wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com wrote:
And, guess what: the reporter's source was the
Wikipedia article.
I recently found this on a "serious" subject as well. Back in 2003 I
wrote an article on [[Sulaiman Abu Ghaith]], an Al Qaeda spokesman.
Almost nothing has been reported on him since then. When recently
researching to make sure nothing new has turned up, I stumbled across a
BBC News "Who's Who in Al Qaeda?" article that seemed to say as
much---that his current whereabouts are unknown, and it's unclear
whether he's in Iranian custody (as reported in 2003) or even in Iran at
all. I almost cited this for the article's last sentence, which says
exactly that. The problem---it's the *verbatim* same sentence. The BBC
not only got its information from the article I wrote in 2003, but
lifted my sentence word for word! (
archive.org can verify that the
sentence in Wikipedia long predates the BBC's use of it, and it uses an
idiosyncratic grammatical construction, so there it's very unlikely to
be a coincidence.) Fortunately, the claim that nobody's reported
anything on him since 2003 is pretty trivially verifiable, so this
source isn't entirely needed, but it's still a bit unnerving that
apparently I am now the world authority---indirectly via the BBC via
Wikipedia---on Al Qaeda whereabouts.
Details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sulaiman_Abu_Ghaith