Wikipedia talk:Identifying and using primary sources

On the “closer to the event” rule (again)

Isn’t every published source closer (in time) to any given event than the present? Especially if it wasn’t published in the very recent past. It seems to me that this “rule of thumb” sorely needs explaining or rewriting, or even sourcing. —Frungi (talk) 05:40, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

I see what you mean. What we're aiming for here is that the source is closer to the event than you are to the source. So the event is in 1688, the source is in 1776, and you are in 2013: the source is primary. But if the event is in 1963, the source is in 2001, and you are in 2013, then it's at least possible that the source is not primary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:29, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

So the actual rule of thumb, then, is that a secondary source is no less than half as old as the event, yeah? I’d still very much like to know where that rule came from, but I’ll edit it to be more clear on that point. —Frungi (talk) 05:35, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I think you'll find that it's more complicated than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:00, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, that was what you said, wasn’t it? Unless you’re using an odd measurement of time, or meant something other than time. I hate to keep repeating myself, but a source for that rule would definitely help my (and, no doubt, others’) understanding. —Frungi (talk) 06:04, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

It's more complicated than that. So the examples I gave hold true: if the Glorious Revolution of 1688 is mentioned in sources written during the American Revolutionary War, you must treat them as primary sources now. If JFK's assassination is mentioned in a source written shortly after the 9/11 attacks, then (depending on what the source says), that might be secondary.

But there are other examples that give different proportions and won't hold true: The Gospel of Mark was written sometime late in the first century; Matthew Henry wrote his commentaries in the early 18th century; and Henry's work should still be handled as primary sources. Similarly, if the Oscars are announced on Sunday evening, and Tuesday's paper contains a truly analytical article about the winners, then you may use that article on Saturday as a secondary source, even though the source is two days away from the event and you are four days away from the source.

If it were simply a matter of subtracting dates, then we could have supplied a link to an internet date calculator. But it's not simply a matter of subtracting dates. It's more complicated than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Hence it’s a “rule of thumb”. But it’s frankly sounding like that rule doesn’t have much value, so why include it? —Frungi (talk) 06:52, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

It's helpful to people who are dealing with old documents. It is a useful way of explaining the problem to people who have found a "review article" about a historical treatment from the 19th century, for example. It's not going to be helpful to everyone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

It's not actually helpful though. It's just leading to dispute, the reasoning in it is faulty in several ways (see earlier thread, where I explain why, though agreeing we should err on the safe side), and hardly anyone knows this page exists, so it's not providing actual advice to much of anyone anyway. (This essay needs its kinks worked out first, then to be "advertised" in the "See also" sections of all the relevant policies and guidelines and other essays.) I'll be happy to help work on this, as I've been writing WP:Use of tertiary sources, and they perhaps should be merged, though their approaches are presently very different.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:46, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I've been teaching historiography for 50 years and never came across anything remotely resembling that strange "rule." Take Abe Lincoln--died 1865 = 152 years ago, half that is 76 years = 1941. The "rule" indicates that people in the 1930s writing books and articles about President Lincoln were creating primary sources! there is zero sourcing so we can drop it. Rjensen (talk) 22:41, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Subject bias

This essay, especially the final section, seems to lean too far toward the academic, historiographic uses of “primary” and “secondary”, rather than the definitions used by Wikipedia. In many places, it seems to be saying that the way Wikipedia internally uses the terms is somehow “wrong” because it’s different from how an academic field uses them, when really it should be about how Wikipedia uses them. I mean, the essay is in the Wikipedia: namespace, not the Historiography: namespace. —Frungi (talk) 05:54, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

So that section on media sources, is it about Wikipedia? Because if it isn’t—if it’s about how sources are classified in a particular field of study—it really doesn’t belong on a Wikipedia-namespace page giving general direction to general editors. —Frungi (talk) 05:46, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

The problem with classifying news according to "how we use it" is WP:Notability. In fact, the news section used to be a part of the section about notability.

Once upon a time, we had a few policy editors who (in good faith) thought that 'secondary' was basically the same thing as 'independent'. So the words were used pretty much interchangeably in various policies and guidelines. That's been fixed in most of them since then. The concept of "secondary" sources crawled into WP:N sometime in 2007 (e.g., March (don't miss the confusion evident in that edit summary), but not January).

Sometime later, some editors started figuring out what 'secondary' means among academics, and also figured out that we didn't actually want articles based on primary sources (as defined by most academics [there are some significant differences in academic fields]; previously, articles solely based on primary sources were explicitly permitted at NOR), and we developed a problem: if you go to NORN or RSN and ask about a source, you get a response that most academics would recognize, e.g., that eyewitness news reports are never secondary sources. But if you go to AFD and ask about the same source, you get a very different answer. The reason for this is that the WP:GNG requires secondary sources, and people "just know" that a stack of newspaper articles about whatever recent event is supposed to make their new article immune from deletion. So we get handwaving assertions that newspaper articles are secondary, even when the sources in question are plainly primary sources (and plainly not what the GNG wants from a secondary source).

Short of convincing people to re-write the GNG, I don't believe that we can produce a single answer of "how Wikipedia uses them". We have two definitions. One is fairly close to how historiography defines it, and the other is what early versions of this page called "Please don't delete this article sources". This second definition is actually wrong: it is not what academics say, it is not what our own policy at NOR says, and it is not what editors at WT:N claim they mean. But it is nonetheless a pervasive claim at AFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:59, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

In other words, we have one definition, and then we have a misunderstanding of the concept. —Frungi (talk) 06:38, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

If you don't want to say that we have two incompatible definitions (NOR vs N), I would say that we have one definition (which is not exactly the same as the definition used by any particular academic field, although it's closest to the historians'), one dramatic misuse of that definition that is widely supported, and a serious lack of education.

