Hmm, on that 2004 Wikipedia page it lists the atomic weight of carbon as 12.0107, and the one link in the reference section (Los Alamos National Laboratory) lists it as 12.011.
That's the correct number for the molar mass of carbon, as far as I know, it doesn't look off by 3x!
I'm always happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood. I'm not sure what the link demonstrates, though, I opened it and I just don't see anything like you described.
About poor faith, these kind of accusations happens so often, there's plenty of existing essays and material on whether you should assume people are posting in bad faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AOBF is a good reference, it's used pretty regularly.
if you are genuinely interested in your misunderstanding, i would begin by listing the following assumptions you've made:
- the element in my original anecdote was carbon
- the wayback machine in 2004 captured a website exactly as it appeared in 2003
Normally people provide relevant links. Even if this is showing bad sourcing, it still sources the important numbers. "External links" is helping with that too.
And this 2003 vs. 2004 distinction is a waste of time when wikipedia has a perfectly good history feature.
the entire "references" section back then was one link