Tim Ferriss is like Wikipedia to me. It's a good place to start, but you will be mocked and humiliated if you only read that material.
If I want to learn about a topic, wikipedia is great. If I need more information, I can look elsewhere but many times I don't need to. And except for maybe a handful of topics, I shouldn't expect to be able to seriously converse with an expert. Why should that be the goal? I think the goal is to find the answer to your questions, and that's it.
While wikipedia does have some errors, most of the mistakes seem to come in the form of someone sabotaging a disliked celebrity or organization's page. In light of this, it seems to me that most of the topics a student would be likely to write about for a term paper wouldn't be affected. Universities should always allow students to use wikipedia for one of their references, but they should also hold students accountable for the information they take from it.
I know university professors who love Wikipedia. Some even give their students the project of writing new Wikipedia articles.