Respect for Wikipedia

    I have always been a major supporter of Wikipedia. I love that I can quickly look up a topic to settle a bet, a discussion or my own curiosity. Every time I begin learning a new topic or have a project to do I go straight to Wikipedia, just to get my mind in the right place. However, I would never even dream of using it as a legitimate source in a paper or project.
    The most exciting new discovery on Wikipedia for me is the history tab. I always understood that anyone could edit an entry but I never realized that the reader could see every edit made on that page. So I looked up random historical topics like Modernism, History of Sexuality, and Abraham Lincoln.  How I ended up on these three pages I'll never know but it was actually surprising to me how much work goes into a Wikipedia page. There is a lot of activity in the editing section for it to be organized by volunteers. On all three of those pages there were edits done within the past few days. These edits weren't because of complete idiots messing with the pages, they were to improve grammar and clarify the information.
    Then under the talk tab there is a multitude of people questioning ideals and theories to see if they are relevant enough to be included on the page on Modernism. On the Abraham Lincoln discussion section there is a warning that all edits are monitored by a bot and will be removed if they have not been approved within a month.
    There seems to be a serious professionalism that Wikipedia adheres to, in order to maintain this as a reliable free community based encyclopedia.Yes, it is easy to edit but it is also easy to contribute, and if the system works, it is also easy to catch those violating the rules. Although my love for Wikipedia has never wavered, discovering  the history and talk tabs may have made it more reliable in my eyes. Will I try to cite it in my work? Absolutely not. But now I no longer just use Wikipedia but I might actually respect it.