Or, to go back to your original comment: yes, we're saying that the way Wikipedia internally uses the terms is frequently wrong, because it is frequently wrong, and wrong even according to Wikipedia's own official definition in the policy, not just according to academics' definitions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:43, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

I’m sorry, I thought you were saying the misuse in AFD was the second definition rather than WP:NOR/WP:N. That’s probably my sleep-deprived fault. Though “secondary sources” in the GNG links to NOR rather than giving its own definition, so I’m still not seeing it. —Frungi (talk) 07:01, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

The 'definition' actually used at AFD, and blamed on WP:N, has nothing to do with NOR. The link to NOR is simply ignored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I strongly agree with the concern raised in the original post. It's okay for us to explain (more briefly) how some other contexts use these terms, but this essay should not be advocating or imposing them, or even dwelling on them. WP has its own meanings and criteria for these classifications, and if this essay continues to buck them, it should be userspaced. I think it has the potential, after a lot of cleanup and reworking, to be very useful, but the first step in this process is going to have to be normalizing it to Wikipedia's own internal voice. I appreciate WhatamIdoing's historical view of how problems have arisen, but agree with Frungi's "In other words, we have one definition, and then we have a misunderstanding of the concept." Our "job" with a page like this is to figure out what is clearly intended in policy, explicate and apply it better, and disabuse people of the incorrect interpretation. If we do this really well and still come to the conclusion that one policy or guideline or the other needs a wording tweak, it should not be an insurmountable challenge to get that taken care of.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:56, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Ancient historians

I have just discovered an article on ancient history (Dacia) seriously (with a straight face, if articles had faces) citing ancient historical writings. Headdesk. It should be obvious that these are not citeable sources for Wikipedia (at least for everybody who has a clue about the methodology of historical research: any source older than about 1950 cannot be taken at face value, even if it was written by an academic historian), but obviously it is not. Perhaps this point merits an explicit mention somewhere. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it should. Ancient writings can be used as primary sources in limited ways, but we would never literally cite directly to them, but to a modern, translated edition with analysis, or better yet simply to a secondary source that analyzes it as a topic. It would be perfectly fine to cite a secondary source at analyzed the poems, for assertions a WP article makes about on the meaning of a passage in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", while also using and properly referencing J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of the poem to provide illustrative quotations in the article, if we like his version better that some other translation. In neither case would we cite the ancient manuscript itself.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:40, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. "Ancient" is perhaps too narrow, considering that, as the OP pointed out, most historical scholarship before the mid-20th century is seriously problematic, with respect to both factual accuracy and POV. I have seen an alarming number of articles on WP referenced entirely to 19th century sources, despite a wealth of recent scholarship from the past two decades. There is really no excuse, considering how drastically changed our views of many of these subjects are today. "Prefer recent sources unless the older source is still considered more authoritative/accurate by experts today" would be my take on it. In an ideal world, I'd also like to see a cleanup template for articles that rely too much on outdated scholarship. I want to see what others have to say on it first though. --diff (talk) 01:34, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Use of primary peer reviewed sources from prominent minority views that seem to contradict secondary sources from majority view.

I am seeing some editor debate on articles I wanted to improve, and there seems to be a lot of push back on minority views in contentious medical areas. (Lyme disease)

I think I have demonstrated that the minority view has multiple prominent adherents, and that there are at least 100 peer reviewed papers that support some of the minority claims. By the very nature of being a minority, there are only some primary sources. But in order to make verifiable claims with appropriate weight, this requires apply some number of primary sources. There are usually multiple papers to cite, but of course none of them come from the medical societies that are driving the mainstream view.

All positions seem realistic, and the growing body of research is advancing the state of the disease on both sides, so it seems important to cite medical research in the context of the minority view.Bob the goodwin (talk) 08:37, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry but this is the wrong approach. Please see the intro to WP:MEDRS. We need to present in Wikipedia mainstream views on health-related issues. There are some who go so far to say (and I am pretty close to this position myself), that if health-related content cannot be supported by a reliable secondary source it should not be in Wikipedia at all - we are not a medical debating society - we are an encyclopedia presenting knowledge to the public. It is OK to represent significant minorities but they must be presented that way, and only as represented in reliable secondary sources. I don't know how closely you follow the primary biomedical literature but there is a huge percentage of primary studies that turn out not to be replicable. In other words, that are not reliable science. That is one of the big reasons why we need to hew closely to the scientific consensus wherever we can find it. Jytdog (talk) 03:18, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

medicine is different

Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) cuols be added somewhere here as it seems different — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.49.40.207 (talk) 13:03, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Spinach

This is a fantastic read regarding how important it is that when we use secondary (or later) sources, we should always attempt to trace back to the original source to ensure that it says what we're asserting it says. This is a staggeringly common problem on Wikipedia. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 08:44, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing that Chris... it was fascinating. Blueboar (talk) 22:43, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Plato and Socrates etc.

