Wikipedia:Checklist of citogenesis incidents – Wikipedia

The connection between Wikipedia and the press?

In 2011, Randall Munroe in his comedian xkcd coined the time period “citogenesis” to explain the creation of “dependable” sources by circular reporting.^[1] It is a listing of some well-documented instances the place Wikipedia has been the supply.

• Did Sir Malcolm Thornhill make the primary cardboard box? A one-day editor stated so in 2007 in this edit. Although it was eliminated a year later, it stored coming again, from editors who additionally invested loads in vandalizing the user page of the editor who removed it. Thornhill propagated to not less than 2 books by 2009, and seems on a whole bunch of net pages. A one-edit editor cited one of many books within the article in 2016.^[2]
• Ronnie Hazlehurst: A Wikipedia editor added a sentence to Hazlehurst’s biography claiming he had written the tune “Reach“, which S Club 7 made into successful single. The data was reproduced in a number of obituaries and reinserted in Wikipedia citing certainly one of these obituaries.^[3]
• Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg: A Wikipedia editor added “Wilhelm” as an eleventh title to his full title. Journalists picked it up, after which the “dependable sources” from the journalists had been used to argue for its inclusion within the article.^[4][5]

• Sacha Baron Cohen: Wikipedia editors added faux data that comic Sacha Baron Cohen labored on the funding banking agency Goldman Sachs, a declare which information sources picked up and was then later added again into the article citing these sources.^[6]
• Coati: Starting in 2008, when an American scholar’s arbitrary addition to Coati, “often known as….the Brazilian aardvark”, resulted in lots of subsequently citing and utilizing that unsubstantiated nickname as a part of the overall consensus, together with revealed articles in The Independent, The Daily Mail, a e-book revealed by the University of Chicago and one other revealed by the University of Cambridge—mockingly in a passage discussing naturalists uncritically copying different writers’ errors.^[7][8]
• Korma: A scholar added ‘Azid’ to Korma as a substitute title as a joke. It started to appear throughout the web, which was finally used as justification for conserving it as a substitute title.^[9]
• Is the radio broadcast the place Emperor Hirohito introduced Japan’s WWII give up known as the “Jewel Voice Broadcast” in English? Google Books search outcomes and the Google Books Ngram Viewer reveal that this moniker seems to have been non-existent till a consumer added this literal translation of the Japanese title to the Wikipedia article in 2006^[10] (and one other consumer moved the article itself to that title in 2016^[11]). Since then, the utilization of this phrase has skyrocketed^[12] and when it was recommended in 2020 that the article ought to be moved as a result of this “literal translation” is definitely incorrect—a greater translation of the unique Japanese would have been “the emperor’s voice broadcast”—it was voted down based mostly on it showing in loads of current dependable sources.^[13]
• Roger Moore: A scholar added ‘The Faculty of the Venerable Bede’ to the early lifetime of Roger Moore, repeatedly enhancing the web page to trigger citogenesis. This has been ongoing since April 2007 and was so broadly believed that reporters stored asking him about it in interviews.^[14]
• Maurice Jarre: When Maurice Jarre died in 2009, a scholar inserted faux quotes in his Wikipedia biography that a number of obituary writers within the mainstream press picked up. “He stated his goal was to indicate that journalists use Wikipedia as a main supply and to display the facility the web has over newspaper reporting.” The fakes solely got here to mild when the scholar emailed the publishers, inflicting widespread protection.^[15]
• Invention of QALYs, the quality-adjusted life year. An article revealed within the Serbian medical journal Acta facultatis medicae Naissensis said that “QALY was designed by two specialists within the space of well being economics in 1956: Christopher Cundell and Carlos McCartney”.^[16] These people—together with a 3rd inventor, “Toni Morgan” (an anagram of ‘Large Moron’)—had been listed on Wikipedia lengthy earlier than the publication of the journal article which was subsequently used as a quotation for this declare.^[17]
• Invention of the butterfly swimming stroke: credited to a “Jack Stephens” in The Guardian (archive), based mostly on an undiscovered joke edit.^[18][19]
• Glucojasinogen: invented medical time period that made its means into a number of educational papers.^[20]
• Founding father of The Independent: the title of a scholar, which was added as a joke, discovered its means into the Leveson Inquiry report as being a co-founder of The Impartial newspaper.^[21][22]
• Jar’Edo Wens: fictitious Australian Aboriginal deity (presumably named after a “Jared Owens”) that had an virtually ten-year tenure in Wikipedia and purchased mentions in (un)discovered books.^[23][19]
• Inventor of the hair straightener: credited to Erica Feldman or Ian Gutgold on a number of web sites and, for a time, a e-book, based mostly on vandalism edits to Wikipedia.^[24][8][9]
• Boston Faculty level shaving scandal: For greater than six years, Wikipedia named an harmless man, Joe Streater, as a key wrongdoer within the 1978–79 Boston College basketball point shaving scandal. When Ben Koo first investigated the case, he was puzzled by what number of retrospective press and net sources talked about Streater’s involvement within the scandal, regardless that Streater took half in solely 11 video games within the 1977–78 season, and after that by no means performed for the staff once more. Koo lastly realised that the one purpose that Streater was talked about in Wikipedia and in each different article he had learn was as a result of it was in Wikipedia.^[25]
