User blog comment:Thor2000/Wikipedia as a Research Tool/@comment-61022-20150503230413

It depends on the material and who is contributing to what. The material is only as good as the researcher and their sources. Articles on Wikipedia itself range from very well researched to horrendously poorly researched. I find that usually when it comes to popular culture the research becomes worse because anyone who actually has any sort of education in writing research material, and citing references, is not going to spend their time writing articles based on popular culture. Which likely explains a lot of the disparity you find.

The Marvel Comics Wiki page also suffers from this, but I think that this is also based on the fact that (a) the age range of fans varies (fans range from adults to kids) and (b) people tend to only add new material, while anything old is not even looked into, researched, or (at the very worst) plagiarized from the source material.

I don't know how many profiles I've completely re-written that there completely ripped off of the Marvel Universe Handbooks or from the Unofficial Appendix website.

By and large most people who update Wikis tend to not know how to cite their material or research properly. Be it out of lack of insight, training, or just plain ignorance and laziness. Take your pick.

At least with comic books it's much easier to hunt down the source material. When it comes to what I add to the Marvel Comics Wikia page, I trust no source but the actual comics for anything I add to this site.