A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia

odyaws writes: "The New York Times has an article about the history department at Middlebury College banning Wikipedia citations as a research source, which came after a professor noticed half a dozen students making the same factual error on an exam. I'm as big a fan of Wikipedia as anyone, but as an academic I find the notion of citing it absurd. Does anyone think Wikipedia (or any encyclopedia) suitable for anything but casual information gathering or as a place to find links to source material?"