(Reparented from another content thread) Agreed. Wikipedia's strength is its long tail of niche articles. However, once one gets off "popular" articles, the quality bounds rapidly spread.
But that seems inherent to having an article for which there are only 1-2 editors, as opposed to 10+ frequently reviewing.
So better UX is probably the best "solution." I.e. pulling editor count, frequency, and reputation into the reader-visible part of the page.
Yeah, the smaller articles are usually written by a single person who has spent an inordinate amount of time in the domain of the article and the article is good.
I started this article recently and was very impressed by how everyone came together to reach a consensus on a very niche topic:
But then the other day I noticed that a page about a certain very popular K-Pop band was missing one of their major releases, so I added it, but then got into a pissing war with an editor of that niche who argued that the band's own Instagram page was not a valid source for information on their releases?!
The reason that someone said the band's Instagram page isn't a valid source for information about the band is because of the rules about self-published sources. The rules were patched at some point with a narrow exception, to allow sources for things like a band listing their own releases (see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:ABOUTSE... ) but it's easy for rules lawyers to insist that that patch doesn't apply. And people with OCD really don't like narrow exceptions.
> However, once one gets off "popular" articles, the quality bounds rapidly spread
The issues I have seen are mostly with these sorts of articles itself. Popular articles tend to be overall much more fair because of massive participation.
But once you go into articles which are about less popular things or contentious topics or from highly polarised areas, there is either frequent vandalism or chokehold control by few editors which makes it impossible to have even a good discussion if you think the content can be presented better.
But that seems inherent to having an article for which there are only 1-2 editors, as opposed to 10+ frequently reviewing.
So better UX is probably the best "solution." I.e. pulling editor count, frequency, and reputation into the reader-visible part of the page.