An interesting point has come up in Socrates. Is Plato a reliable source for the life of Socrates? Plato will have to be used of course, but should he be the main source, to the exclusion of modern sources. It has been argued that these later sources generally rely on Plato anyway, and so it would be better to use Plato directly. I would argue that modern sources are necessary because Plato might well be considered as a primary source for Socrates, and we need other sources to explain him. The same sort of argument might be made about eg. Boswell and Johnson. Myrvin (talk) 08:38, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

You are asking two separate questions... 1) is Plato a reliable source for the life of Socrates? Yes. An article on Socrates that did not mention (and thus cite) Plato would be incomplete. 2) Should Plato be the (main) source? Probably not. Certainly, where modern scholarship disagrees with Plato, we should highlight the discrepancy. The same would be true for Boswell and Johnson. Blueboar (talk) 22:02, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

conflict of interest of a source

WhatamIdoing back in March 2013 you made the following edit, adding the underlined text: "It is a third-party or independent source, with no significant financial or other conflict of interest. That sentence is part of a bulleted list, introduced by: "According to our content guideline on identifying reliable sources, a reliable source has the following characteristics:". WP:RS doesn't say anything about conflict of interest of a source. I am not sure what this means in the context of WP:PAG broadly speaking. Can you please say more, about what you meant? thx Jytdog (talk) 21:32, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

For a source to be independent, it has to be uninvolved in the issue, by definition. That would obviously include COI. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:47, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

i understand that you are interested in getting clarity on issues around COI and sourcing. I am too.

I don't know what it meant to WAID to say that a source has a COI, so I asked her.

about your statement, SV... Authors can have a COI (they are required to disclose it). Funding of research used by authors to do research that is published in a source can influence the results/conclusions conveyed in the source; that funding is also disclosed in the source itself. A source can be SPS and not independent of its author... all three of those things are understandable to me. WP:RS only deals with the third of them. I don't understand what "a source has to be uninvolved in the issue" means, concretely, to you, nor what it means to you to say that a source has a COI. What does that mean to you? Jytdog (talk) 22:53, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I see you restored the content. i still don't know what that means. this is just an essay, not a big deal. Jytdog (talk) 00:22, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog,

Actually, WP:RS stresses the need for third-party sources. The WP:BIASED section specifically mentions financial COIs. On the English Wikipedia, third party and independent are used interchangeably, so everything it says about third-party sources is also about independent sources. (There is a technical difference, but conflating the two pretty much only bothers lawyers.)

Given the relatively poor state of WP:INDY and WP:THIRDPARTY (which I still hope to merge some day, as soon as I find another 30 hours or so to spare), my goal in that edit was to help people understand what it means for a source to be independent/third-party. The main source of non-independence is having some sort of COI.

It's really important to remember that we're talking about COI, not WP:COI. This is about the sort of real-world COI that an ethical author would disclose in a research article, not the sort of COI that a Wikipedia editor has.

"Source" has three meanings on the English Wikipedia: author, publisher, and document. A document probably can't have a COI, but both authors and publishers can and do (even when they're not the same entity/self-published). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for writing here @WhatamIdoing:. I read BIAS before I wrote here. What BIAS says is: "Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs". In other words, "financial beliefs". Which is not saying financial COI. And which I found to be strange and strained. I'm also trying to reconcile your dif above, with this dif] at MEDRS, where you added to MEDRS the following: "Do not reject a high-quality type of study because you personally disagree with the study's inclusion criteria, references, funding sources, or conclusions." WP:MEDINDY seems to be focused on FRINGE stuff not on any kind of financial COI. In this thread in the WT:MEDRS archives you argued that a third party/independent analysis doesn't read on the composition of a journal's editorial board. I think it would be very helpful if our guidelines and essays on sources dealt clearly with what a COI or lack of independence in a source (publisher, authors, funding too) is and looks like. Am not asking for a definition to wikilawyer but rather just some clear and coherent discussion of it.

In my own editing, I strive to use sources that are what I view as independent as best as I can define that (again I think our guidance is weak). As an example, there is a discussion about sourcing for a statement about the relative safety of GM food. Two of the most recent reviews (published in peer reviewed journals) are authored by Monsanto scientists: PMID 25972882 and PMID 24579994; I wouldn't cite them on this, nor would I cite other sources by advocates with clear financial ties like Jon Entine or something put out by BIO nor an SPS by an advocacy group like this. The current content does cite a review in a solid, peer-reviewed journal by Pamela Ronald, a University of California scientist who is very well regarded and who does a lot of public outreach about GM food - that review cites funding by the NIH and the DoE. I think SV's question at WT:MEDRS about how we should handle funding of published research (especially of reviews) is a good one, and I would like our discussion of independence/third party/BIAS to present a coherent picture that everybody can make sense of and follow. Jytdog (talk) 11:47, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• If you read BIAS as applying to "financial beliefs" rather than financially motivated sources of bias, then I did a poor job of writing it (hardly surprising; I started with a bold effort and didn't get many suggestions for improvements in the subsequent discussions).
• Independence (intellectual, financial, and otherwise) is good. It's not an absolute requirement. A systematic review with "tainted" funding (from your POV) is not unreliable, and is not worse than a case study that "pure" funding (from your POV). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

i agree 100% that independence is good. it is just a matter of saying what that means relatively clearly. Jytdog (talk) 19:10, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

So far, I think that "relatively clearly" is going to take between two and three thousand words. This place on this page can reasonably include about half a sentence on the subject. Assume that the main goal is to help inexperienced people remember that WP:Secondary does not mean independent and that self-published doesn't mean non-independent. What would you tell them that independent means? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for asking! I think it would be more clear if we changed this from

• from: third-party or independent source, with no significant financial or other conflict of interest.
• to: third-party or independent source, where the authors or publisher have no significant financial or other conflict of interest.

