Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?

I must admit, I tried really hard to accept the supporting argument for Wikipedia during the Middlebury College debate, but I still have mixed feelings about wikipedia and its use in higher education.  I understand that it has the positive aspects of being an open forum and that there are volunteers who "patrol" the pages for factual errors.  I also must admit that I have gone to wikipedia on occasion for a quick bit of information--but I always go elsewhere to verify.  But using this site in any sort of academic sense to me is simply unacceptable.

My frustration stems largely from the fact that my own brother admitted that when he has free time at work he looks up some of his favorite historical subjects and proceeds to read page upon page on wikipedia.  I am really glad that he likes history, Wall Street exec that he is, but I feel obligated to stop this, even if he is not using this information in a paper or as part of research. I am horrified that he is soaking up potentially wrong information, and possibly spreading this misinformation in everyday conversation.  I might be overreacting, but facts are facts, and as the Middlebury College debate alerted me, Wikipedia does not deal in originial scholarship, just facts. (Which I also just learned is not protected by copyright...very interesting.)  But back to the point--I am a firm believer in squelching ignorance and misinformation where I can, and thus am not tolerant at all to any misleading articles on wikipedia.

For example, I looked at several history articles, examining their discussion sections as well.  Whether I was looking at an article covering a semi-controversial topic (Medgar Evers and his assassination in 1963), or a topic less immediate to the American population--Henry VIII--I found several instances in the discussion tab where a problem was identified, the author agreed to remove the information, yet when I went through the article, the misinformation was still there.  And I only looked at a few of the several thousand articles that exist on this site. 

Basically, I will be purchasing my brother some books for Christmas, or perhaps find a good site that digitizes a large selection of historical topics....