My daughter's teacher told her class that Wikipedia is unreliable because it's just made up by volunteers. So I asked her where they should find information and she said other sites on the internet that can't just be edited by anyone.

Blew my mind.

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be edited by anyone”. I tend to think that Wikipedia converges on reliable because it can be edited by anyone.

This is the argument used for almost 25 years (...yes), did the teacher never get updated?

I'd love to see your daughter submit something extremely wrong with citations from nonsense on the internet.

Had a colleague make the same point on open source, "don't trust code everyone can modify". He was a bottom tier programmer at best.

Simple phrases heard elsewhere which make the person feel for 5s like a really smart experienced one in given topic, while being the opposite. A very common trait in large part of population, any population, which usually comes in pair with lack of critical thinking inward & outward.

At the end though, most of us are guilty of such behavior from time to time.

The thing about Wikipedia is that every claim is sourced. And those that aren't are usually noted with a "Citation Needed" disclaimer.

So even if Wikipeda isn't permitted as a direct source for students, it's a great place to find other sources for claims and facts about almost any topic. That's how I taught my kids to use it in school. It's a ready-made bibliography on almost anything.

Did the teacher teach how to recognize a reliable other site?

I have sometimes thought about firing up my old Encarta 98 CD. A bit outdated now though.