• The Chaneyverse: Collection of hoaxes relying partly on round referencing. Found in December 2015 and documented at User:ReaderofthePack/Warren Chaney.^[26]
• Dave Gorman hitch-hiking across the Pacific Rim: Gorman described on his present Modern Life is Goodish (first broadcast 22 November 2016) that his Wikipedia article falsely described him as having taken a profession break for a sponsored hitch-hike across the Pacific Rim nations, and that after it was deleted, it was reposted with a quotation to The Northern Echo newspaper which had revealed the declare.^[27]
• The Dutch proverb “de hond de jas voorhouden” (“maintain the coat as much as the canine”) didn’t exist earlier than January 2007^[28] because the creator confessed on nationwide tv.^[29]
• 85% of individuals making an attempt a water pace document have died within the try: In 2005, an unsourced declare within the Water speed record article noted that fifty% of aspiring document holders died attempting. In 2008, this was upped, once more unsourced, to 85%. The declare was later sourced to sub-standard references and eliminated in 2018 however not earlier than being cited in The Grand Tour episode “Breaking, Badly.”
• Mike Pompeo served within the Gulf War: In December 2016, an nameless consumer edited the Mike Pompeo article to incorporate the declare that Pompeo served within the Gulf Conflict. Varied information retailers and senator Marco Rubio picked up on this declare, however the CIA refuted it in April 2018.^[30][19]
• The Casio F-91W digital watch was lengthy listed as having been launched in 1991, whereas the proper date was June 1989. The error was launched in March 2009 and repeated in sources such because the BBC, The Guardian, and Bloomberg, earlier than lastly being corrected in June 2019 because of classic watch fans.^[31]
• The Urker vistaart (fish pie from Urk) was within the article namespace on Dutch Wikipedia from 2009 to 2017. There have been some doubts concerning the authenticity in 2009, however no motion was taken. After someone mentioned in 2012 that Topchef, a Dutch present on nationwide tv featured the Urker vistaart, the article was left alone till 2017 when Munchies, Vice Media-owned meals web site revealed the confession of the unique authors.^[32] The article was subsequently moved to the Wikipedia: namespace.
• Karl-Marx-Allee: In February 2009, an nameless editor on the German Wikipedia launched a passage that stated Karl-Marx-Allee (a serious boulevard lined with tiled buildings) was referred to as “Stalin’s rest room”. The nickname was repeated in a number of publications, and later, when the nameless editor that added it as a joke tried to retract it, different editors restored it resulting from “dependable” citations. A journalist later revealed that he was the nameless editor in an article taking credit score for it.^[19]
• In Could 2008, the English Wikipedia article Mottainai was edited to incorporate a declare that the phrase mottainai appeared within the classical Japanese work Genpei Jōsuiki in a portion of the textual content the place the phrase would have had its fashionable which means of “wasteful”. (The phrase really does seem at two utterly completely different factors within the textual content, with completely different meanings, and the phrase used within the passage in query is definitely a unique phrase.) Later (round October 2015), at least one third-party source picked up this declare. The data was challenged in 2018 (discuss web page consensus was to take away it in February, however the precise elimination passed off in April), and re-added with the round quotation in November 2019.
• In June 2006, the English Wikipedia article Eleagnus was edited to incorporate an unreferenced assertion “Goumi is among the many “nutraceutical” vegetation that Chinese language use each for meals and medication.” An instantaneous subsequent edit changed the phrase “Goumi” within the assertion with “E. multiflora“. An equal assertion was included within the article Elaeagnus multiflora when it was created in August 2006. The model of the assertion within the article Eleagnus was later included in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs, a collation of Wikipedia articles MobileReference revealed in January 2008. In Could 2013, after the assertion within the article Elaeagnus multiflora had been removed for the shortage of a long-requested quotation, it was immediately reinstated with a quotation to MobileReference’s The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Bushes and Shrubs.
• Entertainer Poppy posted a tweet in 2020 that confirmed solely ring, social gathering and bride emojis. Somebody later edited her article by suffixing the final title of her at-the-time boyfriend, Ghostemane, to hers assuming she was married; it was reverted citing the vagueness of her tweet. The suffix was later restored, now citing an article from Access Hollywood which on the time stated that was her authorized title, although it has since been corrected.^{[33][34][35][36]}
• In 2009, the English Amelia Bedelia Wikipedia article was edited to falsely declare the character was based mostly on a maid in Cameroon. This declare had subsequently been repeated amongst completely different sources, together with the present creator of the books, Herman Parish. In July 2014, the declare was faraway from Wikipedia after the unique creator of the hoax wrote an article debunking it.^[37][38]
  

