Perhaps my favorite example of a citogenesis-like process is the legendary arcade game Polybius, which originated as an entry on some German guy's web compendium of arcade games (coinop.org), perhaps as a "paper town", or fake entry that acts as a copyright canary when duplicated elsewhere. Gamer news and special-interest blogs and sites, and even print publications like GamePro picked it up, and I think it was even listed on Wikipedia as an urban legend whose actual existence was unknown. Then the retrogaming YouTuber Ahoy did an in-depth documentary (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_7X6Yeydgyg) which concluded that Polybius didn't exist and was never even mentioned before the aforementioned coinop.org reference and, for me anyway, that settled it. Polybius, in its urban legend form, never existed.

(Norm Macdonald voice) Or so the Germans would have us believe...!

> ... eventually the only thing that accrues is things that the factions agree on, or at least what ArbCom has demanded they stop fighting over

Or what the faction with the most favored access to ArbCom manages to make stick by getting the other faction banned.

A state actor could absolutely cause immense damage to Wikipedia at scale, because most admins aren't experts in the subjects whose articles they police. I'm just surprised that nobody has done so already.