Is it possible to have Wikipedia sources in a cycle? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by inspxtr@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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I’m not very familiar with how Wikipedia vets the sources in the references/external links. I was wondering whether there are manual or automated checks for cyclic sources, for example a Wikipedia page cites a source for something, but such source after a few rounds of citing would go back to the same Wikipedia page.

Does that happen with Wikipedia?
Does it matter? I presume that would invalidate the source?
How do they make sure it does not happen? Is there an automated check or something?

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[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 points 11 months ago

That actually once happened deliberately with the page https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_zu_Guttenberg. It's a German politician with a lot of names. So someone added another name to the list and after a short editing war some online publications picked it up and he was able to end the editing war by citing them as sources.

I think it stayed there for several weeks and many many journalists justs blindly copied the name from Wikipedia.

https://bildblog.de/5704/wie-ich-freiherr-von-guttenberg-zu-wilhelm-machte/

this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023

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