Quick Guide To Wikipedia

Article List
Page 1
Intoduction to Wikipedia
Vandalism And The Colbert Effect
Page 2
Trusted Users Concept
Wikipedia trusted user levels
Page 3
Technocracy not Democracy
The Wikipedia Test
Wikipedia has Sources
Sources

Wikipedia functions more like a technocracy more than a true democracy

It is true that people get to vote for administrators, but only people who have invested significant time and effort into Wikipedia. This is the equivalent of having a technocracy where people who have spent time and effort learning about the topics can vote. For example having all doctors vote for the head of the department of health. Wikipedia's voting crowd could also be more like only accountants voting for the minster of finance.
However wikipedia's members, unlike a countries goverment do not get paid(as of my current knowledge). All(or almost all) of Wikipedia's editors are not editing for money. TWithout money, there is little incentive for corruption.
Wikipedia works in such a way, if someone was taking kickbacks in exchange for an article without all the mistakes that company made would be quickly noticed by users, reported and that person would lose there position.
Basically this concept is similar to why the Americans believe in gun ownership, that enables them to remove governments that are not working towards the will of the people, or in this case allows Wikipedia to remain a site of learning not of corruption and profits(this may change). Microsoft has tried to buy better positions and this is also a problem

Wikipedia has Sources

Sources allow you to track where the information was found. Any legitimite site or book uses them. Sources are denoted by wikipedia, with a number that you can click. A edit without a source is not realiable. If you check the source and it is not correct, you can help everyone else out by getting rid of it.
Wikipedia should never be the only source of information you use, as with any other source. Wikipedia is more realiable than many sources(Blogs, the least realible sources of all). Many sources are majorly biased(ex. Fox News). The most believable sources are from goverments that match up with information from other goverments. There is a certain amount of propaganda in all goverments, but Canada has very little compaired to most countries(such the United States, Korea).

The Wikipedia Test

This is something I came up with to test Wikipedia's validity. Pick 10 random topics and go to them one by one. At the first one without looking randomly pick a number. Look at the page and go to the information with the source. Is it valid?
Note how old the page is by going to history and choising earliest. How many sources are there, make note of this. How many external sites. How many people have viewed the page? I predict that younger pages, with less sources, less external sources, less spam sources and with less edits will be less accurate.

Boring Disclaimer

I do not have any relation with Steven Colbert, his show or his network. I realize that I may end being a puppy being attacked by a BEAR! OMG. The bear being a lot of clever person that find mistakes. I enjoy watching Colbert and his ability to make change, however his ability to make change becomes a problem when people take something that is obviously a joke too seriously.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
http://spring.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/01/307864-stephen-colbert-causes-chaos-on-wikipedia-gets-blocked-from-site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_(character)
http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/the-word/colbert-report-the-word/#clip16386
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Wikipedia%20contributors
http://phrontistery.info/govern.html