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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...
When the whole world uses Wikipedia as the reference for a lot of things, what's wrong when Wikipedia does it? This is completely biased...
From TFA:
>A recent post on SlashDot quotes an IT professor saying
I hope this isnt a circular reference to THIS post.
And in English?
You just have to use it for what it is... It helps you start research. It is a lead generator, or an index. But if you think it actually has answers, or your research can end there, you are an idiot. But you have a lot of company.
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.
*cough* RTFA?
Your comment would make more sense if it related to the story at all :)
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.
And what happened to fact checking? There was a time when a small army of fact checkers would verify things like this before they were published. The Internet is a great tool but it's pulling the rug out from under the newspapers and we will all suffer from the loss of reliable, fact-checked information.
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.
{{POV-check}}
When the whole world uses Wikipedia as the reference for a lot of things{{Citacion needed}}, what's wrong when Wikipedia does it? This is completely biased...
My 0.02 cents
You'd think Slashdot was turning into The Register. Or a cheap tabloid. (Oh, but I repeat myself.)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
...is only worth as much as the credibility of the one saying it. I could cite any crackpot site on the net, and it wouldn't mean shit. In the days of "Internet news", I see hoaxes and blatantly incorrect stories fly around like wildfire. Throw one sensationalist and catchy news case out there, and there'll be a hundred sources who never got the correction afterwards.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, if Wikipedia AND the Independent say it's true, it must be. Right?
This has happened before, with the Ronnie Hazelhurst article, as reported here.
This story reminded me of 1984's Ministry of Truth, which regulary "edited" history to match the current political scene. Writing stuff in Wikipedia makes it true.
I was talking to someone recently who bragged about regularly trolling wikipedia to intentionally and actively create dead end and circular references. He was practically giddy with the notion that wikipedia "only requires some kind of external citation, but you can really mess with this because people rarely check them." I'm a wikipedia fan, so was quite annoyed with him, so beat him about the head and chest; this is clearly a 2nd order loophole that should be actively combated. I realized I would be naive to think otherwise, but I still found it illuminating to be reminded people are actively out there creating dead and circular links . It is a more subtle way to create noise in wikipedia rather than the more obvious act of injecting copious uncited nonsense into an article.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Won't quote the article text for phat karmaz here (because it's pretty unreadable), but this is what happened, in a nutshell: 1. Someone makes stuff up on Wikipedia 2. Some ostensibly reputable source acts not all that reputable, takes that information, and oublishes without saying where they got it from (in short, without doing their homework). 3. Said publicatin is then used to reference the made up information in Wikipedia. 4. ??? 5. There is no step 5.
The "easy" answer is: "Wikipedia is unreliable".
A better answer might be: "Journalists are unreliable".
I find it interesting when I hear about people complain about errors in Wikipedia, but don't put it into the same context as errors appearing everywhere else. How many people have read an article about something they had personal knowledge of written by some journalist, and found glaring errors in it? I know I have.
People need to stop trusting single sources of information blindly. All information can be wrong, even "conventional wisdom".
AccountKiller
Great Success!
This is not the first time something like this has happened. Before the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times quoted a "high level" person within the administration of as saying Iraq has started up their weapons program again. Dick Cheney then quoted that article on Meet the Press I believe as proof of the Iraqi weapons program. It later surfaced that Cheney was the "high level" person within the administration who made the original quote.
What's amusing about this is that the article in question talks about Baron Cohen's experiences with anti-Semitism -- but the journalist took it at face value that he worked at Goldman Sachs because hey, after all, he is a Jew...
What is the diameter of 16 gauge wire? Runs over to Wikipedia
16 gauge wire is 1.29mm. And why do I have a strong sense that it this is accurate? Because of the technical detail of the sources listed. And how can you politicize wire gauges?
Wikipedia is a great resource I find for technical articles on various topics. What is molybdenum used for? Wikipedia has the answer.
