Reverted etymologies

Yes, Wiktionary editors are expected to scrutinise sources and not just blindly copy things over. As for "who are we", the answer is very simple: we're the people responsible for the content of Wiktionary, so we get to decide whether we support the claims made by others or not.

Any editor could have a differing opinion, and an uninformed one at that. Why use subjective opinons when actual linguistic research has been done? It would be different if the sources themselves didn't agree, or if there were an alternate theory. But that's different from rejecting something because it doesn't seem right, while actual linguists specialising in that very area do think it's right, and thinking that the specialists could have missed some very basic thing.

Anyway, that's off-topic so I'll leave this whole conversation at that.

As a bit of background, the editor community here has previous experience with very clever trolls. So newcomers adding unfamiliar material immediately sets off alarm bells among those of us who have had to perform clean-up duty in the past. CodeCat is one of the more active editors here, and she's done a fair amount of clean-up.

This has less to do with whether the material you've added is itself researched, and more to do with whether we (broadly speaking) recognize you and the material you're adding. Unfamiliar editor + unfamiliar material == a high likelihood of another editor reverting or reworking those edits. Also, one thing to recognize is that Wiktionary has much fewer editors than Wikipedia -- so editors are much more likely to revert suspicious new content, simply because we're stretched much thinner and have less bandwidth for vetting and formatting new content. If you stick around, and the Wiktionary editing community can verify that you're working in good faith, and working from solid sources, you'll see much less reverting and reworking.