Originally Posted by modestmelody

As a student at Brown University, I can tell you we almost unequivocally jump to Wikipedia as a starting point. Sure there is misinformation out there, but most of that is easy to catch. There is no better resource if you want to get a quick idea about a subject (much like people used Encyclopedias for in the past), and I often end up clicking through source links to learn more about the subject. Actually, with humanities/social science, the description of theories, etc., is typically quite good. With science, I find the articles to be either too in depth or too broad, but the sources are often quite useful, and if nothing else, I gain a better sense of what I should be searching for if my initial query didn't quite bring up what I was looking for.

Overally, I give Wikipedia a huge thumbs up and I only wish that I contributed more to this fantastic resource.

Honestly, who uses an encyclopedia to do much more than get a basic grasp/figure out what it is you should be looking into on a topic? Wikipedia is great for just that function...