowd sourcing, there are no more illiterate messengers with no knowledge of or power over the message content, everyone who participates is a literate noble and responsible for the content they present. I think your drawing a correspondence between Bob and an illiterate serf is poor form and inappropriate.
What we have here is a bunch of knowledgeable, well intentioned people how aren't familiar with dealing on the web.
Dale B. Dalrymple
