today we have the internet and information is shared in a more democratic manner and perhaps chaotic manner. yet the information gets batted about and sifted through so that we should arrive at pure information, unedited and free.

of course we should use wikipedia as a resource. i'm not quite sure why we would not.
why not?

it is democratic. it is created by the people who do know more about the topic than others. it is public, it is peer reviewed, and it is edited constantly.