3 ms·
Except you can use obscure dead tree books as sources and no one will take the effort to check whether the book indeed says so. Use a book obscure enough -- esp
by chx 4y ago
Except you can use obscure dead tree books as sources and no one will take the effort to check whether the book indeed says so. Use a book obscure enough -- especially in a non-English language -- and it becomes almost impossible to execute said check.
- johannes1234321 4y agoIt depend so. The amount of trust I want to give. By citing an obscure book I can judge the fact "hm, that book sounds obscure, why isn't there some other source?" and then decide how much weight I give to it. And if I don't have the book at hand I can identify the person who added the citation and can see what other edits they did to judge their domain knowledge.
- chx 4y agoNo one does this. And Wikipedia myths spread to other media until it's hard to pinpoint where it started.
- stordoff 4y agoSometimes referred to as citogenesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting#Circular_reporting_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting#Circular_re... There is a list of known incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...
- 6510 4y agoBut in case they do you can ask your other well established sleeper account for a book reference then reply a few days later with a: This is what I found posting. Then when asked you can point to yourself and say I've asked him. Do a conversation with yourself weighting how a book is hard to validate vs how important the information is to the article.