  

  Incorrectly labeled photographs misinform customers

• Not Siamese cat: In 2014 a consumer uploaded an image of a Ragdoll cat, and regardless of the unique file having an accurate label, the consumer modified the picture title and outline to “Siamese cat“. Until correction in 2020, many languages of Wikipedia initiatives used this picture incorrectly as an illustration of a Siamese cat. In 2016 the journal Popular Science additionally used the picture in their article. That journal additionally introduced the cat as Siamese, when Wikipedia was the origin of this error.^{[citation needed]}
• Origin of band Vulfpeck: Jack Stratton created the Wikipedia article for his band Vulfpeck in 2013 below the username Jbass3586; the article claimed that “the members met in a Nineteenth-century German literature class on the College of Michigan” so as to add to the mythology of the band. Billboard picked this up in a 2013 interview article, and it was finally added as a quotation within the Wikipedia article.^[39]
• In 2020, an editor inserted a false quote within the article of Antony Blinken, chosen by then President-elect Joe Biden for the place of Secretary of State. The quote, calling Vladimir Putin an “worldwide prison”, was repeated in Russian media like Gazeta.Ru.^[40]
• In 2007, an editor inserted (diff) an anecdote into Joseph Bazalgette‘s web page concerning the diameter of London sewage pipes. The misinformation made it into newspaper articles and books – from the Institution of Civil Engineers, from The Spectator, from The Hindu, from the Museum of London (in modified type), two books these two, each about ‘artistic pondering.’ Additional particulars on the case could be discovered here. The data was not eliminated till 2021.
• In 2016, an IP-editor added three unsourced statements to Chamaki, a spot in Iran: that 600 Assyrians used to populate the village, that the language spoken was Fashionable Assyrian and that the native church is known as “Saint Merry”. [sic] In a 2020 article from the Tehran Times, these similar three statements had been repeated.^[41] No different sources have been discovered for these statements. Whereas sources in Farsi might or might not exist for the inhabitants and language, that is unlikely for the “Saint Merry” spelling. The Tehran Instances article was briefly used as a supply earlier than the chance of citogenesis was realized.
• It’s well-known that Zimbabwe skilled extreme hyperinflation in 2008, however may you actually commerce one US greenback for two,621,984,228,675,650,147,435,579,309,984,228 Zimbabwe {dollars}? A single-edit IP said so in 2015, together with reporting the nation’s unemployment price to be 800% and quantitatively utilizing the phrase “zillion“. Whereas the latter two remarks had been innocently corrected inside 3 days, the 34-digit determine stayed in place for 10 months earlier than it was manually reverted, sufficient time to make it into not less than one book.^[42]
• Wikipedia has claimed at numerous occasions that Bill Gates’s house is nicknamed Xanadu 2.0 and lots of on-line articles have repeated the declare, a few of which are actually cited by Wikipedia. No articles quote Gates or one other authoritative supply, however the moniker was used because the title of a 1997 article about the home.
• In 2006, an article entitled Onna bugeisha was added to English Wikipedia with the declare that it was a time period referring to “a feminine samurai”. The time period doesn’t exist in Japanese (it often seems in works of fiction, referring to “feminine martial artists”, onna which means “girl” and bugeisha which means “martial artist”) and doesn’t seem to have carried the which means “feminine samurai” earlier than the creation of this Wikipedia article. The article was translated into a number of foreign-language editions of Wikipedia—although not Japanese Wikipedia—and finally the time period began to seem in third-party blogs and on-line journal articles, together with Nationwide Geographic (each English and Spanish editions). In 2021, the article was moved to a compromise title, utilizing a Japanese time period that’s used to confer with girls warriors in pre-modern Japan, however appears to have been not often utilized in English previous to 2020; inside just a few months, this time period had additionally discovered its means into various on-line magazines in languages resembling English and Polish.
