And yes, I’m also shocked and saddened that there is a Caillou fandom site.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    I hate to tell you this, but there’s a neologism for exactly this kind of problem called citogenesis, and the Kansas City Star’s (the Freep is just republishing this) lack of a source here makes me worried that their source is basically just user-generated content they found online and thought looked plausible (this Fandom article proceeds that Star article by about 7 years, so at least it’s confirmed it wasn’t this one). There are numerous times when this has happened because of Wikipedia alone. For instance, a couple months ago, Rachael Lillis, the voice actress for Misty, died. Want to know what happened? The first outlets to report her death – effectively glorified blogs like CBR etc. – said she died at 46. Their source? In all likelihood, her IMDb page. This escalated up to more and more credible sources, and eventually, USA Today, BBC News, etc. all started reporting 46.

    Well the NYT actually bothered to reach out to her family, and they confirmed she died at 55. CBC News independently reached out and also verified that age. Some outlets corrected their articles, but if you look up Rachael Lillis’ obituaries, you’ll find a good chunk of them still report her as having died at age 46.

    That aside, my actual concern is echoed by @Chozo@fedia.io’s comment, namely that a Fandom article without a source is almost as good as worthless.