I don't use Wikipedia as a serious reference source but I do use it to find out what things mean that I read on LJ. I used Wikipedia to look up what "shipper" and "Mary Sue" meant. I read these terms right after the last Harry Potter book came out and was clueless. Wikipedia to the rescue.

But even the founder says that some of the entries are 'a horrific embarrassment' and there are messages on some entries that say, "This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality."

To test Wikipedia's accuracy, several experts were asked to rate the Wikipedia entry about their fields of expertise. So can you really trust Wikipedia? Some entries rated: Basque people, Samuel Pepys and TS Eliot.