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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

There are enough copies of Wikipedia that if it has ever been down you could just get the same content elsewhere, so people don't usually make the same fuss about it that they would about AWS/Google/Microsoft.

AWS/Google being down for even a minute or two is a big deal though.

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How many people read Wikipedia other than from the main website? What's the source on that?

Prior to having a cellphone data plan (2013) I kept a copy of most Wikipedia articles on my laptop for use when traveling and being away from easy internet access.

Me? I've seen it down a couple times before, and when it was, I just Googled for another copy of the article instead of posting "Wikipedia is down! OMG the world is ending!" all over the internet as people do when AWS is down.

So that makes it anecdotal. I thought that's something others do as well. I personally don't even know where else to look for articles. I also don't trust other sources or possibly outdated mirrors.

Curious why do you trust (in cases where trust is even required) wikipedia ?

I am under the impression that anyone can build credit and write what they think is correct. Do you check the linked sources and verify as such ?

If it's a controversial topic (e.g. history of Tibet), yes.

If it's just an article about the history of pianos or CPUs or something, the probability of misinformation is much lower, the consequences of being misinformed are much lower, and I don't usually bother. Many times I just browse Wikipedia because I want to learn about weird animals or off-the-beaten-path places on Earth or culture or something like that.

(By the way, primary sources also sometimes have their drawbacks as well; they can often be politically motivated, biased and not tell you the full story, and Wikipedia is effectively peer-reviewed for a lot of articles.)

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