Can I have moment of your time

I found out that the term "Libertarian" was not first used by Socialistic Anarchist through Wiki. Neat as Pete's pick turning.

is fine as a quick, cursory reference.

In fact my understanding is the majority of Wikipedia is edited by a dedicated team of people.

What I think you SHOULD have said is don't treat Wikipedia as an authority on facts.

Again, as a cursory reference it's great. If something doesn't quite seem accurate that's when you go to actual encyclopedias or other more suitable sources for authoritative accuracy.

Yea there's some bad information on Wiki, but a lot of it is sourced. Keep an open mind and don't take what you read/hear as "gospel" until you can confirm the sources yourself. Just because there is bad information on Wiki, does not mean that ALL information is bad on Wiki.

Here's some WikiPedia for you :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

I go to Wiki as a starting point for most things other than anything to do with Israel or anything or any body who does not swollow recent history, or has contradicting evidence outside of mainstream propaganda.

amazing wealth of information for me. It seems that critics of it tend to operate with a misconception that there is a source, somewhere out there, of the "actual" or "real" or "right" truth (dysfunctional Aristotelian concept that seems to promote intolerance). In the real world all things are always debatable and all sources are interpretations of data by unique human individuals. Change is constant. All information is always subject to change as information increases. We have no full knowledge, and therefore, no permanent truth on any one thing but we do our best as we continue striving for something closer to it. Wikipedia is not perfect, but, it may be a perfect reminder to us about the nature of "truth." Always check sources. Rather than to accept information as fact, perhaps it may better benefit one to view it in percentages of probability.

The chaos welcomes you.

Honestly, I wouldn't be so radical yet.

I agree that as with any other sources, one has to be prudent. Or very prudent. But if I think of a few topics about which I had gathered a lot of information outside of WP (when not hands on experience), I can say you can still find fairly objective content on there.

It really depends on the topics at hands. The more factual and many more outgoing links to other records on the WWW are a good indicator of the overall objectivity, beyond the history of disputes on the page. Usually, you'll have to make your average out of the conflicts they will have with each other, then.

Some hard sciences are very well served by WP, others much less. It is very variable.

As for "softer" sciences (history, sociology, politics, economics, etc) well, granted: the greatest care is expected from the reader's side.

Just a guess, but if I had to bet, I'd say WP is overall more objective than snopes.com for instance, which I find more and more suspect/partisan as time goes. Or downright dumbing down at times. I stopped using that one long ago.

Just IMO.

Good points.