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Sacha Baron Cohen Wikipedia Entry Creates Circular References

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the 10-goto-20;-20-goto-10 dept.

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."

3 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Accountability by 26199 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  2. Ronnie Hazlehurst by MagdJTK · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Not the first time by RockMFR · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.