A Major Rant

I can't really think of a proper title for this rant. Bear with me while I let off steam.

Firstly, about banning Wikipedia from being cited in research papers. While even I, a devoted and extreme Wikipediholic, admit that Wikipedia content may not always be fully accurate, Britannica isn't fully accurate either, but it isn't usually banned. Besides, comparison with other encyclopedias is besides the point. Students with even a tiny little bit of research skills should know that checking just one source is or should be proscribed for good reasons. Students who get an assignment, go home, lazily switch on the computer and copy a paragraph or two off Wikipedia deserve to get a failing grade if the information turns out to be inaccurate. Is it really that difficult to search in Google, for goodness' sake? If such students then turn to educators and whine, "But I got it off Wikipedia!", well, who's to blame? Wikipedia for being inaccurate? Educators for not banning it? The students, for goodness' sake. The students for being too lazy to check more than one source that isn't a Wikipedia mirror. Educators taking this issue into their own hands instead of letting students who can't be bothered to do a Google search suffer the consequences just encourages research irresponsibility and laziness, the very laziness many of these aforementioned educators are complaining about in the first place. Is it really that difficult to trust students to do their own research?
Besides, even though many students prohibited from citing Wikipedia in research papers shouldn't be citing encyclopedias at all instead of primary and secondary sources, what on earth is wrong with using them as a tool to gain understanding of a topic before doing more in-depth research? Plunging into assignments shows enthusiasm but can be unhelpful or even misleading if students still lack fundamental knowledge of a topic. So where do they get this fundamental knowledge? Encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, of course!
Secondly, anti-Wikipedians often demonstrate an utter lack of any type of corroboration so deep it's tempting to ask if they've ever heard of research. Take this example from a forum:

the wikipedia is people make up stories one la.

Well, well. If this person had checked more than ONE entry on Wikipedia WITHOUT that ridiculous anti-wiki bias, he/she would realise that no, the majority of entries on Wikipedia do not consist of people making up stories. It's hilarious, really, when one disentangles oneself from the issue, to see how some anti-Wikipedians delude themselves in such a blatant manner.
Thirdly, why do people gripe so much about Wikipedia's accuracy when if they had bothered to do a tiny little bit of research, they would have found that far from being the spotless picture of perfection many imagine it to be Britannica, what many people consider to be the epitome of accuracy (as opposed to Wikipedia, *tsk tsk*), contains (gasp) errors too, which nobody at all seems to be complaining about? They're obviously just unnerved by the idea of "an encyclopedia that anyone can edit", so in their misguided eagerness to support their fundamentally flawed point of view they make foundationally imperfect and even blatantly erroneous comparisons that nobody has bothered to investigate. Oh, well. It's what happens when people are so opposed to any hint of change they prize stagnancy despite its obvious flaws.