• Since May 2010 the Playboy Bunny article claimed that Hugh Hefner “has said that the thought for the Playboy bunny was impressed by Bunny’s Tavern in Urbana, Illinois. […] Hefner formally acknowledged the origin of the Playboy Bunny in a letter to Bunny’s Tavern, which is now framed and on public show within the bar”. No sources have been cited to help it. This data unfold to a 2011 book, an article of the New Straits Times dated 22 January 2011, and an article of The Sun written in September 2017 and titled “This is the real reason that the Playboy girls were called Bunnies” (copied by the New York Post, too). Oldest and extra dependable sources proved that the costume has been impressed by the Playboy mascot used since 1953. A partially readable photo of the tavern’s letter confirmed that Hefner did not “formally acknowledged the origin of the Playboy Bunny” in any respect. Sadly this data unfold to the French, the Spanish, the Catalan, and the Italian Wikipedias. The Catalan Wikipedia used the 2011 New Straits Instances article to help it, whereas on the Italian Wikipedia The Solar article has been used as supply.
• From 2008, the article on former Canadian prime minister Arthur Meighen claimed that he had been educated at Osgoode Hall Law School. In 2021, a reference to a 2012 newspaper article was added to help this declare. Actually, Meighen by no means attended regulation college, as a number of biographies (together with a meticulously detailed three-volume work by Roger Graham) clarify. The creator of the newspaper article appears to have discovered the incorrect data on Wikipedia.
• In 2008, the knowledge {that a} Croatian known as “Mirko Krav Fabris” grew to become Conclavist pope in 1978 was added to the Conclavism article with none supply. This data ended up within the 2nd (however not the first) version of the Historic Dictionary of New Spiritual Actions (2012). In 2014, the knowledge was added that stated Mirko Krav Fabris was a slapstick comedian with the stage title “Krav” who grew to become pope as a joke and had died in 2012; the supply given for this latter declare was a presentation of a slapstick comedian known as Mirko Krav Fabris—who seems to be means too younger to have been born earlier than 1978—wherein it’s neither talked about that the individual ever was a papal claimant in any type, nor that the individual is useless. The 2015 e-book True or False Pope? Refuting Sedevacantism and Different Fashionable Errors revealed by the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary of the SSPX states that Mirko Krav Fabris was a Conclavist pope, a comic with the stage title “Krav”, and died in 2012, with out crediting any supply.^[43]
• In keeping with Richard Herring, Wikipedia was the originator of the declare that he’s primarily referred to as a (skilled) ventriloquist. This was repeated in Stuff after which used as a reference for the declare within the article. He talked about the incident on his podcast in 2021 (Nish Kumar – RHLSTP #315, at 54:47), describing the method of citogenesis with out utilizing the time period itself.
• From 2012, Wikipedia claimed that the electrical toaster was invented by a Scotsman named Alan MacMasters (archived Wikipedia biography, AfD leading to deletion on July 22, 2022). This was an entire fabrication, which entered over a dozen books and quite a few on-line sources, amongst them a BBC article and the web site of the Hagley Museum, each subsequently cited in Wikipedia’s MacMasters biography. To at the present time (August 2022)^{[needs update]} Google nonetheless names MacMasters because the inventor of the electrical toaster, citing the Hagley Museum.^[44] Wikipedia criticism web site Wikipediocracy revealed an interview with the hoaxer.^[45]
• Between September 2007 and March 2022, the English Wikipedia article on Japanese admiral Jisaburō Ozawa said that he was a whopping 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) tall. Whereas Ozawa actually was tall for a Japanese man of his period, with a 1965 e-book describing him as “over six ft”,^[46] this specific top seems to have been an invention, because the supply following it made no declare of Ozawa’s top in any respect. The uncited determine given within the article has subsequently appeared in not less than 4 non-fiction books.^{[47][48][49][50]}
• The time period “Sproftacchel” was added as a synonym for photo stand-in on 15 February 2021 by an anon with no different contributions. No hint of the time period earlier than that date has been discovered, however as of July 2022 the time period has been utilized by The New Zealand Herald,^[51] Books for Keeps,^[52] the Islington council,^[53] the Hingham city council,^[54] the city of Lincoln council^[55] and now we have “Sproftacchel Park” now.^[56]

