I'm lumping in those who cite Wikipedia with researchers. The reason being that they are using the Wikipedia for research purposes in order to express their point. I can't say that I have seen too many people referencing the Wikipedia online, outside of forums like these. (I have seen students reference it in papers, but that receives the same scorn as a student who refernces a print encyclopedia.) At the end of the day, people citing Wikipedia in forums may be a god-send. I say that because I doubt that people would try to support their ideas in casual discussion if they didn't have a convenient resource to reach for.
I also think that the Wikipedia is a great source for getting a starting knowledge of something, and how it relates to other stuff. After that you branch off into deeper resources. I'd lump print encyclopedias in the same category: great starting point but go deeper.
I'm trying to figure out if I'm old, or if too much of my life has been spent in schools. But I have seen this "the encyclopedia is an authoritative source" mentality before.
The CIA World Factbook is also published by a highly biased source (and I'm not talking about the U.S. government in general here, but a particular branch that seems to have close ties with the executive branch of your government). It is also worth noting that it is difficult if not impossible to check upon the data presented in the CIA World Factbook for many countries. Particularly those countries with which the U.S. has antagonistic relationships with.
Dishwashers? Oh, I remember what those are. Those are interesting analogies and I like them because I view the reliance upon online sources as being primarily the product of intellectual (and physical) laziness. But I'm not going to pretend that this association with intellectual laziness makes the Internet any less reliable than the already unreliable print media.