[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Epaminondas said:

Uh-nu-Buh,

I did briefly glance through the Wikipedia article but you have to understand that Wikipedia articles are not always to be taken seriously. They are seldom written by experts in the field, and in fact any Joe Shmoe can enter his 5 cents.

True, that's why they/we have citations. In a study done a few months ago, a random sampling of articles in both a regular encyclopedia written by experts and wikipedia were shown to have an almost comparable number of errors.

Aside from that, it pretty much says what you said--except it shows several different perspectives: i.e. this historian believes this (citation), this other historian believes something different (citation), etc. It also shows the history of the history: e.g. Herodotus believed it was about 5.3 million men including logistics personnel; Simonides gave a figure of ~4 million; Ctesias, a Persian historian, reported ~800,000; the list goes on into contemporary times giving schools of thought. Here are a small sampling of excerpts. Note that they are all accompanied by citations in the article.

"One school of thought rejects the figures given in ancient texts as exaggerations on the part of the victors"

"A second school contends that ancient sources do give realistic numbers. "

"Dr. Manousos Kampouris argues that Herodotus' 1,700,000 for the infantry plus 80,000 cavalry (including support) is realistic for various reasons"

"On the other hand, Christos Romas believes that the Persian troops accompanying Xerxes were a little over 400,000."

I've written/edited/contributed to several articles on wikipedia (cars, japanese archery, various authors, literature) so I know what you say is true: any dork can write anything they want. That is backed by the Colbert-mania elephant extravaganza and etc. However, if the article says something that you disagree with you can check the citations and read the discussions in the meta-article to see if there is any disagreement or controversy. To me, and many others, this lends/gives/assures credence/quality to the system.