Sam Korn wrote:
"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth.
That's about as good a piece of advice as you'll get on using facts from Wikipedia in a journalistic or academic context.
Siobhain Butterworth was in touch with me about this story, and I gave her the WP party line (she has the sequence of events slightly wrong, but I pointed out that there were three insertions, not just one, and twice there was action within a few minutes). I had written to her after a related column of hers appeared last November:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/24/leaders-open-door
Charles