Quote Originally Posted by Dhampir
Encyclopedia present only factual synthesis. They are utterly useless for academic work when you need interpretative and primary source material.
exactly my point.
Wikipedia is useful as a source of links and sometimes even for secundary literature. I have the impression that it might be quite informative in the electronics/physics/chemistry and botanics sector (at least data on natural sciences I have to take as given ) but I found it more than questionable in terms of the humanities. Here it's more prone to smug smattering and interpretation...