That just means they are enforcing their biases on the information. Winning doesn't mean they got it correct, just that they achieved control of the narrative.
That's going to push the means of winning to editing towards the collective biases of the majority of wikipedia editors. Just consider the fact that at various times in our history that commonly accepted knowledge was that the Earth was flat, the Sun, Moon and Stars revolved around it and that slaves were property instead of people.
Effectively this is a proof that mob-sourced information tends towards the mob's interpretation of information and is not necessarily the truth.
I think a lot of people reading Wikipedia forget this and makes me disagree with your last statement -- there's a high potential for danger to the reader if the prevailing mob opinion is outwardly destructive or self-destructive.
That's just what encyclopedias are though, the collective mentality of it's editors, their ideology, so to speak. You were never free to just consume encyclopedias, they were always meant to be understood in the context of their creation. What makes Wikipedia different from its competitors is the sheer diversity of editors contributing.
Encyclopedias usually have lots of competition, outside of niche areas.
Wikis sort of have this backwards. There's lots of competition in the niches but there's not much competition with Wikipedia itself. The risk is in it being a singular body of knowledge.
Sure, that's a good point and I absolutely agree that Wikipedia will neither be unbiased nor always very accurate. My idea was simply to refute the statement that somebody actively controls the world's knowledge in intentionally malicious ways, which would imo be worse than unwillingly reproducing your own biases.
That's going to push the means of winning to editing towards the collective biases of the majority of wikipedia editors. Just consider the fact that at various times in our history that commonly accepted knowledge was that the Earth was flat, the Sun, Moon and Stars revolved around it and that slaves were property instead of people.
Effectively this is a proof that mob-sourced information tends towards the mob's interpretation of information and is not necessarily the truth.
I think a lot of people reading Wikipedia forget this and makes me disagree with your last statement -- there's a high potential for danger to the reader if the prevailing mob opinion is outwardly destructive or self-destructive.