The Wiki software genre as applied to a public encyclopedia.

It is very popular due to its ability to its loose licensing policies, which allow it to be included in commercial Web sites (such as Answers.com), as well as the general bias most of the Internet has in favor of open-source software.
Due to these financially-driven reasons, it is is always within the first results of a search query.

If you are going to read any Wikipedia article, it is important to first read the "Talk" page, as registered Wikipedia users are notorious for their elitism and incompetence. Wikipedia is run similar to a pure democracy, where any viewpoint with support over 50% has the final say.
Both of these reasons lead to inaccuracies and subjective deletion policies, including musical genres any Web search can prove legitimate and unique Web sites featured in the mainstream press. Vandalism is often found on Wikipedia, which can contribute the motives and viewpoints behind the deletion activities.

Wikipedia also invents words and phrases (such as "fancruft") and instructs registered users not to use them outside of Wikipedia's editing process.

Supporters point to studies claiming that Wikipedia is more credible than major encyclopedias, while opponents point to major negative news events, occurrences of censorship and alleged political/religious biases, and founder Jimbo Wales' beliefs in Ayn Rand's Objectivism as applied to his personal life.

Savior of high school students everywhere

A project to create the most accurate and complete free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Written as a collaboration of users across the Internet. Basically, the UrbanDictionary.com version of an encyclopedia, without the witless comments.

The place where you go when the word you're looking for is too sophisticated to be found on UrbanDictionary.

A free online encyclopedia that knows EVERYTHING. I mean EVERYTHING. IT knows ALL.

The world's largest forum for anonymous arguments. Argue with everyone in the world on any topic imaginable. You may be Stephen Hawking, so-called "expert", but you need to reconcile your views on black holes with Bob from Idaho who thinks they are portals to Narnia and find some neutral point of view that you can both agree on.

Internet-based free content encyclopedia that provides entries submitted by regular Internet users, thus covering topics and issues more often ignored by the scholarly print-based encyclopedias. Not everything can be submitted, and there are policies and guidelines that must be followed. Is a distant relative to urbandictionary.com in that they are both free content Internet databases.

Britannica on the bathroom wall.