Although a basic principle of democracy is majority rule, that counts only on election day. In real life there are other serious factors.
In Usenet discussions several people cited Wikpedia. Wikpedia was wrong in those cases. It had "conventional wisdom" which many people share but did not delve deeply enough into an issue to have a proper conclusion.
Now you might ask why don't I correct the entries? I don't have the time nor interest to do so.
There are many things in life in which a large subset of people are passionately involved in, but that in itself does not make something 'right' or 'wrong'. Go into a sports bar and ask some football history -- you may or may not get an accurate answer despite having a large collection of sports-minded people right on the spot.
For example, as you know, I am a supporter of Amtrak. There is a subset of people who detest Amtrak (or actually the idea of passenger trains) and invest a great deal of time and effort being critical of it. Since they're arguments are all carbon copies of each other, it's easy to see they're coming from a single propaganda source which has its facts (IMHO) wrong. Similar subsets of people are reporting to Wikpedia and as you can see, that doesn't necessarily make the issue correct, rather, it's just what a passionate group of involved people believe is right at that particular moment.
For example: PBS just had on a documentary of Edward R. Murrow and McCarthy. We forget that back then a great many people were supportive of McCarthy and not very fond of Murrow, and critical of Murrow in some other segments he did. Today we think those Murrow critics were nuts, but back then they had quite a passionate following. It would be curious as to what Wikpedia would have said about the Communists in 1945 and 1950. With Communists supporters and critics both very passionate, we'd have various writing, but all of them -- on both sides -- would likely be wrong. (We know today the Communists and their critics were both wrong.)
[public replies, please]