A global encyclopedia of all there is, or all that matters. Originally the idea was to include everything possible and have the pages be created and edited by readers, by anyone who thought to sit down and write what they could. This lead to a great schism that was similar to that of the Catholic Church's great schism in 1378. This schism in wikipedia readers led to two factions, the inclusionists and the deletionists.
The inclusionsists wanted to of course include everything they could about anything ever. The believed that since they were not limited by the classic constraints of other encyclopedias, number of pages, costs of volumes, and financial support there should be no reason to judge the validity of entries based on relevance of facts. They believe that a wikipedia held just has much value as an entry about Marlon Brando.
Conversely the deletionists believe the exact opposite. Relevance of facts is the only standard of value by which we should judge entries. If we do not do this the site could become a jumbled mess of useless information that holds no benefit to anyone anywhere. Who really cares about me other than those I know who should already know me.
Granted we must be concerned with the reliability of the information presented to us. Since any of the readers, anyone with an internet connection, can edit information the reliability of the information presented is in questions. Two of the greatest benefits of the site are 1) transparency is held at high value and it sheds light on many subjects previously neglected; 2) many pages hold source references at the bottom and serve as an excellent starting point for research that one can actually have faith in.
So please, don't overlook the value of wikipedia simply because some professor told you they would not allow you to cite the information or because a friend of a friend has a "this one time at bandcamp I was writing a paper on the relation between neutrino physics and saxophone notes" story...
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