Repkea
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Welcome to Wikipedia, Repkea! I am Gman124 and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions, feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or by typing {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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edit{{helpme}} I was curious to get a clear simple idea of what a reliable secondary source really is? I was under the impression it was direct quotes from writers or authors with links or book references. Also, how does one go about showing that a topic has "notability"? Seems a bit subjective at a glance. Your thoughts would be appreciated.--Repkea (talk) 23:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
- Hi Repkea. Direct quotes can be used in articles and whenever they are they must be placed in quotes ("") and a inline citation placed showing where the quote comes from, but this is not how most of our information is presented. Most information is presented by writing material where the information (not the words) comes from an already published source—the information is verified by a source. We then cite where we got the information in order to write what we did. The best way to do this is also with inline citations. You write a sentence, then at the end, you place your citation showing where you got the information. This is not normally a quotation (and it must not be a quotation that is presented as our own material, even if cited, as that would be a copyright infringement). The sources we should use are reliable ones. A guideline on recognizing what that means is at Wikipedia:Reliable sources. The essence of it is that we want sources that have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Scholarly material is often best. A simple example: If you said in an article "the Sun has a diameter of about 1,392,000 kilometers" we would look for a scholarly scientific source that contains the information, which would be far superior to a comic book that said the same thing. We also prefer secondary sources over primary (or tertiary) sources. A primary source is one by the subject or the subject itself. For example, in an article on a person, a primary source would be an autobiography or a quote from the person. A secondary source would be an unconnected person writing about the subject; a biography, a newspaper article, a magazine profile. A tertiary source is one that synthesizes primary and secondary sources--we are a tertiary source and so are other encyclopedias. As for notability, it is not subjective. The word is not used here for its vernacular definition. It means being the subject of significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. It's all related, reliable sources, the requirement that we use them, and notability. From first principals, being what we are, an encyclopedia, we only should contain articles on subjects that the wider world has recognized by publishing about them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:47, 14 January 2010 (UTC)