Wikipedia talk:Fictitious references

This is pure instruction creep
Since links to this proposal were (prematurely) added to several other guidelines, I guess it's open for discussion.

What is the point of this? If a reference is fictitious, it obviously doesn't pass WP:V. There is nothing special about someone trying to use "fictitious" sources that would lead to WP:CSD or WP:AFD any faster than if no sources were used. If someone persists, we have WP:DISRUPT to deal with them. This proposal seems to be simply instruction creep, and thus I must oppose it. Anomie⚔ 03:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, I think WP:RS, WP:N, and WP:V, or at the least WP:COMMONSENSE should definitely establish that falsifying references to add otherwise unverifiable information or fake notability is wrong. This is unnecessary. Mr.Z-man 03:08, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well you two seem suspiciously sure of yourselves ... how can we know you're not just defending your fictitious references? :p II  | (t - c) 04:38, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

This should be made in to an essay. No need for this at all. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd like the page to contain more emphasis that it's deliberate provision of false information that's being talked about. Having said that, I agree with Jossi that it could be left as an essay. We already have enough policy against deliberately adding untruths - this is just a particularly annoying subset of it, along with the people who change a referenced point without altering the reference that is attached, the number change vandals, and all the others. Why do we need yet more policy? Pseudomonas(talk) 08:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

This proposal has large overlap with WP:RS in its current state - what it amounts to is, don't add sources in a bad-faith attempt to lend false credence to a topic. This makes sense, but in practice I think it would be quite difficult to distinguish those who introduce bad-faith refs from those who screw up good-faith refs. A pattern would have to be identified and the users treated on a case-by-case basis. As such, no general policy appears to be required. Dcoetzee 10:45, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What I have written about in here are situations that I have observed myself. For example, one editor had his/her own blog, disguised it as a newspaper, wrote whatever s/he pleased in it, and used it to source various information as fact. Sebwite (talk) 15:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Should be left as an essay - pure creep to make a policy or guideline. Happy‑melon 15:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Better yet, merge it as an example of vandalism. That's what it is, after all...  Rossami (talk) 03:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this falls quite neatly into the "Introducing deliberate factual errors" type of vandalism, and can be handled as such, using Template:uw-error etc. --Slashme (talk) 12:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Fake news
This should be updated to include fake news. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:50, 23 September 2017 (UTC)