Wikipedia more reliable with more edits?

[Budthestud]

So today I found a very misleading article on Wikipedia. Basically something that was supposed to be technical in nature was bluntly stated (misleading and technically incorrect because of it). I spent quite a bit of time trying to find more info on this from other sources because I knew that Wiki could not be right. Luckily I knew it was wrong, many people would just assume it was right or assume that society didn't know the real answer.

This got me thinking of how Wikipedia can tell you how reliable an article is so you know what you are getting in to and I was reminded of the jar guessing experiments. In those experiments the more people that you have guess how many jelly beans (or marbles or whatever) are in a jar, the more accurate your answer will be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n98BhnwWmsc.

I was wondering are the wiki articles that have more edits more reliable? It would definitely be worth looking into. If it is actually true then I think wiki should put some kind of reliability meter at the top articles.

 

[Jennywocky]

Well, for the jelly bean experiment, no one is an "expert" AKA possesses more knowledge of the answer than another; everyone is essentially just eyeballing it. You're talking about aggregation of approximate guesswork.

For actual fields of knowledge (or specific topics), there's the possibility of some people having more information on a topic, while others might not. Depending on the nature of the topic, you run the likelihood of non-experts making edits based on ignorance and arguing with people who actually have knowledge -- essentially suggesting a level of expertise/complexity in the information that doesn't exist.

 

[Pyropyro]

No. Sometimes an article has lots of edits because vandals like to deface it while editors rally to restore it.

Articles with multiple reputable third party references are more reliable.