Might it be useful to add to the beginning of the short paragraph following the list, something like: "A source that has all these characteristics is optimally reliable; a source that lacks one of these characteristics is less reliable; consider finding a better source, and if you must use the source, use it only with care and with attribution."? Jytdog (talk) 09:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing thoughts on that? I know you are busy working on BRD which may be promoted to a guideline but didn't want to let this fall by the wayside. Jytdog (talk) 02:23, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

If you are willing to change the where to something like for which (because a source is not a geographic location ;-) then I think that all of your suggestions here would be significant improvements. Be bold. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:52, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Jytdog, I would object to that change. Authors and publishers are not the only sources of COI, as we've discussed elsewhere. Although COI funding would normally give the authors a COI, a situation could arise where it seems not to. Another example is where an author's source has a COI unknown to the author (a history book written on the basis of a conflicted primary source). And on WP, if someone makes an edit by more or less copying over material written by a paid advocate, neither the editor/author nor WP has a COI, but the article has been affected by COI.

What is the purpose of changing the wording? Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 05:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

b/c COI of a source is not meaningful. a document cannot have a COI. Jytdog (talk) 06:06, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

SV, I'm not looking at this as the be-all and end-all of the definition. I'm just trying to get half a sentence or so to give people an idea of what we mean. How would you explain INDY sourcing to someone who has no idea what we're talking about? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:30, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Name change to Identifying and using primary sources

This essay was titled, "Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources". I just changed it to Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources.

Using secondary sources is the norm, and practically all guidance and policies on Wikipedia editing refers to secondary sources. As this essay says, "primary does not mean bad" and "secondary does not mean good", but usually it does, and if anyone has come to this essay they have gone through the basics and want more nuance. This essay does not try to describe the common case in Wikipedia of using "reliable sources". Instead it is a place for describing the use of exceptional cases - sources which are not reliable sources, and which are primary and under the rule of WP:PRIMARY.

I would like to eliminate the suggestion that anyone should come here to learn to identify and use secondary sources. This is a guide for distinguishing between primary and secondary in confusing cases, but usually there is no confusion, and usually the situation is clear. I think this page's focus should be

1. identifying primary sources
2. distinguishing primary and secondary sources, if immediate identification is not easy
3. using primary sources

I think this essays focus should not be

1. Basics of using reliable sources, which is the common case covered elsewhere
2. characteristics of secondary sources outside the context of distinguishing them from primary

The part most lacking in this essay is usage instructions and use case examples for primary sources. I think this page is the best place for that kind of content. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:15, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, I'm not sure that I agree with the move since this essay is about identifying and using secondary sources in addition to identifying and using primary sources. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:58, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Agree. Bluerasberry and Flyer22 Reborn, this should be moved back. The page isn't only about primary sources. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:21, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

SlimVirgin Could either or both of you respond to the idea that using "secondary sources" is the default norm in Wikipedia and implied when sources are discussed, when this page seems to be talking about the different and special case of using primary sources? I can agree that this page includes more than discussion of primary sources, but I feel that this page is different from almost all other pages because it discusses primary sources when that is not the norm.

An analogy would be calling this page "Identifying and using a special sort of source". Technically it is correct to say "Identifying and using the usual sorts of sources and a special sort of source", but I feel that the second title is a bit misleading because this the focus of this page is the special case, and this is not the place to learn about the norm. What do you think? Blue Rasberry (talk) 03:13, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about the title, but I doubt your assertion that secondary sources are "the norm" (in the statistical sense of being the most common in actual use, rather than the theoretically preferred type; check any current politician's or celebrity's article for the number of primary sources in use), and I think that WP:NOTGOODSOURCE, which is mostly about secondary sources, is one of the more popularly cited sections. Either of those could be reasons to move the page back. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Bluerasberry, I simply think that the previous title is more accurate. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:05, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I can confirm that many Wikipedia articles use primary sources. When I referred to "the norm", I meant to refer to Wikipedia guideline pages like WP:RS, which I feel talk about secondary sources as the norm and to not anticipate primary sources. Like for example, when notability guidelines talk about citing sources, they want a certain number of secondary sources and not for example self-published biographical information and accomplishment lists as commonly seen in politician and celebrity articles.

I still fail to understand why the page should be titled in such a way that suggests that this would be a place for people to come to learn about secondary sources. If someone wanted information about secondary sources, I think that I would send them to WP:RS or almost any of the other help pages talking about reliable sources, and if someone wanted information about primary sources, then I would send them to this page. Do you not share my perception that this page is unusual for addressing primary sources, and that in general, help pages like WP:RS talk about secondary sources? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:24, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

As I said, I don't feel strongly about the title. Either way is okay with me. I agree that before I started this page, there was very few pages explaining primary sources (and most of what we have on secondary sources is an exhortation to use them, rather than practical information on how to identify them).

(Notability cares more about independence than historiographical classification. We could delete a significant number of articles on businesses and living people if the existence of two true secondary sources were actually required.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:11, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I am willing to support the judgement of any new person to join this conversation, if that path to resolution would satisfy others involved. This would be like WP:3O. Otherwise, anyone else currently participating could propose their own path to resolution of this. I care a little but this is not worth so much conversation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:03, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Primary sources in organizations

Previously the "primary sources from businesses" example said that it was okay to make some limited promotional claims if they were true. The example was, "sells more products than others in the region". I do not ever recall a time when this was allowed. I removed this.