Getting an accurate opinion on a controversial political sitnation would be more an issue with Wikipedia, as you would have lots of bias on either sides. In that case I agree that Wikipedia would be better used as a quick summary of views, rather than an authoritative view on the facts.
It makes a great technical resource for "dry" science based topics that no-one really has any reason to falsify. For hot button issues, I'll find more unbiased sources.
I've tried to correct errors on the Wikipedia page for a relatively popular consumer product I worked on. I corrected technical errors, only to have them removed and replace with incorrect "facts" that were even footnoted as correct by links to articles which were written using the incorrect info from the Wikipedia article.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Since when is a screwed up Wikipedia article newsworthy?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
EOM
NB: I hope the original poster is not a journalist, I would expect better writing from a pro.
1) Anonymous users write that Sasha Cohen worked at various investment banks, without citing. One of these edits came from one of these banks (which neither increases nor decreases the credibility of the statement).
1a) TFA assumes the statement is bogus.
2) Other news sources also say that Cohen worked at these investment banks.
2a) TFA assumes that the other news sources used Wikipedia as their source, without fact-checking.
3) Wikipedia users are initially unsure about the accuracy of the statement, but then they find these news sources and cite them.
Assumptions 1a and 2a are unfounded - both are admitted to be uncertain, but then the uncertainties of the assumptions are ignored! There is no evidence that Wikipedia was actually used as the source for any of the journalists. Also, there's no evidence that this information is untrue - indeed, the contrary: there is actually evidence that it is true, because respected news sources say it, and (presumably) these published sources are almost certainly factual! TFA ignores this, because it assumes a very high probability that the journalist used Wikipedia as a source, but I think the actual probability is much lower and this does not dent the truth probability very much. The TFA tries to boost the probability by noting that there was "no verifiable information existed anywhere on the internet
For example, this could be something that one might expect to happen if there were some fact not yet On The Internet, just now emerging onto the Internet. Just because some misguided anonymous fan of Cohen adds something to Wikipedia first doesn't mean that it's automatically untrue, but simply unfit for Wikpedia until a better source is found. Then other sources emerged, and the cite is added - this whole scenario occurs with Wikipedia having information that was probably true, but simply not cited in any online source.
The TFA reasons, it's Wikipedia from an anon, without a source on the Internet previously, so all the other sources from now on are now "tainted" and it's probably untrue? What the heck? Does this mean that if reliable sources say that the population of African elephants has actually indeed tripled in the past 20 years, Wikipedia can't add it? I hope everyone can see the problems with TFA... While this scenario is interesting and theoretically possible, it's not credible or probable.
And even supposing that all these assumptions are true, it's not "evidence" that Wikipedia's doing anything wrong. The problem here is not Wikipedia, but the other news sources. It's reasonable to presume that a (theoretically) respected news source should be accurate. Maybe there's an argument that Wikipedia shouldn't respect these news sources (as TFA assumes), but that's for another day.
TFA is loading really slow, so here's a copy:
A recent post on SlashDot quotes an IT professor saying:
People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading
After reading this, I thought it was time to write about a something I found that backs this up. An anonymous user added information about Sacha Baron Cohen (known onscreen as Ali G.) to Wikipedia on November the 14th 2006. This entry added information about Baron Cohen working for investment bank Goldman Sachs prior to becoming famous as an actor.
On November the 17th 2007 an article appeared in the Independent with the same information. The article included Baron Cohenâ(TM)s career information almost as a footnote, at the end of the article - possibly using Wikipedia as the source of his âoeGoldman Sachsâ career and other family information.
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.
Twinstiq, game news
verynice
now we're truly screwed! make your peace, the acpocalypse is near
The problem is very simple:-
1) Some random idiot adds the "fact" that "Rob Malda is made entirely of Grape Nuts" to a WP article.
2) Then some people at someothersite.com use WP to research their own article on Malda. They (unwittingly) repeat the bogus fact.
