George Herbert wrote:
Well, to some degree, there are legitimate reasons for using consensus: even within experts in the field, there often is not yet full agreement on the validity of newly developing science or technology.
Science works on arguments. Not by popular vote (Intelligent design and creations would be true in that case!). It is not consensus what is important, but the description of all relevant point-of-views based on their relative scientific importance based on scientific sources. To much is based on popular POV-sources, or pieced together quote mining.
I've got slightly over a thousand en.WP pages on my watchlist, about 500 articles worth. Even accounting for overlap, there are plenty enough active wikipedians on en to watch the important pages.
I had about +2000 articles. In my field of expertise, I have waited how long it took on some high profile watched-by-many articles before someone would correct some clear incorrect information, inserted by a drive-by-editor. After a month, I changed it, as nobody did it. Now I do not have those articles on my watchlist anymore (remove all items works wonderful), if any of that gets reinserted again, it is very likely to remain incorrect at Wikipedia for a long time.
Kim