Wikipedia's Value

I've always been told not to use Wikipedia as a source and would be frightened to use it with middle and high school students, yet whenever I have a question or a little interest about anything, I always use it as my first source of information. What does that say about its value?? Like I said in class, there's no way such a large collection of information could ever come together in one place without the collaboration of thousands of individuals. This alone, combined with the tons of hyperlinks and additional sources of information, makes Wikipedia the most unique and useful source of general information in existence. If we can just figure out a way to teach our students how to spark their curiosity from browsing it without relying solely on it for information, we will be able to utilize it as an incredible resource to expand our student's minds and knowledge.