Stillber
Welcome!
editHello, Stillber, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Shalor and I work with the Wiki Education Foundation; I help support students who are editing as part of a class assignment.
I hope you enjoy editing here. If you haven't already done so, please check out the student training library, which introduces you to editing and Wikipedia's core principles. You may also want to check out the Teahouse, a community of Wikipedia editors dedicated to helping new users. Below are some resources to help you get started editing.
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If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:24, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Sourcing
editHi, I received a notification that you had added this source to the article on French Polynesia. This source cannot be used on Wikipedia because it reposts content from Wikipedia, which cannot be used to source itself. When searching for sourcing you need to check over the material very carefully to make sure that it's usable - meaning that the source is verifiable, it was written by an authority on the topic and/or has undergone a thorough editorial process, and that it doesn't copy material from Wikipedia, among other things. Here's a general overview of what you should look for with sources:
- Who wrote it? If there's no author attached to the piece (ie, near the title) then check the bottom of the page and/or the about page to see if there is any information about authorship. If there's no authorship information at all to show you who is writing the article and is responsible for the website, then the site is almost certainly not something that could be used as a reliable source.
- Is there any information about their editorial process? A good reliable source should have their editorial board (and ideally something about their process) posted. Sites that don't have this are likely not reliable.
- Where is the source posted? This is important for cases where people self-publish their work or publish somewhere outside of their norm, even if the person would otherwise be seen as a reliable source. The issue with the "where" is that some places don't verify the information or even provide editing for grammatical or spelling errors. Sometimes self-published work can be used as a source, but it's fairly rare.
- Do they mirror Wikipedia content? This is definitely something to be careful about, as some people will only use Wikipedia as a source or in the case of this website, just mirror the content. Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the content cannot be used to source Wikipedia.
- Does the source explicitly make the claim you want to add to the article? Sources can only be used to back up claims if they specifically state that same claim. This is actually a pretty common mistake with new users, especially if you're used to writing academic papers. It's perfectly fine to draw your own conclusions in an academic paper - it's a good way to learn - however this differs on Wikipedia, as we can only include conclusions that other people have already made.
I'd like you to re-review the module on sourcing, thanks. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 14:43, 19 October 2017 (UTC)