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That Wikipedia was unreliable
I mean when writing an essay you should really be sourcing from the original source not Wikipedia, good thing Wikipedia lists the original source the info came from so you can just use that. (Unlike some websites the teacher said were better then Wikipedia which were just full of unchecked bullshit)
But for everything else Wikipedia is great
They should have always been teaching to use Wikipedia as a beginning of research. Go to wiki, follow the cited sources and follow those cited searches if anything was referenced.
There was always a double standard though compared to something like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Pre-internet, for practicality, you couldn't really check the cited sources on Britannica, so you took it as word of god. They're a major publication! Huge money and people who wear suits and monocles wrote it! Posh British sounding name! How could they be wrong?
Except that when researchers compared Britannica to Wikipedia for inaccuracies, they found Britannica to contain a much higher rate. So why did Britannica keep being held in higher regard? Pure appeal to authority.
Some wikipedia articles have been edited by science/history deniers/fascists/liars and it is difficult to determine if whats written at any point is true or edited. Thats where the statement comes from.
It's never difficult. Wikipedia cites sources. It's very easy to check if any piece of information has citations and what those citations are.
There have been some very long lived hoaxes on Wikipedia, but they're basically the exception that proves the rule. Nothing is infallible.