3) Finally, someone working on "improving" the WP article attempts to verify and cite all the questionable uncited facts. Lo and behold, someothersite.com has an article which states that Rob Malda is indeed made of Grape Nuts. Someothersite.com's article (not Wikipedia) is used as the reference for this incorrect information.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The story of the Bush regime.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/10/0079780?pg=1
"A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies." (And that hasn't even been updated yet!)
While everyone basically suspected as such, the nation's highest leadership exacted retribution as if it were true, creating your mentioned dangerous cognitive dissonance.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think this pseudo-exploit largely explains why Wikipedia is a miserable failure. If you don't have people intentionally censoring and manipulating information, you have people who aren't qualified to speak on the matter in the first place.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Circular referencing of this sort happens unfortunately often on Wikipedia - because journalists use Wikipedia as the universal backgrounder, then of course it gets used as a reference. Then someone works it out, the journalist is somewhat embarrassed and a note goes on the talk page. It's the joy of Wikipedia being an eternal work-in-progress live draft - like running CVS HEAD for everything. The FlaggedRevisions extension should be going live on German Wikipedia soonish, though, and hopefully on other Wikipedias (including English) not too long after.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
While your statement isn't exactly untrue, as a whole it is wrong in only getting it half right. Wikipedia is exactly like every other source; a shade of gray in the truth. Yes, it is a lighter shade of gray, but the whole idea of "primary source" is a bunch of BS. Even if you go and personally interview first hand witnesses, you cannot be sure of the facts. Heck, even if you sit down and do an experiment yourself, you cannot be sure that you are interpreting the results correctly.
People have it completely wrong when they think that any facts they have are definitely correct. What they have are the most likely correct information that they have come across to date. One of the big problems with what is considered 'good' research is that kids are taught, and then as adults, look for information that supports their assertions. There is absolutely no attempted to find information that falsifies their assertions. So, in a climate where getting the correct answer is not the goal; where the only goal is to have sources that agree with you so that you have plausable deniability when you are shown to be wrong, Wikipedia is an entirely valid source.
If I am having a debate with someone, Wikipedia is considered a valid source unless a more believable source can be presented that contradicts Wikipedia. Then, that source is considered valid until it can be disproven. Hearing people argue that newspapers and magazines and reports should use a lower quality standard of evidence than what I would accept in a nerd fight is pretty sad.
Maybe it was meant to discredit the journalist, rather than Wikipedia. If I were ticked off that the guy in the next cubicle over kept getting away with, say, using Wikipedia as a reference, and I knew what assignments were on his plate this week, maybe I would go add a reference to his upcoming article (but not too obviously so) somewhere I knew he would find it, just to see what would happen: would he go back to Wikipedia once again, would he find the plant, would he fall for it, or would he figure out it was a joke (on him), would he then start a witchhunt in the office to figure out who had tried to trick him? Or *maybe* his officemates were starting up a new Alternate Reality Game just for his birthday, and this was supposed to be the starting point, only he failed to catch the clue train and it's already Game Over?
You people don't seem to realize what has happened. Reality is now referring to Wikipedia. In other words, something appears on Wikipedia, and then several days later, the same thing appears in reality!
Presently, since Mr. Baron-Cohen's Wikipedia entry has become capable of influencing events, and since effectively his "reference count" will never go below one...
At least, that's what some would argue happens when an information-theoretic singularity occurs. Others, however, think the very fabric of information itself will somehow be "torn," and that the self-referencing article will begin collapsing on itself, drawing in nearby articles and bending all their references in its direction. All too soon, they say, every article on Wikipedia will refer to the article on the hapless Mr. Baron-Cohen. They, and he, and all of us, will be swallowed up completely! Unlike in a real black hole, however, we may survive, only to find ourselves in a world in which every fact bears somehow upon Mr. Baron-Cohen. He will become as our God, then.
Terrifying.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
We pull news out of our asses for newspaper man to deliver back to us next day!
