Wikipedia by definition is not adding to the sum total of human knowledge. The most it can hope to do is present some existing knowledge in a convenient, concise form. However, a major part of that must be summarising paper sources which are not already available through the web - perhaps the best web commentaries and summaries should still be in static pages outside Wikipedia along with original research.
Is Wikipedia reliable? No, I would not rely on it for anything at all important. Of course all editors are hoping it will tend towards accuracy, but because of vandalism and inexperienced editing article will always vary in quality.
I tend towards inclusionism, although would prefer the coverage of Wikipedia to be a bit more even - there is a lot of information about current TV programmes, say, but much less about 20th century writers. Therefore I am also attracted by mergism.
One exception to erring on the side of inclusion is where an article or insertion obviously has a public relations or promotional provenance. Attempts to remove point-of-view are usually only partially successful even if most of the article is deleted. I believe this kind of abuse of Wikipedia should be strongly discouraged by deletion, as in fact usually happens if the new pages patrollers are alert enough. Please see my /Proposals that there could be more structured referral of these editors to other Wikis where NPOV would not be an issue.
The obligatory userboxes
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they
This user considers singular they standard English usage.
Disclaimer: Political and religious userboxes are discouraged at Wikipedia and may be deleted in future. Those included here are intended to be descriptive of this editor's background, rather than confrontational, campaigning or divisive. Userboxes may refer to interesting articles, but editors always aim to produce
