Wikipedia. So...how accurate is it?

I like browsing it for casual information, but I don't use it as a credible source for researching scholarly stuff. One of my history professors said that a research paper he was given by a student was word for word what was written on Wikipedia, and he said he found a lot of inaccuracies on that particular page (I think it was a WW2 topic).

Another professor said stuff similar to other peeps here, what's to stop a guy from writing things one way, and trying to make it a fact? What if the kingdom of France according to most accredited historians existed in the 11th century, but some guy wants it to have been established in the 7th century and then edits it accordingly?

And yeah, I've seen some interesting stuff before. While it's not as bad now (thanks to a bot that automatically reverts pages that get dramatically changed, but this is far from perfect), one time I looked up "dinosaur", and got a page saying that it's fake, and that God is going to punish people for saying all these lies and stuff.

Another interesting one I saw was "woman". The page I saw was basically "woman R teh Suq, they're bastages, etc, etc." apparently some guy got dumped recently and decided to get rid of everything that was written there, and replace it with what was essentially the online equivalent of graffiti.

Maybe in like 50 years it'll be credible enough to be a respectable source. But until then, if you cite wikipedia as a reliable source, and then the information is wrong, then you'll look like an idiot, which is why professors increasingly don't accept wikipedia sources (it might be okay for a general overview, but don't rely solely on them).

Jam it back in, in the dark.