Are your references/sources reliable enough according to reliable sources? This guide should help you find out! Please note that a "reference" is the same as a "source" here.
- Is the source/reference unpublished (for example, you talked to the subject of your article or you just know the information yourself)?
- Yes, it is not published.
- Wikipedia's goal is verifiability, which means that anyone should be able to check where a piece of information came from. If your source is not published, then it's not verifiable, and no one can check it for himself/herself. Your article needs to use published sources, and if such sources do not exist, it is probably not notable enough by Wikipedia's standards (see below). Please note that just because a source may require a subscription to access (from a website such as JSTOR, for example) or because it is only in one library in the whole world, does not mean it cannot be used.
- No, it is published somewhere.
- Go on to the next box.
- Is the source/reference published by the subject of your article or a party affiliated with the subject of your article?
- Yes, the source/reference is published by the subject of the article or a party affiliated with the subject of the article.
- Are most or all of the sources in your article published by the article's subject or a party affiliated with the subject?
- Yes
- An article should not rely mainly on primary sources, which are sources published by the article's subject or another group/person closely related to the article's subject. For example, an article on Coca-Cola should not use Coca-Cola.com too many times.
- No
- If most of the other sources in your article are published by independent parties unrelated to the article's subject, then it is usually OK to use a source published by the article's subject to back up uncontroversial information. For example, you could use Coca-Cola's "Contact us" page to back up a claim that it is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, but you should not use a source from the Coca-Cola website about a controversial incident, as companies usually publish information biased in their favor to promote their own commercial interests.
- No, the source/reference is published by an independent party, not affiliated with the subject of the article.
- Is the source/reference from a blog, social networking site (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn), wiki (including Wikipedia), or any other type of site where anyone can write something, or is it from a generally trustworthy publication, such as a newspaper, magazine, book, academic journal, or other peer-reviewed publication? (Please note that it does not matter if the source is online or in print.)
- It is from a blog, social networking site, wiki, or other similar site
- These types or sources are ✗ not reliable and should not be used to back up information in the article. For example, anyone can proclaim himself/herself the King/Queen of England on Facebook but the claim would not stand in the Wikipedia article about the King/Queen of England. Such websites should be categorized under the article's "External links" section, but be sure only to include the most relevant links, as this section should be concise and not filled with links.
- It is from a newspaper, magazine, book, academic journal, or other peer-reviewed publication
- These types of sources are usually ✓ reliable and can be used to back up information in the article. There are exceptions to this, and it is best to ask at the reliable sources noticeboard if you are not sure about a source's reliability.
- Why does my article need sources/references, anyway? I know everything I wrote is true.
- The goal of Wikipedia is not truth, but verifiability. (Yes, this means in certain circumstances we might use a "reliable source" that you think is not true.) References do two main things:
- References back up all the information in the article. For example, an article on Coca-Cola could have this sentence: Coke mini is a 7.5 ounce can packaging of Coca-Cola that debuted in December 2009.[1] If someone wanted to verify this fact, they could look at the reference that backs up this claim. This does not mean it's 100% proven, just that a trustworthy publication (in this case, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) has said this and it wasn't just from some random Wikipedia user's imagination. Any statement(s) that do not cite a source may be removed at any user's discretion. Ideally, all non-obvious facts in an article should be supported by a reference. For example, "Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink" does not need a source, but "Coca-Cola was first sold at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886" would need a source, because this is not widely-known, basic information.
- References show how the subject of the article is notable. On Wikipedia, notability (AKA why is something important enough to deserve a Wikipedia article) is defined in several ways, depending on the type of subject (such as an athlete, a company, a website, a band, etc.). However, the general notability guideline defines notability has having received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. If you include such sources, you are essentially proving that the subject of your article is an topic worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia (although there are some cases where the article would still not be appropriate for Wikipedia), and if no such sources exist, the subject of the article is likely not notable enough by Wikipedia standards. This doesn't mean that the subject is not important in real life, but that it/he/she/they simply do not meet Wikipedia's guidelines.
- I used this guide but I don't understand why other articles are allowed to use sources/references that this guide calls "unreliable".
- Many articles on Wikipedia are not up to our standards. You are encouraged to improve low-quality articles, but just because they exist does not mean you should mimic them and use unreliable sources in your own article, as this only results in more articles with poor sourcing and less verifiability. If you want to use another article as a model to write your article, look at Wikipedia's best articles: WP:featured articles and WP:good articles. Both of these types of articles have gone through special quality review processes, and there are enough of them that you should be able to find one on a topic similar to your article's subject.
- So how do I actually add sources/references to an article?
- Wikipedia has a special feature that lets you add footnotes (which look like this: [1][2], etc.), and this feature is the current standard way of citing sources.
Wikipedia uses a special feature to automatically generate footnotes with the help of two HTML tags: <ref> and </ref>. Anything placed between the two tags will generate a footnote, which appears in the text as [1]. This method of using "inline citations" is useful because it allows the reader to easily see which source supports which statement. To cite a source using this method, you need two parts:
- The two tags:
<ref> </ref>
- A "References" section at the end of the article with the code
{{reflist}}, which is able to generate a list of footnotes based on what is placed between the two tags:
==References==
{{reflist}}
An example:
Wikipedia was created by Jimbo Wales.<ref>Jones, Michael (2008). The History of Wikipedia. Publishing Company, Inc.</ref>
==References==
{{reflist}}
which results in: