User:BirgitteSB/Burden of evidence
Burden of evidence[edit]
- For how to write citations, see Wikipedia:Citing sources
The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.[1] The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question. Editors should cite sources fully, providing as much publication information as possible, including page numbers when citing books.[2]
If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.
Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed, but editors may object if you remove material without giving them sufficient time to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider tagging a sentence by adding the {{fact}} template, a section with {{unreferencedsection}}, or the article with {{refimprove}} or {{unreferenced}}. Alternatively, you may leave a note on the talk page requesting a source, or you may move the material to the talk page.
Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced information that may damage the reputation of living persons or organizations in articles and do not move it to the talk page (See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons for details of this policy). As Jimmy Wales has put it:
I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.
–Jimmy Wales [3]
- ^ When content in Wikipedia requires direct substantiation, the established convention is to provide an inline citation to the supporting references. The rationale is that this provides the most direct means to verify whether the content is consistent with the references. Alternative conventions exist, and are acceptable when they provide clear and precise attribution for the article's assertions, but inline citations are considered "best practice" under this rationale. For more details, please consult Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources.
- ^ When there is dispute about whether the article text is fully supported by the given source, direct quotes from the source and any other details requested should be provided as a courtesy to substantiate the reference.
- ^ Jimmy Wales (2006-05-16). ""Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information"". WikiEN-l electronic mailing list archive. Retrieved 2006-06-11.