Encyclowars
There's been a war of words going on for some time about the value, or lack of it, of Wikipedia. Tim Bray's writings on the subject do a great job of summing up the arguments, and I'm with Tim all the way. Wikipedia has become my first port of call when I'm looking for data, and only if what's there isn't satisfactory, I look elsewhere. Of course, as with any summarising secondary source, I'm well aware that when it really matters I need to go further in my research.
One huge benefit of Wikipedia that I haven't really seen mentioned is the availability of metaknowledge. What I mean by that is that every page has 'discussion' and 'history' buttons so that beyond the 'finished' article I can see how the article has evolved over time, and what discussions have led to that evolution. In fact I've now taken to looking at the discussion page for most articles I read allowing me to instantly take the temperature of the intellectual environment around a topic.
Take for example the article on male circumcision. As you'll see at the top, the wars over what to write have become so heated that the page has been locked down. Reading the discussion section, and getting a sense of how extremely held the various positions are, and how loaded most of the research is, is far more valuable to me than a blandly 'neutral' article that attempts to avoid controversy.
Today someone used the term 'collectivist' as a criticism of the work of Paulo Freire. I had no clear sense of why 'collectivist' would be used as a pejorative term. The article on collectivism gives me a hint, but the talk page makes it crystal clear right at the top. (Incidentally the talk page on Paulo Freire has some material not deemed good enough yet for the main article, an example of emergent quality control in action).
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