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Originally Posted by jersysman
What exactly is Wikipedia for anyway? Is it not an information dump? A place where information is kept on various subjects? I can see where rumors as such should not be used as fact, but one thing it is not is a media source where you should have independent corroboration. If that were the case, nothing would be published on that site.
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I look at Wikipedia as a starting point. They have requirements for citations and verifiable sources, in addition to other rules. Information can and will be removed if it does not meet the standards, but the key is that someone has to identify the bad or incomplete or unverified information and act on it.
It works better for some types of information than it does for others. Certain categories of information can be designated as part of a WikiProject, or fall within the scope of a "task force", or both. Generally, these are handled, edited and watched closely by those with a specific interest in maintaining quality in those areas.
You can find out what, if any, special classes or designations a page falls into, as well as any editorial review oversight it has had, by looking at its "Talk" page. As an example, here is the Talk page for Classical Music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Classical_music