In some instances, phrases or nicknames created on Wikipedia have since entered widespread parlance, with false data thus turning into true.

• The expression “Dunning–Kruger effect” was created on Wikipedia in Could 2006, in this edit. The article had been created in July 2005 as Dunning-Kruger Syndrome. Neither of those phrases appeared at the moment in scientific literature; the “syndrome” title was created to summarise the findings of 1 1999 paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger. The change to “impact” was not prompted by any sources, however by a priority that “syndrome” would falsely indicate a medical situation. By the point the article title was criticised as authentic analysis in 2008, Google Scholar was showing a number of academic sources describing the Dunning–Kruger impact utilizing explanations much like the Wikipedia article. The article is often within the prime twenty most popular Wikipedia articles in the field of psychology, reaching #1 at least once.
• In 2006, a Wikipedia editor claimed as a prank that the Pringles mascot was named “Julius Pringles.” After the model was offered from Procter & Gamble to Kellogg’s, the title (modified barely to “Julius Pringle”) was adopted by official Pringles advertising and marketing supplies.^[57][58]
• Mike Trout‘s nickname: Mike Trout’s article was edited in June 2012 with a nonexistent nickname for the Major League Baseball participant, the “Millville Meteor”; media started utilizing it, offering the article with actual citations to switch the primary faux ones. Though Trout was shocked, he didn’t dislike the nickname, signing autographs with the title.^[59]