Some people find it controversial to allow any primary sources from businesses, but I just listed some facts commonly taken from primary sources which I think usually are allowed. See my edit. The facts that I listed are these -

• annual revenue
• number of staff
• physical location of headquarters
• status as a parent or child organization to another

As a further explanation -

• Having the annual review of an organization differentiates small organizations with a low annual budget from massive corporations with huge budgets. It is useful context to provide some measure of money, and this information often is only in an annual report
• similarly, number of staff can be a measure of the size of an organization. Sometimes on Wikipedia it is difficult to differentiate companies with no staff from those with hundreds. List the number outright when it is available in primary sources.
• Knowing the location of a company is useful like the nationality of a person. It can be misleading for multinational, multi-site organizations but in many cases country matters and GPS coordinates are welcome
• If one organization is controlled by or controlling others then it is useful to note relationships, in the same way that primary sources for biographies often note family relationships not otherwise established in secondary sources.

All of these are grey area but in my experience this information is routinely included from primary sources. Furthermore - this sort of information is often desired to be hidden by many companies, which limits the potential for abuse that is common about sharing other organizational information. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:33, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Photos on Commons are primary sources

It is a quirk of Wikipedia to need to address this but photos on Commons are typically original research without verification and primary source material included in Wikipedia articles.

I just added a statement that this is okay. I am not sure where or how this has been addressed elsewhere, but now it is here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:35, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

All citations removed

I just removed all the citations to external sources for this article. There were 5, and they seemed to all go to university library websites describing the difference between primary and secondary sources.

4 of the links were dead. I did not bother to try to find their updates, archived version, or any replacement. One link was alive, but since it is published in the outdated format of a 1990s website, it is obvious that it is obsolete content.

This is an essay which will be used mostly by experienced Wikipedians. I have regularly seen young Wikipedians, high school and early college, easily outthink university librarians regarding the difference between primary and secondary sources from the perspective of good practice in Wikipedia editing. At this point, I think easier to understand, more comprehensive, and more applicable "primary versus secondary" explanations can be found in Wikipedia's own editing guides than in any homemade university writing center guide. This essay is kind of old - I also removed notes which said, "Wikipedia is not the real world", which is Wikipedia community jargon from the time when it was imagined that Wikipedia is a fringe community. Nowadays Wikipedia has its own extensive in-house documentation on these things.

If anyone finds a good external link, share it, but I think these are not necessary. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:48, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, not only is removing these citations (dead links or no) extremely unhelpful for readers who may wish to check the sources, but quoting a non-free source without any citation or attribution is likely to be a copyright violation (see Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria). I've suggested a possible way to improve sourcing for this section under § WP:PRIMARYNEWS below. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 18:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Sangdeboeuf Confirmed - if I had this to do over again I would have deleted the content along with the citations. I was careless about that. I will comment about changes below where you made a proposal. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

"The first published source for any given fact is often considered a primary source."

"The first published source for any given fact is often considered a primary source" is not a true statement - it should be "often" not always. Disagreement?

A very common case is the publishing of research analysis (secondary source) while keeping the original study data unpublished. The presumption behind the above statement is that primary sources have to be published before secondary sources are published, and this is not correct. Secondary sources can be based on unpublished primary sources, leaving the reader to wonder if it is possible to find the primary source elsewhere.

Perhaps this entire sentence could be omitted just because it makes a sweeping debatable generalization. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:48, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't disagree with saying that it's "always", but it seems to be one of those things that depends upon the field. Regardless of whether such a source actually "is" primary (according to whatever definition is preferred by any given speaker), the fact remains that on Wikipedia such a source "should be treated as" primary (i.e., used carefully, without giving too much weight to it). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Illustration

I used a familiar example. It was replaced with a copyrighted work that is hardly known.

Can the example be something that can be seen in Wikimedia Commons? Wiki favors free content. I do not understand the bit about removing pictures to increase diversity, and think that if art is mentioned at all then it should be shown. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there's any advantage to showing the art work (we don't give excerpts from the other primary sources, after all), especially when the title itself provides all of the description that's needed to understand the example. I also have a bias in favor of using examples that don't conform to the "white male as default", especially when the examples are relatively unimportant.

I'm also not sure that we're helping users optimally by showing a picture of antique travel diary. A modern blog or a travelogue in a magazine is equally a primary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYNEWS

Sampling of university-based sources that address the question:

• "A newspaper article is a primary source if it reports events, but a secondary source if it analyses and comments on those events."
• "Characteristically, primary sources are contemporary to the events and people described [e.g., like a newspaper article on a current event]... Examples of primary sources include...newspaper ads and stories. In writing a narrative of the political turmoil surrounding the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a researcher will likely tap newspaper reports of that time for factual information on the events. The researcher will use these reports as primary sources because they offer direct or firsthand evidence of the events, as they first took place."
• "There can be grey areas when determining if an item is a primary source or a secondary source. For example, newspaper journalists may interview eyewitnesses but not be actual eyewitnesses themselves. They also may have completed research to inform their story. Traditionally, however, newspapers are considered primary sources…. Examples of common primary source formats can include...contemporary newspaper articles…. Newspaper articles, although often written after an event has occurred, are traditionally considered a primary source…. "
• "Examples of primary information: A current news report that is reporting the facts (not analysis or evaluation) of an event."
• What are primary sources? Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time about a particular event. While these are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. The important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical analysis."

