Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a source

For the policy against using Wikipedia as a source on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Verifiability § Wikipedia and sources that mirror or use it. For the how-to-guide on citing Wikipedia externally, see Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia.

Below is a list of documents that have cited Wikipedia as a source and are of general interest to Wikipedians, but don't fall into one of the other categories (see right).

2014

• 23 February: The active noise control article is referenced in a discussion of how noise-cancelling headphones work by Scientific American. The article says, "There are several websites that explain how these headphones work, so a simple google search will lead you to them, but really, Wikipedia does a fine job if you don't mind a bit of physics terminology."

2013

• Robert W. Wood, Jackson Estate Says, "Beat It, IRS." NYSBA Journal, November/December 2013. pp. 11-13, at 13. Cited Celebrity bond in footnote 4.

2010

• 5 October and 6 October: The Anwar al-Awlaki article is discussed in a discussion as to whether he should be subjected to targeted killing; those discussing it are Andrew Sullivan in "Yes, We Are At War, Ctd", October 5, 2010, The Atlantic; Amy Davidson in "Should We Kill Anwar Al-Awlaki?", October 5, 2010, The New Yorker, and Glenn Greenwald in "Times Square bomber: Cause and effect in the War on Terror", Salon.

2009

• 27 January: In a post to blog site ibeatyou, actress Jessica Alba references Wikipedia's Sweden during World War II article as ammunition in an ongoing dispute with commentator Bill O'Reilly. [1]
• Accessed 28 July: On the official Philippines site for the two-dimensional platform game Grand Chase, the character biography of the unlockable character Ryan (second from bottom) is a direct lift from Ryan's entry in this revision of the Grand Chase article.

2008

• 15 July: United States Department of Defense links to frigate, battleship and Delaware class battleship when announcing the naming of two Virginia-class submarines, explaining previous uses of the names USS Minnesota and USS North Dakota.
• 29 June: Signpost for the new street "Erika-Mann-Bogen" (English: Erika Mann drive) in Hamburg, Germany, citing Wikipedia for the explanation of its name.
• 10 June: Haute Secure links to malware from its FAQ.
• 21 April: Astronomy Picture of the Day uses Image:Phage.jpg as their picture of the day.
• Accessed March 8: The United States Department of Agriculture links to Community-supported agriculture from its page describing community sponsored agriculture to define community supported agriculture.
• Accessed February 1: The Michigan Department of Transportation links to Single-point urban interchange from its page describing SPUIs to provide a definition.

2007

• November: "Web User Interaction: Threat Trees", a W3C Working Group Note, cites the English Wikipedia entries for cross-site request forgery and cross-site scripting.
• September: FIDE uses the Spanish Wikipedia biographies of the contenders in the 2007 World Championship Tournament in Mexico. link
• August 24: List of Academy Award winners and nominees for Best Foreign Language Film was cited by Peter Martin on the website Cinematical (which belongs to AOL). He referred to it as a "nicely formatted list of winners and nominees".[2]
• Official web site of the governor of South Australia links to Wikipedia biographical articles.
• July 25: BBC News directs readers to the Wikipedia article on social bookmarking to learn more about the service they launch on their web site.
• July British agency cites Wikipedia in denying F1 trademark
• June A religious web site of the Rapture persuasion, ShoutVoiceTrump.com, announces "Pre-Tribulation Rapture Already in Progress". They cite Wikipedia as the source: "The Rapture has started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture"
• March 3: Nine Inch Nails, on their promotional website for their upcoming DVD Beside You in Time, include an HD FAQ briefly discussing the differences between DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray Disc; they point to our article Comparison of high definition optical disc formats for additional details. --Delirium 23:43, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• February 1: On the "Ben Franklin" episode of the US version of The Office, Jim Halpert explains that he looked up prima nocta on Wikipedia (actually a redirect to droit de seigneur) to confirm his suspicions that Michael Scott had used the term incorrectly.
• February: Steve Wander, ed. (February 2007). "Supercritical" (PDF). System Failure Case Studies. 1 (4). NASA. (an internal NASA safety awareness document) lists SL-1 as a reference.

