Ok, now I get the link you’re trying to make, but it doesn’t fully adress my question.

The one thing that’s still leaving me prickly is simply saying Wikipedia is wrong because it’s editable by anyone. That’s like saying FOSS is insecure because it’s editable by anyone. Neither the conclusion nor the premise is correct in either case. There are hierarchies & access controls in both that often yield better results than the traditional alternative.

Wikipedia is a treasure, and while it is still vulnerable to brigading (far more so than FOSS), this is far from the norm (especially nowadays) and should be backed up with specific sources and rectified.

While I do agree with you that Wikipedia shouldn’t be cited directly due to this vulnerability, it acts as an excellent contextual citation aggregator, and quite frankly I’ve often found it more up-to-date and less biased than some of the crap that made it past the peer review process in my college days.

For instance, if what you’re saying is true (shortsightedness), people may over the years still populate those areas (the claim of the Wikipedia article is that a lot/most of the ghost cities did). If you have sources stating otherwise, please report the article for manipulation and include them there. If you don’t feel like it, post them here and I will do so, despite knowing absolutely nothing about Chinese ghost cities, because I believe this is important.

Please don’t dismiss such a shining example of human collective action so lightly. It’s one of the few things that makes me believe there’s still some good left in the world.