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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.
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.
Well, if Wikipedia AND the Independent say it's true, it must be. Right?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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?