Wikipedia talk:Fictitious references

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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

I agree, I think

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)[reply

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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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

This proposal has large overlap with

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)[reply]

Should be left as an essay - pure creep to make a policy or guideline. Happy‑melon 15:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Better yet, merge it as an example of vandalism. That's what it is, after all... Rossami (talk) 03:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this falls quite neatly into the "Introducing deliberate factual errors" type of vandalism, and can be handled as such, using

This should be updated to include fake news.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:50, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]