Is it possible to have Wikipedia sources in a cycle?
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?
https://xkcd.com/978/
You mean citogenesis?
lol there really is an xkcd for everything!
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/
Wikipedia does not check if the sources themselves cite Wikipedia. I mean they can, but they rarely do.
This has led to situations where a falsehood keeps getting added because it has a “reliable source” and editors are too lazy to question it.
From my experience, despite all the citogenesis described in other comments here, Wikipedia citations are still better vetted than in many, many scientific papers, let alone regular journalism :/ I recall spending days following citation links in already well-cited papers to basically debunk basic statements in the field.
Can you give an example if you remember for the last point you made?
I do not have notes from that time anymore, sorry. I do recall though that after following a chain of citations I ended up at the paper in the center of this controversy. Nobody sane would cite in now except to point out its flaws, but if there's a modern paper that cites a 10 year old paper that cites a 30 year old paper that cites it—people usually won't notice.