Wikipedia and Web 2.0

It is hard for me to understand why wikipedia is such a horrible site and that academics are so against it. Wikipedia is very useful to get a general idea of what a topic is. The reading says that you shouldn't use Wikipedia as a primary source for serious research. I thought everyone knew that though. Wikipedia can't be used for every fact you want to find at simply because anyone can go in and change the facts if they want to. The thing about that is, and Epley said this in class, that how come academics that see something wrong on Wikipedia don't fix it? It isn't hard to do just click edit and correct it. But the fact that they don't fix something and then say that Wikipedia is not a good source because everything on it isn't correct isn't helping anything. Another thing about Wikipedia that makes me think it is fairly reasonable is because every time you google search something Wikipedia is in the top five of your search. I think that Wikipedia will definitely be used more in the younger generations. This is because with so many people using the internet at some point professors are going to stop saying have five book sources and instead have five internet sources that you can track and make sure they are factual. On Wikipedia you can find out where the information that is posted comes from. If you really had to find out you would just have to go to the bottom of the page and follow the links to the real source. I see nothing wrong with Wikipedia and using it to find out more information about certain things. I think that professors banning it as a source really doesn't matter because students are going to use it anyway. Why? Because it is convenient and easy to use.