Wikipedia Article Process

The process of creating my Wikipedia article brought me back to basic research, albeit done digitally.

There was very little material available on the internet on my subject, 1930's food media personality George Rector.

I ended up resorting to newspaper archives, primarily the New York Times, since Mr. Rector achieved his greatest fame in that city.

Google was only useful once, when I checked Google Books for Rector books, and found a contemporary review from Kirkus.  This was helpful because the Kirkus website does not include the full texts of old reviews.

I found this of note while reading up on my first attempt at posting an article:  "In general, sources with NO editorial control are not reliable."

Does Wikipedia have editorial control?  I suppose a Wikipedian would argue that it has after-the-fact editorial control, because if something wrong or biased is posted, someone else will eventually see it.  Wikipedia considers other old fashioned, top-down edited sources of information more reliable than sources without editorial control, but does Wikipedia consider itself a reliable source?  I assume so, because it tells people making posts to include sources and references.  But somehow this seems somewhat circular.

Wikipedia seems to make it difficult to find the link to post new articles.  Then it gives you lots of warnings, before allowing you to post a new article.  I think I have gotten fewer warnings when erasing the hard drive on my computer.

I suspect Wikipedia rightly assumes that there is more need for peer editing, than for new articles, so it may bias its user interface in favor of editing, instead of editorial expansion.