Which "university-based sources" is this section quoting from exactly? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:49, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing probably knows. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:17, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I see now where the citations were removed. The source pages for the first and fifth quotations no longer exist, even in archived form, and the fourth quotation is taken out of context; the source also names "a newscaster's commentary on the day's events" and "Articles from magazines, journals, newsletters, newspapers, etc." as types of secondary sources. I would suggest trimming these parts and rewriting the section, with references, to more accurately represent the intent of the sources, for example:

Several academic research guides name contemporary newspaper accounts as one kind of primary source. Other university libraries address newspaper sources in more detail, for instance:

• "In the humanities, age is an important factor in determining whether an article is a primary or secondary source. A recently-published journal or newspaper article on the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case would be read as a secondary source, because the author is interpreting an historical event. An article on the case that was published in 1955 could be read as a primary source that reveals how writers were interpreting the decision immediately after it was handed down".
• "Characteristically, primary sources are contemporary to the events and people described [...] In writing a narrative of the political turmoil surrounding the 2000 U.S. presidential election, a researcher will likely tap newspaper reports of that time for factual information on the events. The researcher will use these reports as primary sources because they offer direct or firsthand evidence of the events, as they first took place".
• "There can be grey areas when determining if an item is a primary source or a secondary source. For example, newspaper journalists may interview eyewitnesses but not be actual eyewitnesses themselves. They also may have completed research to inform their story. Traditionally, however, newspapers are considered primary sources. The key, in most cases, is determining the origin of the document and its proximity to the actual event".

—Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing and Bluerasberry, any thoughts on what Sangdeboeuf stated above? Bluerasberry, Sangdeboeuf linked to a change you made. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:23, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I say replace the old text with this new text. The ideas are clearer and the citations are better. This is written for the humanities but it works. Ideally the quotations could be replaced with free text but that is not urgent. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:47, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

The proposal is okay, but I think that the simplicity of the first one ("A newspaper article is a primary source if it reports events, but a secondary source if it analyses and comments on those events") is extremely helpful to editors who are trying to do the right thing. In a similar vein, I recommend leaving out the bit about eyewitnesses, because it's likely to mislead editors by conflating independence with primary-ness. It doesn't matter whether the reporter saw the car wreck with his own two eyes; the three-sentence newspaper story about the car wreck last night is still a primary source for the fact that a car wreck happened last night. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree that we should retain that first sentence from the original piece. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:08, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

The part about eyewitnesses is simply an example of the "grey areas" regarding primary vs. secondary that the source is talking about. Without it, the quotation wouldn't make much sense.

I have no problem with including the statement A newspaper article is a primary source if it reports events, but a secondary source if it analyses and comments on those events – but if this is a quote from a copyrighted source, then that source would need better attribution than a dead URL. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 03:42, 8 February 2017 (UTC) (updated 00:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC))

Update: Pending further input, I have inserted the text as it appears above. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:18, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

That quotation doesn't "need" better attribution than a bibliographic citation that includes a dead URL. This isn't a Wikipedia article, so WP:CITE doesn't apply (according to WP:POLICY itself).

One of the problems with the "grey area" quotation (which I added a few years ago) is that some editors read "journalists may interview eyewitnesses but not be actual eyewitnesses themselves" as the example and jump to the conclusion that everything except an actual eyewitness news article is always a secondary source – including "the journalist copied stuff straight off the police blotter", "the journalist interviewed the police officer about the mayor's arrest", "the journalist mindlessly repeated the facts that the preacher claimed about last night's ice-cream fundraiser at the church", "the journalist copied two sentences out of a press release that says WhatamIdoing's Gas Station has changed its opening hours", and all of the other primary stories that appear in a typical newspaper.

I think that the shorter quotation is clear enough without the intervening example, and the issue of eyewitness news is already addressed in another section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:55, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

WP:CITE applies to all copyrighted material in Wikipedia, even in information pages (see Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria). Specifically, the quotation I mentioned needs attribution unless it was explicitly published under a free content licence. The existing citation doesn't identify the source enough for readers to find the source themselves. Without this, it's not possible to verify the quotation and establish the context in which it was written – it could be over-simplified or otherwise misrepresent the intention of the author. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:35, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

That's not actually true. CITE says (second complete sentence) "Wikipedia's Verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, anywhere in article space." This is not "in article space", and therefore CITE does not apply. As I said earlier, POLICY, specifically the WP:NOTPART section, says that content policies don't apply to these pages. Look for the sentence that says "It is therefore not necessary to provide reliable sources to verify Wikipedia's administrative pages...".

Copyright status is irrelevant for this; we cite things in articles to show that it's verifiable, and everywhere to avoid plagiarism. But, in this instance, it doesn't actually matter how complete the bibliographic citation is: "readers" aren't going to be able to find this source themselves, because the library took that page off their website. Even if we find the original title for the article, people are still not going to be able to read the page. You are pretty much going to have to trust that if I were lying about the contents of that page, that someone would have mentioned it in the archives before now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Please have a look at Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria, which is policy:

Articles and other Wikipedia pages may, in accordance with the guideline, use brief verbatim textual excerpts from copyrighted media, properly attributed or cited to its original source or author (as described by the citation guideline), and specifically indicated as direct quotations via quotation marks, <blockquote>, or a similar method.

While certain pages are exempt from this policy, project pages such as this one are not among them. Indeed, it makes little sense to argue otherwise; US copyright law doesn't care whether a page is an article or an information page; they are both equally accessible to the public. The Wikimedia Foundation's licensing policy states that

All projects are expected to host only content which is under a Free Content License, or which is otherwise free as recognized by the 'Definition of Free Cultural Works' [...]

