Wikipedia *IS* a generally reliable source for a lot of things. The reason isn't because "it's quite correct on some things" but rather because it's peer reviewed content derived from peer-reviewed sources.

Just the other day I was researching some stuff for an article about Pre-biotic earth -- I was reading the page about the Miller-Urey experiment and found some misinformation that linked over to AnswersInGenesis; I edited the page, corrected the information, cited my source, and saved it! Problem solved.

I see no reason for it to not be used in K-12 papers, provided it's not their only information source; People should still learn how to do formal research through dead-tree-edition media. They also shouldn't cite content from Wikipedia that doesn't have a cited source itself.

Here's a good compromise -- use Wikipedia to find your information, find the source cited, and then go find that original source and use IT for your research / bibliography. 

Wiki usually lists sources at the bottom of the page.  Anybody worth half a damn can follow those links to see if they're legit, or if they lead to actual sources.

If Wiki doesn't list a source, I typically regard it is possibly true.  I agree that it should not be allowed as a primary source.

I posted a link in another forum about a kind of arachnid found in the high desert in this county. I told them to ignore the top of the page. Why?

"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"

is what somebody wrote there. My fear is that I'll get a page that's been vandalized in less obvious terms. Especially on controversial issues like religion, you've got to expect believers to get in there and alter a few buried, but significant, parts of an article. 

Perhaps you will come across a page vandalized in that way. Fortunately there are people dedicated to maintaining Wikipedia and while they are not perfect, combined with user initiative vandalism is usually doubt with very quickly. I recall once that my brother searched a page on Wikipedia once and the content was missing expect for two words I can't remember. They were not polite. I loaded the page from my computer to see it for myself and it had already been restored. Pages that are vandalized often, or seem like targets for vandalism are locked so that they can only be edited by permission. Boards exist for the pages when they contain questionable material and for other issues to be debated out.

Wikipedia has its obvious flaws, but I think it is a great resource overall.

Three words

Stephen Colbert Elephants

Yes its on wiki... 

Wikipedia is worthless.  Here's a better compromise:  Go to a library, and read a book, and forget all about wikipedia.  How about that?  I think that is a lot more respectable.

 I totally agree Rook.

doublepost

I can't help but think that people who claim that wikipedia is "worthless" don't actually know much about wikipedia. Like others here have said, wikipedia is maintained by a dedicated community, vandalism is quickly (and easily) corrected, and bad articles are almost always marked as such. All one has to do is look at the article in Nature comparing Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Brittanica which found that wikipedia is nearly as accurate. The advantage, of course, to Wikipedia, is that errors can be corrected immediately, instead of having to wait for the next edition.

The moral of the story, of course, is that you need to use more than one source! And as someone else mentioned, wikipedia makes a great starting point for research, as most articles cite and link to sources.

People editing Wikipedia still have to comb through pages of data, then independently research loads of figures, timelines, statistics, etc., all for free. If edits had to go through this moderation process first, it would be a different story (and a much smaller site); but, if even obvious vandalism can slip through, at any given time, it's difficult as a user to know whether seemingly innocuous claims have been falsified or altered.

I like Wikipedia, but I generally confined my use of it to referring people to things I already know about on entries I would be able to spot errors in.

When the comes to contraversial subjects be warned.

For example check the Mithraism. You can see the Christians did a major clean-up 22/Aug/2007. Nothing was moved to a new page, just similarities between Christianity and Mithraism were deleted. The following discussion was interesting to read...

I like wikipedia for some things, but If I had get a grade on a paper, I'm not too sure I would personally use that source to help me pass...