Some more anecdotal evidence: My life partner did her PhD on a historic consumer organization in my country and the additions, edits and corrigenda she proposed to the wikipedia article were rejected.
So Wikipedia is like the worst of both worlds if you compare it to historic encyclopedias (who were vast works with contents curated by professors/experts and professional editors): Like the old world, it still is not as democratic as we would want it to be, and it lacks the academic rigor we can expect from something like the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s just that the editing/moderation power has moved to faceless people on the internet.
Wikipedia sadly is not as democratic as you might think: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/01/wikipedia-the-overlooked-monopoly.html
Some more anecdotal evidence: My life partner did her PhD on a historic consumer organization in my country and the additions, edits and corrigenda she proposed to the wikipedia article were rejected.
So Wikipedia is like the worst of both worlds if you compare it to historic encyclopedias (who were vast works with contents curated by professors/experts and professional editors): Like the old world, it still is not as democratic as we would want it to be, and it lacks the academic rigor we can expect from something like the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s just that the editing/moderation power has moved to faceless people on the internet.