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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/2407
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

From my own experience Wikipedia is very credible. In 2005 already it has been compared to [Encyclopedia Brittanica](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html) I am always amazed when people start complaining about the quality of Wikipedia. The idea behind wikipedia is that it is managed by the community. If you find an error, just correct it. The success of wikipedia lies in the fact that people do edit.

Regarding using wikipedia as an original source. Don't! That is to stop reading and cite. A well written wikipedia article contains various citations to resources to backup the assumptions. Use these references. There is an example where a scientific journal even requires its authors to also submit their content to Wikipedia (http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081216/full/news.2008.1312.html).

My general recipe to find proper reference and get a brief introduction into a novel topic is:

1. Read the Wikipedia article on the topic
2. Follow references of this Wikipedia article and read these articles.
3. Once I have some understanding on the topic I use a scientific literature search engine to fine additional references. Scholar is just one of these services, but depending on the topic there is [Pubmed](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/), [ACM](http://portal.acm.org/), and many others
4. Browse social networks on citations like [CiteULike](http://www.citeulike.org/) and [Connotea](http://www.connotea.org/)

So the main message would be yes, Wikipedia is credible, but like with the scientific literature don't take one source for granted and look for alternatives

just my 2cts

EDIT This might be an interesting read on this topic: [http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000941](http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000941)

Original score: 2