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by pdpi 1426 days ago
> The university departments i'm aware of still don't allow citing wikipedia and explicitly cover it as bad style.

It's worth noting that Wikipedia is not special in this regard — those same departments probably also consider it bad style to cite Britannica (and, if they don't, they should).

Encyclopaedias are meant to be starting points for research, not the ultimate destination. Editors, both of Wikipedia and otherwise, are not expected to be subject matter experts, which is why the guidance on Wikipedia is that you're not even supposed to use primary sources as reference, but rather secondary sources[0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...