This is a known problem in the intelligence community. Not only are circular references possible, there's the false confirmation problem. This occurs when what appears to be confirming information originates from the same source, but is collected via a different route. That's not a confirmation and does not increase the reliability of the information; in fact, it may increase the odds that it's disinformation.
Journalists need to watch for this, too. Bloggers should, but that's probably asking too much.
It has checks in place to prevent circular references.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
My local paper had the audacity to run a front-page article and not just use Wikipedia as a source about some type of illegal substance, but included the phrase "according to Wikipedia." Instead of asking the local police "Can you define what $illegal_substance is?" they went to #*@&ing Wikipedia. The lot of 'em need to be fired, reporters and editors.
I know the newspaper industry isn't exactly thriving, and cable and Internet news are pushing the papers to get content out quicker and not devote as long to a story, but any paper that cites Wikipedia as a source deserves to go bankrupt. If they don't do proper vetting and fact-checking, they should be ashamed to call themselves a newspaper -- they're a #*@^ing tabloid, nothing more.
I'm fairly sure this is how it all started... First one circular reference, then another, until finally Wikipedia in an effort to self correct becomes self aware... It realizes the only way to protect itself is to get rid of the primary source of it's anguish... I'm gonna go get coffee, someone page me if I gotta crawl into a bunker.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
...although I agree that it's scary.
The first time I noticed such occurrence, it was in 2006 in connection with a claim that in the days when the Ivy League was being organized, Rutgers was invited to join, but declined. This claim was originally unreferenced, then referenced to a hard-to-verify source. The editor who inserted the claim said he had seen it in microfilm records of Rutger's student newspaper, The Targum, and mentioned a year, but never gave an exact date and page number, giving varying reasons for not so doing.
One day, there was great excitement because someone found a good, verifiable print reference in a mass-circulation newspaper. It was quickly added to the article, and many of us thought the matter was settled.
The newspaper story, of course, did not mention its source. Someone found an email address for the reporter and queried the reporter... who acknowledged that his source had been Wikipedia!
The whole story (and much more) is at A Rutgers reference from the Daily news
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The entire project should be shut down, and started over, taking on board the criticisms that have been levelled at it over the years.
The concept is solid. If it wasn't the thing wouldn't work at all, or certainly not for this long and this successfully. The problem is in the details of how the community functions, or rather fails to function. It has become defensive and territorial, and has established its own POV which lies at the mean of community opinion but is quite libertarian-orientated and US/Western centred compared with the user base (theoretically, everyone).
The fact that this bias is a direct reflection of the founder of Wikipedia (An American libertarian) shows that the system does not function correctly to remove personal prejudice from the content. Despite the vast army of editors who contribute, Wikipedia hasn't gone beyond being a mouthpiece for Walesism.
Perhaps I am being uncharitable. Wales' beliefs are hardly far from the mainstream of techies - who are usually freedom-minded folk but have to by necessity follow a belief system that permits their relatively privileged position in life - however an encyclopaedia isn't a Linux distro. It has to be directed to everyone and thus it can't afford to get bogged down in the personal opinions of Wales or the techie community.
Nothing I have said here will come as a surprise to Wikipedians, seeing as these issue are mentioned by the project itself. However, my experience as an editor has shown a huge gulf between Wikipedia policy and Wikipedia reality.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hope I won't find it hard to find an "edit war"; it sounds challenging and engaging. If one seeks Truth and Logic in the spirit of Fun then it is just a game, but a game where everybody wins and the struggle is not so tedious.
Best regards,
UTW
Oh. I guess we'll all need to start welcoming our British overlords. Again.
I'll bring the tea.
This has, of course, already happened.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I do a lot of press for Wikipedia in the UK, and I've yet to speak to a journalist who doesn't use Wikipedia as a handy universal backgrounder. Which is what it is, after all. However, journalists should be able to handle sources of questionable reliability. I expect it's better they say "according to Wikipedia" than fail to say "according to Wikipedia" ...
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Remember, not truth. Everything is what you make of it, or what you want it to be.
Not surprising. Querying "the way things are done here" usually gets one of several responses:
Welcome to Wikipedia!
