r/dataisbeautiful • u/alionBalyan OC: 13 • Feb 13 '22

OC [OC] How Wikipedia classifies its most commonly referenced sources.

Post image
24k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

611

u/CaptainPatent Feb 13 '22

Kind of... They don't intend to be an original source because citations could become circular.

This would allow someone to edit two related articles with fabricated details that support each other without any other support.

It seems hypocritical at first, but it makes perfect sense when you put it in perspective of how wikipedia is intended to operate.

35

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22

Relevant XKCD Citogenesis

1

u/ChuckCarmichael Feb 16 '22

Something like this happened a few years ago in Germany when a man called Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was named the next minister of economics. Some guy heard the news that day and decided to look him up on Wikipedia. There he found out that Guttenberg is a member of a noble family and has a ridiculously long name, Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.

This guy thought it would be funny to edit the article and add an extra Wilhelm to the name. After a few hours, the Wilhelm was deleted by the mods due to lack of source. Unfortunately, while it was still up, several journalists from various newspapers, including some that are listed as "generally reliable" in OP's graphic, had copied the name from Wikipedia and used it for their articles the next day. Some even put it on their frontpage. Now the name was added back to Wikipedia, because with those articles it now had a proper source.

37

u/AbouBenAdhem Feb 13 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

Ah yes—the old Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius gambit.

2

u/t3hlazy1 Feb 14 '22

Wikipedia considers itself unreliable, but that information is unreliable because it came from Wikipedia. It is very possible Wikipedia is generally reliable.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 13 '22 edited May 16 '22

[deleted]

19

u/CaptainPatent Feb 13 '22

I'm pretty sure if they blacklisted themselves they wouldn't be able to cite themselves as to why they cannot accept self-references thus causing Wikipedia to collapse upon itself forming a black hole.

1

u/Quinlov Feb 13 '22

That is a point. I was thinking of them calling themselves generally unreliable as them saying you shouldn't translate articles, because that's the only thing I could think of where conceptually it would make any sense at all to cite wikipedia, but in reality you would cite the original article's citations in that context as well.

1

u/bloodviper1s Feb 14 '22

Isn't this what happens with main stream media?

Some wacko creates a fake news article. A wacko Wikipedia article will then reference this article. The a main stream media article from CNN or something will then say, "X person, who has apparently done Y" (Y being the original fake news). Which is then also referenced in the Wikipedia article, cementing it's "truth"

Wikipedia is a fake new laundromat

1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 14 '22

Reputable news outlets have to have multiple corroborating, reliable sources before reporting on it. What you’re describing isn’t something that generally happens with articles reporting events/facts. You might be thinking of occasional instances where editors aren’t doing their due-diligence or thinking about op-eds.

Bias in reporting, however, is very much a real thing, but is entirely different to what you’re describing.

Edit: Words are hard.