This is not a cut-and-dried issue, and we should treat it with respect. Say you're tasked with quickly determining if a fact is true. You decide to find at least two reputable sources mentioning the fact -- and moreover, you look briefly at each of their references, if any. You're under deadline; so shaving 5 minutes off your search time a dozen times a day is helpful. Wikipedia offers a fast way to snag one of these sources. But is it reputable enough to count? Or is it only useful as a portal to its own references -- where you'll have to scour each one to see if it contains the specific morsel of data you were searching for[1]? In theory, for some highly-edited articles, it /is/ reputable enough to count, as are other encyclopedias or reporters -- that is, it serves as confirmation that one or two reasonably-informed people did basic background/literature checks and found something to be true. Of course primary/secondary sources are far better still than these two classes of information. In practice, WP *gives the visual impression* that all articles are comparably reputable. As such, it is problematic to include it alongside the World Book as a tertiary source usable as "one of two" sources verifying a claim. Every active editor knows that not all articles -- not even all finished-looking articles -- are equally reliable. Most of us have our own reflexive "can I trust this revision" routines - scanning for format quirks, or signs that a true style-guide expert has been here, checking the talk page, checking the recent history. We must find better ways to float this information up to the casual user. SJ [1] NB: if we fix our referencing system, this will no longer be true. On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> wrote: -- ++SJ