The people telling you Wikipedia wasn't a valid source were teachers who wanted you to learn to verify information

They should have told their students to use the sources cited on Wikipedia (when credible), not pretended that the entirety of the world's premier encyclopedia is only a wretched hive of vandalism and misinformation.

They were never the same people, and implying they are is very disingenuous.

The "don't believe everything you read on the internet" (90s) to "reads a lot of clickbait articles" (~2010 and beyond)) pipeline is real, though.

Both of my parents are examples of that, though my dad is center right by Danish standards and my mom is left wing, so none of the articles are from Faux News or Breitbart, thank FSM!

my older bro use it annoyingly so much, he thinks its th primary problem solver for all your questions, and hes in tech. i was thinking dude use your brain. even directly going to a reddit post is "better", since likely someone has asked that direct question you are asking and already answered, an LLM cant differentiate that they just combine it into one summary.

That's why you cite wikipedias sources and not wikipedia, teachers hate this one little trick.