Google was decent at one point. The true enshittification only started to be felt in earnest ~2015.

Before that there were books and index searches at the library. You would go pull, say, 11 books on Robespierre and the French Revolution. Then systematically index search each one for relevant info to research and write up whatever you were writing up. Same with journal papers though they had their own search devices and were typically housed in those cool rolling stacks.

Wiki is user based. Anyone can write or modify anything on a wiki. There are mostly good intentioned players, but even so. I’m sure thee are people who sidle in to tweak their own Wikis or have a publicist create it. I’m old enough it’s never been my go to unless I’m looking up media. What year did Baldurs Gate come out? Who wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer? What was JJ Abrams involvement with Fringe? What episode of TNG was Picard taken hostage and tortured with the lights? That sort of thing. That said, if you find something is lacking in a wiki, you can fix it yourself.