The main problem is that sites don't quote Wikipedia when using our information. For example, while working with the list of best-selling video games article, The Independent used our information about the best-selling video game franchises of all time, copying it verbatim, but not referencing us. Soon after, other sites like Gamasutra and GameSpot picked it up. So, we had reliable sources using information from Wikipedia, but not acknowledging it. Thankfully, nobody fell in the "trap". I contacted The Independent about the license breach, but they never answered.
It also happened later, when Yahoo! Video Games copied the list (although they updated a couple of numbers).
This would be solved very easily: those who use Wikipedia should reference us. Considering the license could be simplified to "link back to the Wikipedia article, where copyright information about the extract can be found", it is a shame journalist, bloggers and miscellaneous editors don't do that.
Wikipedia is perhaps the best know internet phenomenon in terms of collective editing. The truth is out there, but Wikipedia only mirrors what has been published in what it deems as respected journals or books. Respected publications get it wrong all the time but Wikipedia has a caveat of Verifiability - Original Research/Truthiness is bad, but if X is a respectable publication then it can be cited, if the claim is rebutted in another respectable publication all is good and that should be dealt with as a controversial statement. Situations like this are actually quite rare on Wikipedia . Just be Bold - delete it if it untrue or your truthiness is better.
So-called “proof by mutual reference” is a classic invalid technique for proof, and AFAICT this incident would exemplify it. If, however, one were to assume the complicity of parties involved, it could be seen as an allusion to a clever hack that some writers pulled off some time ago in which a book was put together which contained reviews of the book. I have made a(n admittedly) cursory attempt at finding an online account of this hack (the mastermind of which may have been Douglas Hofstadter) and failed to come up with a link for you; any replies containing suitable links thereto would be appreciated.
Someone on the mailing list looked into the history of "verifiablity, not truth" recently. Apparently someone added it unilaterally, it stuck, and eventually it just became the way things always have been.
Someone should buy new glasses: the wikipedia entry is from 2006.11.14 and the article is from 2007.11.17
I understand your point that 'people misuse wikipedia' and such. The problem is every day more and more people forget the weak points of wikipedia (which IMHO makes it only useful for getting a nice quick idea of what MIGHT be true about something) and instead think what they read is fact. It's a serious problem. As we've seen from numerous articles, the controlling body is full of corruption, self denial and indeed, self gratification.
Wikipedia wants to be thought of as more accurate that an encylopedia but in reality can never be without a major change in the way it functions. A good first step would be putting in a controlling board that isn't corrupt.
EK
> doesn't matter what you say, as long as you can find a "Reliable Source" that said it first.
Yep - the Wikipedia article on my dad has plenty of citations, almost all of which are links to the website of his political opponents (and have been added by someone notorious for citing web pages under his control). One's political opponents can hardly be considered reliable sources.
I had never considered the theology of garbage-collection schemes before this post. Thank you.
The real question for me is whether God comments his code.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Politics and wikkipedia seem to goto the highest bidder or whoever the editor favors the most. You can see this in the slanting on articles all about political endeavors and issues.
Take something as well known and documented as the Katrina response. On the main Katrina page, they blames bush for everything even though there was a stub that could be found that talked about the Nagen issues of going to a hurricane party instead of the approved retreat according to their disaster plan or the governor of Louisiana holding things because they forgot to officially request the help and the two days attempting to argue control of the FEMA command while the city if flooding and people are starving. I don't know what it says now because I gave up on it ever being accurate unless it benefits one of the hidden goals imposed by some editor or the secrete editors. Hell, wikkipedia won't even put accurate articles about it's own scandals in it.
An encyclopedia article should be neutral in tone and just represent the facts. They shouldn't offer opinions, or present opinions as facts. It sounds like that is something that is happening with your dad. I suggest having him complain to the elections board overseeing his campain and let the government go after wikkipedia. They will most likely change it and there will be one more scandal not mentioned on their sites.