Wikipedia though has a strong reputation for being well cited and due in large part to the huge user base glaring inaccuracies get corrected quickly. I saw a study at one point comparing them to a traditional encyclopedia and they had of course faster shifting errors, but on average where pretty on par for accuracy.

A federated system where I or any other knucklehead could put up an instance isn’t going to have that ‘checked by 1000 eyes’ factor going so much, or if it did ever get to that point then they’ve likely become the defacto ‘real’ federated encyclopedia and the others inherently suspect.

All in all It’s a neat idea, but sounds like it’d be rife with chaotic discord. As a general thing if something is on the standard Wikipedia I can be pretty sure it’s reasonably accurate without having to research who posted it, and I can torrent a copy of the whole thing as I just recently found out.