[Golf_Hotel_Mike]

What other system would you propose that would ensure that articles are as uniformly objective and factual as possible? It's all right to claim that anyone should be allowed to edit an article, but the fact is that internet communities have consistently shown that without extremely heavy-handed moderation to uphold standards, they can quickly devolve into echo chambers where only one opinion or one set of facts is heard.

Articles about NBA players are not a good example of this, but I can easily think of plenty of other topics which would involve extremely loud and opinionated fringe communities who are very motivated to broadcast their views to the world. I can't think of any way to limit the influence of these communities except by insisting that every article have impeccable sources.

The cost of this insistence on sources is that sometimes utterly obvious edits may be reverted unless they can be properly sourced, but I think it is an acceptable price for maintaining consistent standards of quality across the wiki.

Also, I don't agree that the system only exists to pander to academia. Every encyclopedia in the world has standards of quality to which their articles must conform. The only difference between these other encyclopedias and Wikipedia is the speed with which they are updated.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't go to Wikipedia to get the latest news. I go there to learn stuff with the belief that this stuff will be correct. I don't care if players' teams are updated hours instead of seconds after a trade. I care much more about whether this information is correct. Verifiability builds trust, and I don't see how Wikipedia could continue to exist without it.