Wikipedia works best when there are a lot of editors with different opinions working on an entry, but on some of the less traveled pages, fringe views can dominate.

I looked at this issue fairly extensively in an article I wrote for the Southern Poverty Law center about attempts by white nationalists to hijack certain pages, particularly those on “Race and IQ” or other related topics. It took several years and multiple mediations for the page to get relatively neutral.

But as I mentioned in the piece, some articles present “soft targets.” They have few users or admins patrolling them and edits can slip in. One of the most egregious examples was a bio page about South African Neo-Nazi terrorists AWB, which cited a webpage by a South African Neo-Nazi. It scrubbed almost all reference to their bombings, massacres and beatings but it had an entire section on their charity work.

I don’t want to knock Wikipedia because they do a massive amount of work for free, and the system works about as well as it possibly can, but take what you find there with a grain of salt, and if you see something that is suspect check the source at the bottom. If it’s unreliable, do your part, and fix it.