Godless Knowledge

As received wisdom would have it, Wikipedia is not to be trusted. Oh shock and horror.
This tiresome faux-truism is finger-waggingly trotted out by idle hacks, quite regularly enough for unquestioning minds to be scared off. These soothsayers are kindred spirits with anyone who seeks to assert their intellectual credentials by declaring that they watch no television, since it's full of trash. Both viewpoints are almost heartbreakingly ironic. What they are in fact asserting proudly to the world is that they don't have a shitfilter to speak of, and therefore can neither sift and watch TV discriminatingly nor pick through any article if it commits any sins of misinformation or subjectivity. Presumably, real dictionaries like the Britannica are paragons of objectivity laid down on stone tablets.
But Wikipedia does not purport to be 100% accurate. It may be more prone to factual error (albeit not even by much) or authorial bias and prey to vandalism than professionally composed information sources, but to judge it on the same criteria is misguided and fruitless. What Wikipedia is (and I admit to this use quite shamelessly) is an excellent starting point for any serious research. The links provided in the articles offer a pointer as to where to go next, but naturally other sources should also be consulted. No research worth its salt relies on only one source, which is somehow an approach its critics seem to think Wikipedia promotes, despite its built-in capacity to signpost articles as being under dispute and to have content edited rapidly and openly.
Perhaps it's the ring of uncertainty that this approach gives out that so upsets its critics. It's just not gospel enough.