1. Wikipedia avoids weasel words. It attributes statements to their sources, rather than to “some people say”. Can you imagine a newspaper surviving five minutes with such a policy?
2. When somebody hoaxes Wikipedia, the article quickly gets investigated and deleted within three weeks (and yet this case is held up as an example of Wikipedia’s unreliability). When somebody hoaxes the mainstream media, they carry on credulously reprinting the press releases five years later.
3. Wikipedia has a policy against plagiarising newspapers. Judging from the amount of times I’ve blurted “hey — I wrote that!”, while reading The Metro on the tube*, the reverse policy doesn’t apply.
4. You can correct mistakes in Wikipedia. You cannot correct mistakes in the Daily Telegraph, even if you were the subject expert quoted in the item.
5. Wikipedia is not about to go bankrupt.
(via Steven Walling)