Yesterday I met Smt Shruti Sadolikar, musician, in the Music Department of Mumbai University located in the rear of Churchgate station.  In a discussion with PhD students, a question was raised regarding the reliability of citing internet references.  Some of us gave examples about how Wikipedia was used all over the world for all kinds of reasons.  Smt Sadolikar, who was present, gave an instance of wrong information in Wikipedia: 

"Sadolikar was born 1951 into a family from Kolhapur which was known for its musical tradition and owning sugar mills.^[3][4] "  in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shruti_Sadolikar.  She said that "a hundred people" had mentioned the bit about owning sugar mills.  This was factually incorrect, and gave the wrong impression that she came from an affluent family. 

Now [4] is a newspaper article: Tandon, Aditi, "Three days of rich musical treat", The Tribune, 6 November 2000.  I looked up the source, and sure enough, it mentions the sugar mills.  So it seems that whoever wrote the article merely repeated a factual error in the source (which has been properly cited as [4] ).

Smt Sadolikar's father and guru was a musician, Marathi stage artist, music director, etc.  His Wikipedia entry  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wamanrao_Sadolikar makes no mention of sugar mills.

Smt Sadolikar had  a point to make: if Wikipedia is to put information about her in the public domain, is it not their  responsibility to inform her about it and confirm that the information is factual?  Some of us had said that Wikipedia was not organized along the principles of, say, a newspaper, but if a factual error was brought to its notice, it would be corrected.  In that spirit I am sending this mail to your mailing list. 

Like the rest of the world I am a grateful user and great fan of Wikipedia.