Anarchopedia:Reliable sources

This is a proposed guideline discussing the reliability of sources. Anarchopedia articles must cover all major and significant minority viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources.

Wikipedia is a huge place with thousands of editors, and it would seem to have been convenient for them to establish rules beyond what is logical, to address potential inability to use logic. But their rules are still illogical, and we can do better.

It is also a place that rests on conventions, some of which have lasted hundreds of years. However, making the same mistake for hundreds of years does not make it less of a mistake.

Anarchopedia guidelines should take into particular consideration the logical fallacy known as Ad hominem. Qualities of a part of something under consideration should be the only qualities and the only part to be considered. For example we are to consider an argument put forward by Threetoes. If Threetoes has a reputation as someone who uses loaded language and rhetoric, then the natural reaction is to view everything he says with suspicion. That is expedient, but not logical, and leads to obvious problems, such as when someone says that we can't listen to anything Threetoes says, because it will obviously just be rhetoric. Or when we gloss over Threetoe's arguments, because, we say, it is not our policy to give Threetoes more than three assertions to make his case. Or when we say that one of Threetoes' arguments is obviously biased because it is about a topic he showed bias in before. And so on, infinitely. The only logical course of action is in fact to address what Threetoes says NOW.

If we want to be scrupulously unbiased ourselves, then we need to use logic, not rules.

This is also true of sources.

Only beings supernaturally incapable of error would be capable of purveying information that could automatically assumed to be free of error; only beings supernaturally incapable of ever doing anything right, assumed to be always wrong.

And that includes us, and our rules.

Whatever we decide to be our preferred combination of accuracy and informativeness, which can be assumed to be somewhere between getting every last piece of plausible information out there and always being right, the sources we use are not automatically respectable or automatically rejected. In fact, the sources, according to Ad Hominem, are irrelevant. The information in them is relevant, and should be considered on its own merits.

Wikipedia's Reliable Source rule

Wikipedia articles should use reliable, third-party, published sources. A reliable source can be defined as a credible published material with a reliable publication process; the author of the source is generally considered to be trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand. How reliable a source is depends on context. As a rule of thumb, the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication. Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made; if an article topic has no reliable sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources

For the purposes of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, primary, secondary, and tertiary sources are defined as follows:

• Primary source: Primary sources are sources very close to the origin of a particular topic. Some examples of primary source are:
  • an eyewitness account of an aviation accident
  • archeological artifacts; photographs
  • historical documents such as diaries
  • census results
  • video or transcripts of surveillance
  • public hearings, trials, or interviews
  • tabulated results of surveys or questionnaires
  • written or recorded notes of laboratory and field research, experiments or observations, published experimental results by the person(s) actually involved in the research
  • original philosophical works, religious scripture, administrative documents, and artistic and fictional works such as poems, scripts, screenplays, novels, motion pictures, videos, and television programs.
• Secondary source: Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event. Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims.
• Tertiary source: Tertiary sources are publications such as encyclopedias or other compendia that sum up secondary and primary sources. For example, Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source. Many introductory textbooks may also be considered tertiary to the extent that they sum up multiple primary and secondary sources.

Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.

Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. To the extent that part of an article relies on a primary source, it should:

• only make descriptive claims about the information found in the primary source, the accuracy and applicability of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge, and
• make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the information found in the primary source.

Unsourced material obtained from a Wikipedian's personal experience, such as an unpublished eyewitness account, should not be added to articles. It would cause Wikipedia to become a primary source for that material.

Tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources may be more reliable than others, and within any given tertiary source, some articles may be more reliable than others.

Appropriate sourcing can be a complicated issue, and these are general rules. Deciding whether primary or secondary sources are more suitable on any given occasion is a matter of common sense and good editorial judgment, and should be discussed on article talk pages.

Exceptions

Generally articles should use reliable, third-party, published sources. But in some specific circumstances, this policy may be relaxed. For example, Green Anarchist is an anarchist magazine which is not covered in third party sources, but we will allow creation of this article because this magazine is an important anarchist magazine. This requires permission from the editorial board.