Question

Is it okay to cite or use (and not cite) information from Wikipedia?

Answer 1

Wikipedia is not a source of first party: in Wikipedia no new information is "made" in principle. Where possible, you can seek to assign knowledge to those who produce it. It is difficult to relate knowledge to the content of a Wikipedia article: many editors can be involved in certain content, several editors are anonymous, etc. This means the knowledge is not to blame. This opens up potential possibilities, such as writers secretly inserting Wikipedia material that they can use to support the arguments in their article.

Wikipedia isn't a trustworthy source. Anybody can edit the wikipedia at any time. It means that the details that it holds at any given time may be vandalism, a job underway, or just plain incorrect. Living individual biographies, news reports and subjects that are politically or culturally controversial are especially vulnerable to these issues. Edits which are in error on Wikipedia can eventually be fixed. However, because Wikipedia is a project run by volunteers, it can't monitor every contribution all the time. A lot of errors stay unnoticed for days, weeks, months, or even years. Wikipedia should therefore not be considered a definitive source