OK, I admit I use Wikipedia all the time. It's a great jumping off point for doing research. Like any encyclopedia, it should never be used as a primary source, because, well, because it isn't one. If I need to quickly know a factoid about a country, or the date something happened, and the need for verification is not high, it's great. For pop culture, it is awesome.
Here's the problem. It's too dang open. Not in the sense that anybody can edit it. That's not what I mean. I understand the philosophy behind the project. But it is too open in the sense that its content is too transportable. I'm trying to do research into the history of Halloween, and it's many cultural analogs throughout the world. Wikipedia gave me a great list to start from, and some external links to follow for more carefully reviewed and edited sources. But every time I try to find out more about some items, I come across countless pages that are simply cuts and pastes from Wikipedia. Or perhaps wikipedia author stole something from somewhere, pasted it and then it has been endlessly redistributed. It's so dang hard to verify something, when there is just this huge circular chain of citations. No wonder it is so hard to explain the concept of plagiarism to middle school students.
I like the idea of open knowledge. I applaud wikipedia for its admirable mission. But this only goes to show why there are such things as copyrights, peer reviews, accountability, editorial oversight and the authority of established publishing houses and academia. When anybody can publish, anybody can publish garbage. When you have to work in order to get published, you'll do some work!
Case in point. I came across Nos Galan Gaeaf, a Welsh analog of Halloween. All I want is to use it in a word search that the kids in my R.E. class can take home with them. For that purpose, a citation in Wikipedia will do. But I want to A) know how it is pronounced, and B) know enough about it to field any questions. All I get are the same two or three wordings, repeated endlessly over the internet. Doubtless, if I searched long and hard enough, or got off my rear end and drove three hours to a university-level library I could find the answer. The answer is out there, and probably just sitting on a Welsh culture website somewhere. But it's a pearl buried in a sea of rubbish.
The Internet needs an editor.