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."

Accountability

[26199 (577806)]

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...

Re:Accountability

[explosivejared (1186049)]

I agree. This doesn't even seem to be as big a deal as the article makes it out to be.

Now wikipedia uses as its references the articles that came after the initial modification to Wikipedia itself

I found the summary particularly inflammatory for no apparent reason. I mean, wow! People sometimes misuse wikipedia! We had no idea! This isn't standard practice or any guideline set down by admins. It's one case where some anonymous editor acted foolishly.

You can take this and make a point about how lightly people these days treat information. They don't even consider verifiability and good practice like that. What you can't do is somehow take this and make it a crusade against wikipedia like the summary hints at.

Re:Accountability

[budgenator (254554)]

Wikipedia is notoriously bad at biographical content regarding famous people, it's just the nature of the beast. The wikinazi's can plaster citation needed all over the place, but it's not going to change the spin that PR types are going to places on every bit of information they can lay their lying hands on. I'm waiting for a Wikipedia article explaining how the Chinese have rolled out modern infra-structure and established human rights in Tibet

Re:

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Wikipedia isn't mean for serious academic research any more than a yardstick is meant for making precision measurement.

It's just a tool for getting in the ballpark. I'm amused at the hysteria that always ensues when a story like this comes out.

Re:

[amRadioHed (463061)]

You could counter the argument by providing a citation, right?

Re:Accountability

[AlXtreme (223728)]

You can take this and make a point about how lightly people these days treat information. They don't even consider verifiability and good practice like that. What you can't do is somehow take this and make it a crusade against wikipedia like the summary hints at.

This issue isn't black-and-white; the journalist is to blame, the editors are to blame, and wikipedia too is to blame.

How come the latter? Well, over the last few years the average Internet-user has had quite a few articles comparing the reliability of Wikipedia against Encylopedia Brittanica. It was always a study comparing a fixed set of articles, but this has lead to the public perception that Wikipedia is comparable to EB.

This wouldn't have been a problem, if the Wiki-cabal wasn't trying to reinforce the meme that the two are comparable. The public is increasingly relying on Wikipedia to be correct, but due to its nature you have to take each and every article with a large grain of salt. Nowhere on your average Wikipedia-page is this stated.

I'm not talking about a 'disputed' block, but a 'wikipedia-is-not-an-encyclopedia' block on each and every page. Until that time, you can't put all the blame on the (mis)users of Wikipedia.

Re:Accountability

[Snowmit (704081)]

You got modded insightful for this?

It's not some secret Wiki Cabal that is somehow misleading people into thinking that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's the goddamn mission [wikipedia.org]. You can have an intelligent discussion about whether or not Wikipedia is doing well to meet that mission but you can't possibly argue that the "free content encyclopedia" project should stop calling itself an encyclopedia.

You are right about one point though, it's true that in many ways the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia are not comparable. For example, the Sacha Baron Cohen article on Wikipedia had some faulty information about his employment history for awhile. On the other hand, the Sacha Baron Cohen article in the Encyclopedia Britannica DOESN'T EXIST.

Fact checking

[wbean (222522)]

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.

Re:

[Pig Hogger (10379)]

Axed, account being too expensive and detrimental to the newspaper bottom-line. And because also to often the facts stands in the way of the world view of the newspaper right-wing owner.

Re:Fact checking

[bongomanaic (755112)]

This is the British press we're talking about. Instead of "Is it true?" the question they ask is "Will they sue?"

Re:Fact checking

[HeroreV (869368)]

we will all suffer from the loss of reliable, fact-checked information.

I don't see how that's related to newspapers.

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

The pressure to get a scoop out is higher now, as well as the pressure to cut costs. Fact checking takes time and money. People generally don't seem to remember the goofups either. Sometimes it comes to light and rips through the "blogosphere", but I think it's likely that the circumstances of most errors just fade away and people remember the incorrect fact, not any corrections that might have been silently done.

Re:Accountability

[unlametheweak (1102159)]

I would think that any circular references would be self-correcting by the Wikipedia community. Therein lies the solution, and the problem; there does need to be consistent and enforcible rules that are devoid of ambiguity and self-interest, with a measured degree of accountability.

Re:

[unlametheweak (1102159)]

Your quote:

You mean like the reliable sources policy? [wikipedia.org]

Yes!

And as an example:

The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context, which is a matter of common sense and editorial judgment.

- "context" needs to be defined, and more importantly:
- "common sense" needs to be defined or eliminated altogether (the vast majority of people do not have 'common sense' IMHO, or do they mean 'common consensus'?)
- "editorial judgment" is just judgment. Without accountability such judgment is meaningless (I'm not just speaking of pseudo-anonymous administrators, but of the Big Guy [Jimbo] himself). Of course we need to define 'accountability' as well. With anonymous and p

Re:

[SL Baur (19540)]

I think you're missing the bigger implication. What if the person writing the article was the same anonymous person editing Wikipedia? I assume that is the case here.

