A high citation rate is desirable in academia. Citing other work doesn't cost much, so citations are cheap to give but desirable to get. That brings me to the question:
If a previous article addresses a topic similar to the one I'm writing, is that a sufficient reason to cite it? Or should the prior article meet a minimum quality to "deserve" a citation? To put it bluntly: if I'm aware of a prior crappy article, should I ignore it, or cite it and write why it's crap (of course in a more diplomatic way)?
In my field, some articles questioning anthropogenic climate change get quite a lot of citations from colleagues pointing out flaws in their reasoning or statistics...
Note that I'm exclusively talking about peer-reviewed publications.