Wiki

It's mostly accurate, especially for scientific and technical matters where it's difficult for someone who doesn't understand a subject to sabotage it convincingly. Check the references and edit history of a page if you have doubts.

The idea that anyone can edit it so you can't trust it is one of those beliefs that comes under "it makes sense so it must be true", but making sense doesn't make it real. I've found Wikipedia to be about as accurate as the Encyclopædia Britannica and usually more comprehensive.

I get that anyone can edit the Wikipedia to say whatever they want, but it's also worth bearing in mind that anyone can write a book saying whatever they want. And Wikipedia has the advantage over a book in that if you publish something that's demonstrably wrong, someone else can fix it, whereas if you publish a book that is demonstrably wrong (for instance one of the dozens of tomes purporting to cure autism or dyslexia) there's very little anyone can do to directly counter your work beyond publishing an opposing work (which people might not be aware of or choose to buy) or setting fire to any copies they find in bookshops (maybe do it in the alley behind the shop though).

I wouldn't cite Wikipedia as my primary source for an academic work unless I was making points specifically about the Wikipedia, but I'd certainly feel happy starting my research there and using the sources they reference as a jumping off point for further investigation. And as a non-academic, I find it a reasonable enough source of information on subjects I find interesting, particularly as I know there are people out there who make it their business to chase down malicious and inaccurate edits.

It's like any other source - there's no reason not to basically trust it, as long as you take everything with a pinch of salt and do further investigation when reading up on something that matters.

Baemax is right, never cite Wikipedia as a source unless doing a piece of academic work on Wikipedia itself! When we did our dissertations, our lecturer told us to use Wikipedia if we want to, to find references to proper pages where you can get the proper information from rather than write and quote directly from Wikipedia and may be saying stuff that is not factually correct by how someone has typed it.

I should have my own Wikipedia page

I'm not quite sure how to take that, other than being fairly certain it's an insult?!

Good points raised.

Also why would someone want to edit something that is "incorrect", they're not going to increase their credibility, so those people would rather go on social media and have the knowledge, security and kudos of people following them. Big companies and fans also ensure that information is correct.

Someone said this to me the other day, yourtypical Daily Mail reader, who hates anything Goggle, Apple or American, the sort of person who is mourning the loss f the empire.

So your views are enlightening.