The only exemptions to this policy are those covered under WP:NFCC. Infringing copyrights is also prohibited under the Foundation's Terms of Use. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 14:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

As to the second point, this is asking not just me, but every reader of this page, to trust that the James Cook University quote is accurate and fairly represents the author's view. Since the Troy University quote was taken out of context as I mentioned, and the Indiana University quote (beginning with "Characteristically..") was somewhat oversimplified, with editorializing added (see difference between the two versions above), both of which were originally added at the same time as the JCU quote, I think it's reasonable to ask for some better verification of the latter quote, or else to remove it. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:18, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Despite what I wrote above about not having any problem with including it, the wording of the quote might be confusing; it's not clear what the difference is between "reporting" on events and "analysing and commenting" on events. Most of the other sources I've cited say that secondary sources analyze and comment on other sources, not events. I think the information I just added based on Yale's comparative literature guide covers these points more clearly, so the JCU quote isn't really necessary. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Update: I removed it here. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:51, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

If an editor seriously cannot grasp the difference between reporting on an event and analyzing or commenting on said event, then WP:Competence is required and that editor needs to find something else to do. If you'd like, we can provide editors with a link to Analytic journalism to help them figure it out.

More relevantly, this brief quotation has been in the page for years now, and nobody has ever expressed any confusion over it. It is, of all the quotations in that section, the one that seems to have been most useful to editors. It should remain here, even though you don't like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Let's not jump to any conclusions. I happen to like the quote fine; I just don't believe it represents informed scholarly opinion on the subject, and without a reliable citation, I don't see any reason to change that belief. I see that the quote was added back.

As for the quote remaining on the page for years without comment, that doesn't prove anything. Maybe not many people bother to read this information page in the first place. Also, many outright hoaxes have gone undetected on Wikipedia for years at a time. I'm aware that project pages are not subject to the same content standards as the rest of the encyclopedia. Nevertheless, it shows that false or misleading claims can and do persist until someone takes the trouble to correct them.

Regarding "analyzing and commenting" vs. "reporting", I don't think the distinction is so clear-cut. Consider a hypothetical breaking news story that begins, "The festive spirit of the season was interrupted by a scene of chaos this afternoon, as frantic pedestrians fled the path of a careening vehicle..." Do the words "festive spirit", "frantic", and "scene of chaos" represent factual reporting or editorial commenting on this hypothetical event? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC) (edited 15:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC))

Considering these three factors: the questionable sourcing, the fact that secondary sources comment on other sources, not events, and the existing summary description of secondary sources based on Yale's comparative literature guide, I suggest removing the JCU quotation again – it's both questionable and unnecessary. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:16, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

One more point: I don't think it matters how "useful" a statement appears if it's flawed to begin with; confusing events with sources seems a pretty important misunderstanding of the role of secondary sources. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 07:58, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I still agree with WhatamIdoing that this is helpful, but let's see if she has anything to state about your latest points. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:08, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

• I don't think that it's possible to completely "represent informed scholarly opinion" in any 23 words. (It could, however, be done in two: "It's complicated".) But I do think that this is a useful (=the primary duty of an explanatory advice page) first approximation of what's happening. It is true that it's an oversimplification; however, it's an oversimplification that sets editors on the right path. To be candid, after producing this huge wall of text, you'll convince me otherwise when you produce actual examples of multiple editors getting it wrong while citing this sentence, and not a moment before then.
• The "festive spirit" example is irrelevant, because an encyclopedic summary should not normally need to consider such a trivial detail.
• Neither Yale's comp lit guide – nor any source from any single academic field – is the arbiter of the One True™ Definition of secondary sources. But if I were going to pick a single academic field to decide how to classify and use journalism, it would frankly not be the field of comparative literature, which ignores questions such as "Can we learn anything from this short news report?" in favor of questions like "Does this book actually 'count' as proper literature, or is it just unimportant junk?" and "What universal human truths are conveyed in this work?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Images are sometimes primary sources

One needs historical knowledge to understand propaganda (starting from ancient emperors to Hitler and Stalin). This Wikipedia isn't for Western academicians only.

I find the Nazi propaganda present in many pages digusting.

Propaganda pictures are acceptable in Nazi propaganda, where they are explained, not as an image of Nazi Germany or Adolf Hitler or some other idol.

The same pictures are being used several times in connected pages. "repetitio est mater studiorum" which means here "Wikipedia indoctrinates you."

Xx236 (talk) 14:11, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not clear what action is being suggested here. Problems with specific articles should be discussed on those articles' talk pages or at the related WikiProject. However, please also remember that Wikipedia is not censored, so simply finding some material "disgusting" is not adequate grounds for removing excluding it. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 19:42, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Propaganda pictures are useful in many kinds of articles. An educated understanding of the subject will know what all the sides thought of it: the image that the Nazis chose to project for themselves, the image that their enemies used of them, the images that we now use, etc. There's nothing wrong with explaining what those images represent in those other articles: "Official portrait of <person>" or "Photo of military parade by famous Nazi propagandist, Watts Hisface" or "Wartime poster by <enemy>". WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:02, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Primary / secondary sources in basic science

I would like to get some clarification on this guideline "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." because it is not easily applied to the basic sciences. Here's why.

The best sources in basic science are peer reviewed research articles in reputable journals i.e. primary sources by the WP's definition. The basic science equivalent to secondary sources, i.e. reviews of a developing research field, often just contain a brief summary of the primary research and can be colored by the authors' own view point. This often makes them a worse source than the primary research and it is different to medical research where meta-analyses and systematic reviews are often superior to primary research. But these types of publications are often not possible in basic research since at the bottom of the research tree it does not make sense to repeat the analysis on a small root many times to get enough data for a meta-analysis.

