Most students use Wikipedia, but there has been quite a backlash against it from academics. Here’s what a student needs to know.

1. Everybody uses Wikipedia all the time, including lecturers. It’s a great place to get an overview of a field, and it’s usually accurate, detailed, and up-to-date.
2. It’s not a peer-reviewed academic publication, so you really can’t cite it in your essays (Middlebury College actually banned citation of Wikipedia). But you really can’t go citing a printed encyclopedia either, or a dictionary, magazine, newspaper, press release, or blog. Read actual journal articles and books; you’re at university now.
3. Wikipedia’s policy is that all articles should cite other publications, and the reference list can be a great starting point for your own research. As Catherine Pellegrino nicely points out, Wikipedia aims to document every entry with reliable sources, the same sources lecturers want you to use.
4. Copy-pasting bits of Wikipedia into your assignments is bit stupid.

Many tech-savvy folks think that banning all citations of Wikipedia is silly. Alan Liu at UC Santa Barbara has a good policy which allows for citing Wikipedia “when the point being supported is minor, non-controversial, or also supported by other evidence.” But students who cite Wikipedia need to understand how to read discussion pages and history, how to judge the reliability of a page, and how to cite the exact version of the page they looked at. One of the best guides for students on how to use Wikipedia can be found at (no surprise) Wikipedia.