[c22]

I would argue that anyone who takes wikipedia at face value and trusts everything they read there without further verification, research, or compatible pre-existing knowledge is not a very discerning individual. Wikipedia is not being coy about their identity, I'm pretty sure everyone knows it's edited by strangers on the internet. If you want an encyclopedic source you know you can trust then buy an encyclopedia.

[ThoAppelsin]

> I'm pretty sure everyone knows it's edited by strangers on the internet

I can assure you that there are at least some who are unaware that even they can edit a Wikipedia article. My housemate (a computer engineering student) didn't. My girlfriend seeking her doctorate degree didn't. My 2 roommates who managed to get to the first 100 at our national examination, also didn't.

[pessimizer]

Who did they think wrote Wikipedia? I'm not sure that much concern should be taken for people who don't care at all about the sources of the things that they reference; not that it's not bad that they'll be confused by bad information, just that if people aren't concerned at all about sources, they're going to be confused by a lot of things, not just Wikipedia vandals.

Printing something in a book doesn't make it true, and putting it on a website also doesn't make it true, no matter how professional and authoritative-looking the css is. You trust something because you trust the motivations and expertise of its sources.

[smsm42]

Can confirm, many do not know. Even more people never actually think about it and certainly do not think about it in a way that they may be part of the project and take part of the responsibility on themselves too. It is a pity, since there are many communities with awesome self-organizing cultures that achieve great things, and free open knowledge is one of those things that most of people, otherwise of different opinions and persuasions, can agree on.