A WebmasterWorld thread named Wikipedia gets too many high rankings shows one members dissatisfaction with Google ranking Wikipedia too well in Google results. For those of you who do not know what Wikipedia is, it is basically the largest wealth of knowledge maintained by volunteers online today. Basically, contributing writers, it can be you and me, add/edit/delete content from the Wikipedia. Since its open to anyone, it is susceptible to spam, but since anyone can then edit it, it is often corrected and cleaned quickly.
One member has a great two liner, explaining Wikipedia and wikis;
The bad thing of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. :( The good thing of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. :)
Now, Google knows this, and must deem Wikipedia an authority on any topic it covers. Hence it ranks well. Besides for the authoritative status; it has lots of fresh content (new pages and updated pages daily), the content is all unique, there are tons of links pointing to the site and its fast loading (to name a few of the hundreds of variables).
