One of the significant complaints about Wikipedia is that there is no reliable way to assess the quality of an individual entry. A new research shows that the length of the article is a very good indicator of quality. Entries longer than 1,830 (or about 2,000) words, i.e. the length of a decent essay, are usually fairly good quality. Of course, there are many other factors that contribute to the reliability of information (it could be that one bit of information in a good article that is wrong or was vandalised) but that is the same for any other sources of information. In the meantime we have a good 'first-glance' metric at our disposal.

Wired Campus: In Wikipedia, Length Matters - Chronicle.com The magic word-count cut-off seemed to be 1,830 words, above which articles were likely to be higher-quality, featured entries.