Authorities of Inaccuracy

There has been much talk about the validity of Wikipedia lately. Many critics of Wikipedia have been using Encyclopaedia Britannica as the gold standard of information. What I was teaching in Universities, one of the first things I told my students was not to use any encyclopaedia, not Britannica, not Encarta, not World Book, nothing. The reason is that the accuracies in these books are highly unreliable. The facts are often wrong; and when they are not wrong, they are incomplete, mind-bogglingly over simplistic and generally confusing. To say that they are useless is an understatement. People read an entry in Britannica and think they have learnt whatever that is. The sad thing is that they have learnt nothing, if lucky. The problem behind encyclopaedias is that they hide behind their supposed authority. It would be much healthier, if people must use such sources of reference, to keep the inaccurate and unreliable nature of them in mind. I think therefore Wikipedia is the far more useful tool. Its inherent shortcomings are upfront and clear. Any inaccurate information is subjected to open correction. It may not have the air of authority as Britannica, at least it does not try to pretend to be authoritative and thus mislead its reader.