> taught to reject Wikipedia as an academic source What ends up happening is people (including academics in published work) still use Wikipedia as a source, bu

> taught to reject Wikipedia as an academic source What ends up happening is people (including academics in published work) still use Wikipedia as a source, but just don't mention it. This is much worse than just citing Wikipedia, because it can lead to "citogenesis", whereby a claim that originated (without evidence) in Wikipedia is then given credibility by being republished elsewhere. Sorting out what happened later is a huge pain, and many examples slip through the cracks. Overall, Wikipedia should be taken for what it is: a moderately inconsistent tertiary source written by pseudonymous volunteers some of whom are dispassionate world-class experts and others of whom are incompetent amateurs, ideologues, or trolls. However, what I've found tracking down lots of Wikipedia claims over the years is that Wikipedia is on average no less reliable than many other kinds of sources that are taken more seriously, including paper encyclopedias and peer-reviewed journal articles (and don't get me started on newspaper articles). Every source and author should be carefully evaluated for credibility and read with at least some skepticism.