This article about Wikipedia in the New Yorker continues the debate about how much need there is for “authority” in order for such a resource to be useful.
My own view is that all information sources should be taken with a grain of salt, and that it is foolish to expect otherwise, but that (especially on technical or controversial issues) it would sometimes be useful to include or link to articles that are within the control of a known author or editor.
For the cotroversial issues this would allow each point of view to be seen in its own words, and for technical issues it would make it less necessary for authors and editors to have to waste time correcting errors introduced by the uninformed.