On 5/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson
I see this all the time too, and I can't understand it, people don't say "I looked it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica", they say "I looked it up in Encyclopedia Britannica". It's really quite strange that they wouldn't use the same construct for wikipedia..........
Many times people stick "the" in front of things they don't understand and sometimes are a little afraid of. The best example I can think of offhand is Denzel Washington referring to "the AIDS" throughout the movie Philadelphia.