On 1/4/07, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page) that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the internet.
How inaccurate the online sources are depends on the subject matter, however. Generally internet sources are not much worse than the popular press when it comes to accuracy; such an article, pre-Internet, would likely pick up the same kind of errors from the popular press if they were used as the source.
For some subject areas, the academic works are published online and available. In others, there are no academic works to use, and sometimes the most authoritative works are online.
-Matt