Re:I beg to differ (Score 2, Interesting)

It's only stupid to look at Wikipedia first if you have poor media literacy and don't know how to read it analytically (but then, in that case, you'd probably do poorly on a normal websearch as well.)

A pretty large portion of my websearches are out of idle curiosity or unimportant research (like fact-checking for a frivolous hobby purpose). For these purposes, going directly to Wikipedia is often quicker, easier, and freer of ads than a Google search. A scan of recent Wikipedia lookups on my laptop shows stuff like "American Gladiators," "Caffiene," "Somerville, MA," "Radiohead," "Woodrow Wilson" -- all topics for which I had, at best, passing interest at the time I looked them up.

When I'm interested in something more in-depth, Wikipedia's list of references and links can often provide a starting point of resources to consider that have already been pre-scanned by a human being. For a hot-button issue, it won't help me, but for, I dunno, Islamic democracy (a relevant, modern topic) it provides me with a starting point of links and article references that I can check and judge the validity of myself.

For really, really important stuff it definitely wouldn't be my first (or second, or third) choice, but then... how often do you do really, really important stuff on the Internet compared to how often you want to know what year "Like a Prayer" came out or what the population density of Iowa is?