2006

• November 29: Environmental Assessment Application for Bear Mountain Wind Park Project (Volume 1 & 2) Re: Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Visual meteorological conditions, and Main Page.
• November 19: A Simpsons episode capsule on snpp.com refers to wikipedia to explain the quote, "what John Glenn eats when he's not in space". [3]
• October 16: political commentary posted on YouTube cites the Wikipedia article on Bill Frist. Association of Professional Casino Webmasters commentary on Bill Frist
• August 20: dailyrotten.com uses the article Death (DC Comics) on their Sunday Morning Church Chat for Sunday, August 20th.
• July 26: The 9 on Yahoo! TV had on its list, "What Would MacGyver Do?", linking to the article List of problems solved by MacGyver.
• Sprite launches "sublyminal" campaign. Entering "illusion" as a code on the sprite website unlocks several lines of text from wikipedia, and the URL of the article floats around the screen
• 1 March: Australian Senator Lyn Allison cites the article propaganda to describe Prime Minister John Howard on the eve of his tenth anniversary in office. [4]
• In the 2006 Da Vinci Code style novel The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne, which Piers Morgan said of: "The best thriller I've read in years" and the British newspaper The Mirror said "The biggest challenger to Dan Brown's crown" , Wikipedia features as an academic style encyclopedia.
• The 2006 publication BioVisions 2015 by Siemens AG cites the articles Proteomics and Systems Biology.

2005

• Sen. Paul Coghlan quotes Wikipedia on green card in Seanad Éireann debate Coghlan 24 November 2005 - Employment Rights - Statements : Column 1813
• Anne McIntosh MP quotes Wikipedia on persecution of Christians in 9th century China in UK House of Commons debate Hansard 13 Jul 2005 : Column 301WH
• Marilyn Burns, an Alberta politician, has her website linked to the Wikipedia article [5]
• The Parliament of Canada cites Wikipedia's article on Same-sex marriage in the further reading list of Bill C-38 (An Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for marriage for civil purposes). [6]
• American Radio Works (the documentary arm of public radio program producer American Public Media (formerly known as Minnesota Public Radio, still the name of its parent)) cites Wikipedia as a source concerning Y2K, on the references page of its retrospective package "The Surprising Legacy of Y2K".
• In Apple Computer's announcement that one of the winners of its OS X Tiger Dashboard contest is the "WikityWidget", it links Wikipedia's wiki article to explain "wiki technology".
• Gervase Markham writes about the book of mozilla and refers to about:mozilla on his blog, Hacking for Christ.
• del Arte, Alonso. "FUSION : Although current, Wikipedia not always reliable source of information". The South End Newspaper. March 2, 2005. [7]

  History Professor Eric Ash, of Wayne State University, stated that he had looked at the Samuel Smiles article for some general information:

  "Ash recalled that one time, before giving a lecture on a novel by 19th century author Samuel Smiles, he turned to Wikipedia to see if he could find some supplemental information.

  "Ash said, 'Wikipedia had one screen of information. I learned he’d written other books' besides the one he was lecturing about."

• Kilmer, Mark. "Fatwa Against bin Laden". March 10, 2005. Redstate. [8]

  Wikipedia defines a fatwa as "a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist on a specific issue." OBL does not qualify, while the Spanish Islamic Commission just might. And they've issued a fatwa against bin Laden for making up Islam as he goes along.

• Crouch, Dennis. "Intellectual Property Podcasting". March 17, 2005. [9]

  Podcasting is catching on as an extension of the blog. According to the Wikipedia, a podcast is like an audio magazine subscription: a subscriber receives regular audio programs delivered via the Internet, and can listen to them at their leisure.

• 9 February: Australian MP Danna Vale discusses the article on totalitarianism in a speech about terrorism. [10]
• Storobin, David Esq. "Nazi Influence on the Middle East During WWII". January 3, 2005. Cites Wikipedia article on Amin al-Husseini, Sherif_Hussein_bin_Ali, and Rashid_Ali_al-Kaylani. [11] [12]

2004

• PressThink, a blog by Jay Rosen, cites Spiro Agnew in this update
• Sys Admin, a magazine of the United Business Media, cites Slashdotted in the July 2004 issue, in the article about Squid cache. Sysadmin

• The American Numismatic Association's biennial publication, Discover the World of Money references Wikipedia's article "Marianne" in an article about that figure on French coins and currency.

• "Mel Gibson's Film "The Passion of the Christ" - AN INTERNATIONAL HOAX" references Wikipedia on a number of topics, particularly Aramaic. It is a document which refers to many sources in order to demonstrate that "The Passion of the Christ" is a Satanic film designed to trick good Christians into worshipping the Antichrist.

• Roger Ebert's review of the 2004 movie "Zatoichi" refers to Wikipedia for information on Takeshi Kitano.

• Something Awful's IHateAlpacas.com Article by Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons uses Wikipedia's Alpaca article to define the Alpaca.

2003

• Sony, presskit for the movie The Statement. Cites Vichy France and Paul Touvier. [13]

• National Nuclear Security Administration, "Radiation and how it effects you" part of a Emergency Public Information series. Based on radiation. [14]

• Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission, Cybercrime. Cites worm, virus, payload and trojan. [15]

• Mark Doernhoefer, Surfing the net for software engineering notes, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (November 2003). Has a section about wikipedia.