I sense my reply may not fly around here with some:
With the possible exception of some TV shows (even then as soon as I find a good site not masked by javascript/flash everywhere this ends) all my searches attempt to eliminate wikipedia. @Guild McCommunist is it really so hard to add site:.edu somewhere in your search string?
If someone is foolish enough to quote wikipedia as a source it will be a very short interaction. If am marking "schoolwork" I will fail them assuming I am not bound by protocol not to (even then harsh marking is an understatement).
Salting the site- never done it myself (never touched it for that matter) but no moral qualms if someone does do it. It is usually fairly evident when someone has used it making that somewhat unnecessary. Were I to salt it then accurate but obscure wording would be my chosen line rather than outright misinformation. Blacklisting the site and those that feed from it is not only acceptable but commendable for such an institution- they exist to teach and wikipedia in the current incarnation has little place in teaching.
QUOTE said:
As for vandalism, most important pages are locked from edits (such as the pages of key people and events in history) and there are thousands of people undoing edits daily. Even then, most vandalism is obvious. Vandals aren't smart enough, most of the time, to make an edit that looks legit. Usually they'll just wipe the page with "____ LOVES DICK IN THEIR MOUTH LOLOLOL" or just insert stupid crap that's obviously fake.
I am reminded at this stage of the mid-late 90s definition of a computer hacker and similar the expected security of [computing] technology. Here we would not expect the internals of an operating system to be available to all and there are thousands of man hours spend in securing the system.
Even then most hacks are obvious and they will usually do something silly like insert a funny wallpaper. In a more clarified manner yes anyone can edit but but seen as the entire site is little more than an open forum and most of us here are familiar with given categories of forum user......... Similarly I can buy accounts for any number of sites and while I am far too lazy for such things there are those who are paid quite handsomely for abilities along those lines- how is wikipedia possibly immune to this.
Use for sources- better but still quite dangerous. My usual example here (not necessarily for wikipedia but for sources in general) but I will usually pick a discredited line of research/study (say phrenology*) and back it up- there is a reason people fall for phishing sites and it follows to sources as well. Panzer Tacticer's post carries through this as well.
*while that has long been discredited you have many more modern "alternative" medicines and worse subversions of existing practices (chiropractic medicine is suffering quite badly under this)
Any trouble with this amplifies many times should you go in for history (see revisionist history or more simply the "history is written by the winners/survivors" phrase) and even more for anything resembling a moral issue* (hint there are rarely just two sides to an argument) and even worse for matters of religion.
*science is pushing many frontiers these days so it is far from free here- genetic engineering, animal testing, nuclear physics, human influenced global scale climate alteration are the obvious ones and if you care to name another area I am sure you can find someone willing to rail against it (often citing their magic book and/or using all the techniques of someone unskilled at debate- how quickly would something like Chernobyl be referenced in a debate against nuclear power, now ask yourself what merit does it have).
As a grounding- I wish it were possible to avoid saying something as trite as what you first learn is hard to forget but it is true for many people (a simple test for yourself is how hard did you find it when old concepts were thrown out for more accurate but more complex ones- contact friction is the same for all surface areas is not true for many plastics as anyone with a ladder might tell you). Equally troublesome is confirmation of bad knowledge or "I think this is how something works I will just check".
It is tempting in such a debate to find examples (there are more than a few
http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=wikiped...&source=osd being something of a start) but such things tend to quickly devolve into use of extremes which I feel would undermine the more dangerous lower level misinformation. Similar while we might stand a chance of debating accuracy of information "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" teaches us a valuable lesson and best of luck to anyone who wishes to argue that wikipedia is a shining example of good grammar.
Courtesy of the above and more I usually find it to be less hassle in the long run to avoid the site as best I can. To end my debate I shall say "use wikipedia and similar "open" information sites all you wish but know that unlike "good" sources you have absolutely no recourse if something goes wrong as a result using it. The internet may have made information free but finding it is still where the trick is".
It would be remiss of me to slate the site and not provide some options. Others mentioned that school is not necessarily about learning things and techniques but giving the impression you have which is sad but true (the fact that the term "exam technique" exists serves only to highlight it)- it is up to you how you play it though
Geography stats, figures and the like:
CIA world factbook:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
Science and engineering
Figure out the TLDs of the varying educational institutes in the world (.edu is one, .ac.uk is another or simply drop wikipedia from the search (quite a few educational sites do have .org as a TLD).
Similarly try to find a revision site (beware things like (electron) current going the opposite way in electronics and use of systematic chemical naming (toluene is methyl benzene for instance) on American sites)- everyone from universities through to exam boards have them at every level you can think of.
History
History is all about sources (far more so than any other intellectual pursuit in my experience). For an "unlimited" scope for sources assignment there usually are still limits- someone who was there, someone who has later researched the event and someone with some physical evidence.
Languages
For the given languages the previous suggestions hold, for foreign (to your location) it can get more tricky until you get to the point where you are "thinking" in said language (sadly usually after you leave education in languages).
Computing-
There are any number of other sites that have information, tests and
For a basic "everything" site I would instead opt for
http://www.howstuffworks.com/ or
http://www.about.com/ or one of the many other peer reviewed type sites (various ones wax and wane as time passes).
