# Wikipedia 404 Hacker News commenters recommended Wikipedia and 327 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (15 owners). **Verdict:** A free, volunteer-built, downloadable encyclopedia with sourcing rules and open moderation that's invaluable as a starting point, though critics say contentious political topics are biased or manipulated. ## Why people recommend it - Vast free repository of knowledge (5 comments): "Multi-language repository of basically all human knowledge that’s extremely resistant to government capture and contributed by volunteers totally transparently?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46102692)) "It's a miracle that in a world where everything becomes a service, proprietary and cloud based, you can download a collective human knowledge" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46637878)) "I worry that people don't understand how important Wikipedia and Wikimedia are to not only a large percentage of the world" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45937275)) - Citation and sourcing rules (5 comments): "the fact-checking processes that go into validating articles written on wikipedia does more to unbias the articles than like, 90% of the news media" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48301723)) "the reason people treat Wikipedia as a valuable resource is exactly because it won't publish anything indiscriminately" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48785297)) "If you want population statistics or whatever, Wikipedia will tell you and link to the country's own official metrics." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46894360)) - Relatively neutral via consensus (3 comments): "its value is still considerable, of course -- there are far more neutral things than controversial ones, and most of the articles about those are fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50175169)) "one of the more neutral point-of-view sources on the internet these days given its wide range of editors and consensus process" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47499240)) "Wikipedia will win against a generic corporate encyclopedia on neutrality/oversight, but it'll lose badly on UX" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47558899)) - Transparent, open moderation (3 comments): "Multi-language repository of basically all human knowledge that’s extremely resistant to government capture and contributed by volunteers totally transparently?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46102692)) "I think a large part of that is due to moderation actions being very public and open for discussion on the "talk" page." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46528949)) "by insisting on citing reliable sources, no original research, setting up a whole system of moderators and governance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45780659)) ## What people warn about - Ideological bias on politics (4 comments): "I hesitate to use Wikipedia as a source given all the anti-Israel bias lately, but that particular section seems okay-ish for now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806329)) "Wikipedia is ideological. Even when the articles stick to the facts (which they often don't), editors will selectively omit inconvenient (but factually true) information to push their ideology." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46643065)) "Wikipedia is an aggregate of "reliable sources" (read: left wing media outlets) and as such cannot be trusted as a source of fact in political matters." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47141183)) - Controversial topics manipulated by groups (4 comments): "The Wikipedia pages on those specific topics (Ukraine, Gaza, BLM) is known to be have been manipulated by groups of editors acting in coordination" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46641367)) "State actors, company security departments, activists, etc influence and seemingly control the more meaningful/controversial Wikipedia sections." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389385)) "it has many serious flaws (generally of the form that a small number of zealots can control the messaging on topics they are obsessed with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900782)) - Unqualified or hostile administrators (3 comments): "Wikipedia is bogged down by administrators who are average Joes, often from the other side of the planet and with very little first-hand knowledge" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987880)) "Unqualified people have the power to tell experts who were there that their contributions are insignificant, wrong, or that details don't matter." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46635627)) "I constantly had to deal with obnoxious behaviour on there from administrators who kept enshittifying content and leaving me rude messages." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49962568)) - Inaccurate on expert topics (3 comments): "I find wikipedia is really vulnerable to Gell-Mann Amnesia where any article about a topic on which you are very familiar has blatantly incorrect information" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50174829)) "Wikepedia, the most untrustworthy source ever, cases and cases of people who gained access to the article and completely changed it with fake information" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534543)) "Wikipedia is a great resource and I use it a lot, but it is far from a complete solution for topics with any depth." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842644)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Grokipedia](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grokipedia.md): 52 recommend - [Local Wikipedia](https://hackerapproved.com/p/local-wikipedia.md): 45 recommend - [Britannica11.org](https://hackerapproved.com/p/britannica11-org.md): 14 recommend - [Wikidata](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wikidata.md): 13 recommend - [Wiktionary](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wiktionary.md): 12 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.wikipedia.org/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Wikipedia", https://hackerapproved.com/p/wikipedia/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).