[chx]

Except you can use obscure dead tree books as sources and no one will take the effort to check whether the book indeed says so. Use a book obscure enough -- especially in a non-English language -- and it becomes almost impossible to execute said check.

[johannes1234321]

It depend so. The amount of trust I want to give. By citing an obscure book I can judge the fact "hm, that book sounds obscure, why isn't there some other source?" and then decide how much weight I give to it.

And if I don't have the book at hand I can identify the person who added the citation and can see what other edits they did to judge their domain knowledge.

[chx]

No one does this. And Wikipedia myths spread to other media until it's hard to pinpoint where it started.

[stordoff]

Sometimes referred to as citogenesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting#Circular_re...

There is a list of known incidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...

[6510]

But in case they do you can ask your other well established sleeper account for a book reference then reply a few days later with a: This is what I found posting. Then when asked you can point to yourself and say I've asked him. Do a conversation with yourself weighting how a book is hard to validate vs how important the information is to the article.