Why is everybody always pickin' on Wiki?

I was asked today why some people have a thing against Wikipedia.

Here was my answer:

I think it's because some parts of society aren't ready to accept a resource that is so editable by the masses.

If I was a person who relied solely on printed material, I would probably find Wikipedia to be an abomination because the material can be contradicted by anyone. The generation that grew up on encyclopedias and other reference textbooks cherish static information because it lessens the chance of anyone challenging them. This is a trait that many generations have suffered from.

I remember the looks I got from teachers when I suggested that some of what we were learning was no longer accurate. If scholars accepted sources like Wikipedia as potential sources of information, it opens the door for people to challenge everything - and some folks don't appreciate the challenge. Another thing I notice is that it's so easy to label Wikipedia an unreliable source of data when you find one incorrect entry. But we somehow got this message that because Wikipedia has a few incorrect entries, none of it can be trusted.

I beg to differ. I would challenge that if you stacked up every article in an entire set of a hard copy encyclopedia and measured it against Wikipedia, the encyclopedia would have a much higher percentage of inaccurate articles. I also suggest that Wikipedia becomes more accurate over time by virtue of its ability to be edited.