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Sacha Baron Cohen Wikipedia Entry Creates Circular References
Lantrix writes "An anonymous user added information to Wikipedia's entry on Sacha Baron Cohen three days before the now-referenced external article was written. The Independent wrote the referenced article apparently using Wikipedia as the source establishing his 'Goldman Sachs' career. Now Wikipedia uses as a references the article that came after the initial modification to Wikipedia itself."
So a journalist used Wikipedia as a primary source, added something incorrect to an article. Now the same Wikipedia page is using that article as its primary source, which in the view of Wikipedia makes the incorrect fact true. Chaos ensues.
The weak link is the journalist -- who should have known better. And now the newspaper presumably knows all about it. So perhaps this kind of problem can be self-correcting in the long run...
This has in fact happened before. When Ronnie Hazlehurst died, multiple newspapers here in the UK mentioned that he cowrote "Reach" by S Club 7. This information came from Wikipedia (and was the result of vandalism), but once a few papers had published it, everyone did, as it was clearly backed up by many reliable sources.
The article is still being edited to include this "fact" every now and again, often referring to one of the articles which made the error.
I've seen circular referencing occur many times on Wikipedia, often by complete accident. If journalists actually gave their own sources when writing articles, it would be much less of a problem. Of course they will never do that, as then it would be revealed that they themselves don't bother fact-checking at all.
Doesn't anybody find it curious that this "anonymous" poster knew the article was coming out before it did, and that the author of the article happened to look up his subject on wikipedia just as the entry was updated? If I wanted to discredit Wikipedia, or at least cause a minor stir, I would probably construct an artificial circular-reference scenario, and this is how I would do it. In any event, the previous comments to the effect that the flaw was in the journalism are spot on.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
And in English?
A = anonymous Wiki node, B = Independent article.
A make a claim with B as a reference.
B makes the same claim with A as the reference.
Thus, both sources have technically substantiated their claim, despite the niggling li'l absence of "truth".
Recall that some of the Iraq WMD intelligence cited as further evidence by Bush was from the Brits. And the Brits got their info from.... the Americans.
So it just isn't Wikipedia that needs to be careful.
Nothing new to see here... move along....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It's wikipedia, it's possible to correct this kind of thing. In fact there is no longer a reference to the article in Wikipedia.
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