Today I Learned

Correct and not at the same time. I'll use Wikipedia as a source to hopefully show you that I'm in a position to understand some of the nuances.

1. Never, ever, ever cite Wikipedia in formal writing unless it's to cite some meta aspect of the project itself (such as "this article was 5879 words long as of 4 May 2025"). If you really do need to formally cite Wikipedia, always make sure to grab a permanent URL for the current revision.
2. If you already know a fact but just need it cited, look at the inline citation in the article, evaluate the source, and use it if it's to your liking.
3. You don't necessarily have to look at Wikipedia's sources at all if you don't want to. You can look at something stated on there then go out and try to find more in-depth information about it if we just cover it in a sentence or two with a shallow citation doing the bare minimum to support only what we say.
4. There are some subtle qualities to articles you only pick up on as an experienced editor, but here are some less vibes-based things: does the article have a little grey or blue padlock at the top right on desktop? Those are protection templates, and they prevent IPs and very new editors from changing the article. Is there a green circle or a bronze star at the top right on desktop? Those represent a good article and a featured article, respectively. A good article has been peer-reviewed by an experienced editor, and a featured article has been peer-reviewed by at least several highly experienced editors. These articles are routinely scrutinized to make sure they keep up their overall quality, and this status can be removed if they deteriorate.
5. Wikipedia legitimately has high standards for the information presented – way higher than when teachers were (absolutely correctly) panicking about students sourcing it in their writing. In 2012 – 13 years ago, when I would consider Wikipedia to have had much lower standards than it does today – it was found that its information about psychological disorders was of higher quality than Britannica and a psychiatry textbook. 2012 Wikipedia was still climbing its way out of the hole that Wikipedia stopped digging around 2006 when it implemented quality standards, and it's vastly better in 2025 than in 2012.
6. There's honestly nothing that wrong with using Wikipedia as a source in casual disputes over popular topics. For how many Mughal casualities there were in some obscure 1608 battle? Yeah, probably continue on to the source the article cites instead. For the date of JFK's assassination? Just take it at face value, to be honest. For something where you just want to give someone a casual overview of the topic? Really just link them to Wikipedia; it'll likely do a better job than you unless the subject is very underdeveloped there or unless you're a subject matter expert.
7. As for using Wikipedia as a source in your own private life when you just need to check something? In that case, just try to keep in mind your own level of familiarity with the subject, how obscure the subject is, how contentious the subject is, if the article overall looks well-cited or if it looks/sounds like someone just injected their own original research, if the inline source looks credible (this last one doesn't guarantee anything; if you want a guarantee, check the source yourself to ensure it says what Wikipedia says it does), if it's plausible that Wikipedia isn't showing the full context here, and if the consequences of an inaccurate understanding are worth risking.
8. If you see something on Wikipedia that's uncited or poorly cited, please either remove it or attempt to find a robust citation for it. It helps a lot.

I'm partial to the og Oncler, mostly because the song he does in the lorax is such a banger