Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.apu.ac.uk>]

Karl wrote:
As a person who tried to be active in the Wikipedia community for a
while, these are what I found about the reliability of Wikipedia
articles:

Those that deal with factual subjects where there is little to no
controversy concerning them, usually are reliable.

Those that deal with subjects where there is a scholarly consensus
among academia even though there is some controversy, almost
invariably take the academia consensus, sometimes even not even
mentioning that people question the consensus. Where there are
sufficient numbers of adherants to the alternate view, a separate
article will sometimes focus on the alternate view with sometimes
distortion of the alternate view as the academia consensus is
defended.

Where there is an ideological componant to controversy (as distinct
from mere disagreements within a subject as in the previous
paragraph), the articles can become downright partisan to the point of
misrepresentation of alternate views, if they are mentioned at all.

It has been years since I was last active in Wikipedia, but it appears
that the patterns I noticed as recounted in the above three paragraphs
are still followed. As a result, I rarely use Wikipedia and then only
for subjects where there is little to no controversy that I know of.
end quote

JCR: Yeah! I've had similar experiences. I can't help
but get the feeling that this is largely because the
main organiser is hoping to sell it in print and make
a bob or two off it when it is finished.

Anyway, I am aware of its limitations in this regard
and only really use it aa a shallow starting point.