So obviously, there's an inherent lack of trust with the Wiki concept... since anyone can edit a wiki at any time, the information available can't be trusted to be from anyone or contain correct information about anything

Then why does openSUSE use wiki software on their download page? Does anyone else see the obvious issue?
http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version

So I'm thinking to myself... okay, maybe there's a PGP signature to verify the .iso's... and no, there isn't. There's MD5, but hey! That's wiki'd too!

All it takes is an 8 dollar typojack and a malicious ISO to ruin someone's day.