[craig-faber]

I think the fact that people know that Wikipedia can't be completely trusted makes for healthy skepticism. People are far too willing to trust print sources written by experts, or too assume the author must be an expert because they got a book published.

College textbooks, for instance, are full of minor unintentional errors. Textbook authors rely heavily on secondary sources and simply can't double check all their sources when they're trying to summarize an entire field, and more errors creep in when they're summarizing other people's summaries.

People use Wikipedia as a starting point to find information, but usually have sense enough to double check it before they assume it's true. They should do the same with books too.