The Value of Wikipedia

I think that wikipedia is extremely helpful to anyone doing research. I personally do not use it as a source, however it is a great place to go to learn a general idea about the topic and to find links to more credible sites, rather than having to wade through the results found when looking on the web with a search engine. Academically, this makes wikipedia useful, but, due to the open-content imput, someone cannot and should not use it as a source for factual information on an academic paper. The open-content does allow for very up-to-date news and such, however I think that any user should go into wikipedia knowing that the content might not always be correct or unbiased. At the end of the day though, I think it is more helpful than harmful, and allows knowledge to be access freely and without the bias that one would get if they were looking things up in a book and anything that gives people a chance to learn more or to become interested in something new sounds good to me.