There is absolutely no way Wikipedia can "defend" against abuse like that.

The weak link is the journalist

No, the weak link is the amount of trust folks put in Wikipedia. Humans are human and it is human nature to game the system whenever the rewards outweigh the risks.

What's wrong with that?

[by Anonymous Coward]

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...

Sorry, can't resist

[alx5000 (896642)]

{{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...

Recursion, see also: Recursion.

[grm_wnr (781219)]

From TFA:
>A recent post on SlashDot quotes an IT professor saying

I hope this isnt a circular reference to THIS post.

Re:Recursion, see also: Recursion.

[flimflam (21332)]

The whole Web 2.0 Internet is a just a mass of circular references. Be thankful that it isn't telling you the holocaust never happened, or something else obviously untrue.

Actually, it's the believable but false information that's much more insidious and dangerous.

Re:Recursion, see also: Recursion.

[perlchild (582235)]

I wish I had mot points. Obviously untrue disinformation is not a threat, People will use information hygiene techniques(verifiaibility, checking sources, even debate). It's not so obviously untrue disinformation, which is dangerous. If you slowly, over time, change some story from the truth to something untrue. If it happens slowly enough, people will not have the reflex to check the information, and in time, it will be established as the truth.

Re: Believeable but False

[TaoPhoenix (980487)]

The story of the Bush regime.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/10/0079780?pg=1 [harpers.org]

"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.

Summary

[Goaway (82658)]

And in English?

Re:

[DustyShadow (691635)]

Seriously. My brain hurt after reading that.

Re:Summary

[pla (258480)]

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".

It is not a source...

[houstonbofh (602064)]

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.

Re:

[jake_fehr (469788)]

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.

No kidding. It's getting pretty scary. I was talking with the teacher-librarian at a local high school a few weeks back, and she told me that a few teachers were telling their students that Wikipedia was great to use for research. She can't contradict the teachers, so she's forced to agree, then try to get the kids to also use the fulltext databases to do some better research...

Re:It is not a source...

[Salgat (1098063)]

I wish people would use the damn references section at the bottom of the Wiki pages.

Ronnie Hazlehurst

[MagdJTK (1275470)]

This has in fact happened before. When Ronnie Hazlehurst [wikipedia.org] 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.

Re:Ronnie Hazlehurst

[matt me (850665)]

He now receives royalties.

Not the first time

[RockMFR (1022315)]

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.

Setup?

[corporatemutantninja (533295)]

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.

Re:

[26199 (577806)]

Hum. The linked article implies that this sort of thing is going on all the time. In which case it could be not so much conspiracy as coincidence...

It's a trap!

[Unordained (262962)]

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

Oh, for crying out loud....

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

There are more effective and direct ways to correct Wikipedia than by posting Slashdot articles about every little error that worms its way into the system.

You'd think Slashdot was turning into The Register. Or a cheap tabloid. (Oh, but I repeat myself.)

Re:

[CRCulver (715279)]

There are more effective and direct ways to correct Wikipedia than by posting Slashdot articles about every little error that worms its way into the system.

As long as Wikipedia refuses to change so that these little problems cannot happen again and again, it makes sense to show how their resistence to improvement ensures a stready stream of errors.

A citation

[Kjella (173770)]

...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.

It must be true. I read it on the Internets.

[Jonah Bomber (535788)]

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

Happened before ...

[gladiacuk (1171423)]

This has happened before, with the Ronnie Hazelhurst article [wikipedia.org], as reported here [theregister.co.uk].

1984

[AcidPenguin9873 (911493)]

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.

damn dirty wikitrolls

[xPsi (851544)]

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.

What can we learn from this?

[Vellmont (569020)]

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".

Great Success!

[WilyCoder (736280)]

Great Success!

Cheney did it first

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not just wikipedia

[plopez (54068)]

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....

It's ok

[HalAtWork (926717)]

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.

reference count > 0 FOREVER!

[BorgCopyeditor (590345)]

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...

...he has become immortal!

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.

DEFINITELY not the first time. Example from 2006:

[dpbsmith (263124)]

...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 [wikipedia.org]

Wikipedia needs a reset

[damburger (981828)]

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.

Re:Wikipedia needs a reset

[David Gerard (12369)]

It would be because the rest of the English-speaking world is way left of the US. And in fact English Wikipedia has a large contributor base from non-English-speaking countries, because English is the current lingua franca. It could be that the rest of the world averages out to what the rest of the world averages out to, and it's the US that's skewed right.

Re:

[26199 (577806)]

*cough* RTFA?

Your comment would make more sense if it related to the story at all :)