Gathering references

Gathering references

Lesson-4

• The information you will be writing about needs to be supported by sources. You will cite specific facts and establish notability using references. References used to support notability must meet additional criteria beyond reliability. References used for specific facts need not meet these additional criteria.

A topic must be sufficiently noteworthy and that notability must be supported by citations to trustworthy sources for it to be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia.

In general, sources with?no?editorial control are not reliable. These include (but are not limited to) books published by vanity presses, self-published "magazine" blogs, web forums, Usenet discussions, personal social media, fan sites, vanity websites that permit the creation of self-promotional articles, and other similar venues. If anyone at all can post information without anyone else checking that information, it is probably not reliable.

• A topic is notable if it has been the subject of extensive information published over time in reputable sources (such as books, journals, or newspapers).
• In order to provide evidence of significance for review by other editors when creating (or expanding) a Wikipedia article, you must cite these sources.
• If you cannot locate such trustworthy sources that offer in-depth and thorough information about your proposed subject, it is unlikely that it will be kept because it is not noteworthy or verifiable. So your first job is to?go find references?to cite.

There are many places to find reliable sources, including your local library, but if internet-based sources are to be used, start with?book?and?news archive?searches rather than a web search.

Once you have references for your article, you can learn to place the references into the article by reading?Help:Referencing for beginners?and?Wikipedia:Citing sources. Do not worry too much about formatting citations properly. It would be great if you did that, but the main thing is to?get references into the article, even if they are not perfectly formatted.

Next lesson: How to avoid common mistakes?