So, while I agree that secondary sources are best for history and medical research, I think this is not the best guideline for basic research. And not summarizing basic research would deprive the Wikipedia of most of its material in the sciences. — J.S.^talk 10:51, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

You wrote: "And not summarizing basic research would deprive the Wikipedia of most of its material in the sciences.". I assume that when you wrote "basic research" you meant "primary sources". Is that what you meant? If so, what about the loads and loads of actual secondary and tertiary sources that are published all the time? I see no basis in reality for this claim, that generally using secondary and tertiary sources and using primary sources rarely and with care would deprive WP of anything. Jytdog (talk) 19:18, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

This discussion is probably more appropriate at WP:SCIRS or WP:MEDRS btw. Jytdog (talk) 19:23, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi J.S., and thanks for the comment. Are you talking about basic research (as in what happens at SLAC) or the basic sciences (as in biology, physics, etc.)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog and WhatamIdoing, thanks for getting back to me. Yes, I think it's problematic to cut down on primary sources and promote this as a guideline or even a rule of the Wikipedia. Secondary sources have an element of Chinese whispers. Information invariably gets altered, even distorted at times. You may say a news piece on a primary research publication is secondary and therefore more desirable as a Wikipedia source. I would say it's not. Better to go to the source like a detective and not rely on hearsay. Of course secondary sources often make the information easier to take up because they summarize and evaluate. So if there is a good review/newspiece/press release/highlight, why not. Often there isn't. The accelerator article is a good example. Many pieces of information entirely appropriate for the article do not have a good secondary source. This article would be much poorer without primary sources. I completely agree that data shouldn't be published in the Wikipedia but once it's peer reviewed, I think it's the richest source of information for the Wikipedia. When a new drug is discovered, double-checked, and published in a reputable journal, should we really wait a year until a review article comes out, or 5 until a meta-review is published? Or should we use the news piece of a journalist that understands the research less than many of the better Wikipedia editors? Let me know what you think. If this discussion is more appropriate for another page, feel free to move it. All the best, — J.S.^talk 15:12, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. What you write, is the way that many scientists try to approach working here, in Wikipedia, when they first come here. This is a discussion that many of us have had with people like yourself, many times. But scientific writing here is not like scientific writing elsewhere. This is explained somewhat in WP:EXPERT which you might find helpful. The emphasis on secondary sources exists for many, many reasons. Those reasons are pretty easy to explain and pretty easy to understand, if you are willing to listen. Let me know. Jytdog (talk) 17:49, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I have a couple of separate thoughts about this:

• You sound like you're the target audience for WP:10SIMPLERULES. You probably also want to take Jytdog's suggestion and look at WP:SCIRS or WP:MEDRS, if you haven't already, since they deal with scientific sources in much greater detail. I've included only a brief paragraph on scientific literature here, because editors really need to look at the longer one.
• About whether you can cite a primary source:
  • The "guideline" that you quote at the start of this section is a widely supported "policy". WP:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays is subtle (and sometimes arbitrary), but this particular statement is a widely accepted best practice that everyone should follow appropriately.
  • The net effect of this particular page is to walk that policy statement (slightly) back towards common sense. We have some editors who interpret the statement that "articles should be based upon" secondary sources as "Thou must not cite a primary source, lo, not even for the smallest sentence in an entire article". When the policy says that "articles should be based upon" secondary sources, the policy means that a majority of the content and the major themes for an article should be cite-able with reliable secondary sources. It doesn't mean that you can't ever cite a primary source for anything.
• About whether editors should prefer the primary literature:
  • As every scientist knows, especially in the range of biology/medicine/psychology, there's a peer-reviewed journal article that supports just about any viewpoint. The replication crisis in behavioral sciences is well-known, even for widely trusted studies in the most reputable journals, and some days, it seems that peer-reviewed journal articles about altmed treatments are just as (un)reliable as a sales brochure. So the odds of a Wikipedia editor adding accurate scientific information while citing a primary source is lower than we'd wish.
  • The secondary literature does not necessarily include news articles. A press release about a journal article is still primary. For the sciences, we tend to prefer peer-reviewed review articles and meta-analyses to either press releases or news stories (which often amount to little more than the press release anyway). You are correct that this can, in some instances, result in a delay. OTOH, that delay means that we're less likely to publish flawed results or information that can't be replicated.
  • When editors cite the primary literature, we tend to see a lot of unrepresentative or unimportant studies (e.g., people citing the one study that claims that bacon improves health, and ignoring the thousands that say it doesn't, or people citing the one study that's in the news this week). It's hard to end up with WP:DUE attention to the majority and minority viewpoints when you're reading this week's popular primary sources.

Because of these problems, we tend to get better results, on average, when we encourage editors to stick to the secondary literature. Yes, that can result in a lag between, say, "this disease is universally fatal" and "as of last month, exactly one person has survived this disease so far". There are costs to this choice. But the choice tends, on average, to result in stronger articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Wow you said that so, so well. Jytdog (talk) 15:15, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jytdog and WhatamIdoing, thanks for expanding on the secondary-preferred guideline. Ultimately the most important quality factor is the writer. Primary sources are not always reliable but the same is true for secondary sources. Reviews are great because they save us time but bad because review authors know less about the discoveries that they sum up from a distance. Primary literature, on the other hand, is bulkier but also less error-prone and easier to verify because you can directly go to the source instead of hoping from one review which cited another review which finally badly cited the original experiment. Ultimately, it's in the hand of the editor to pick the best source and check it thoroughly before summing it up nicely for the Wikipedia. What will definitely lower the quality of almost any Wikipedia article is the dogmatic application of simplistic rules (no research articles ever) but I'm hopeful from your comments that there are sensible editors around and maybe even in the majority? — J.S.^talk 16:22, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

You are writing abstractly. WAID and I are both explaining to you how the community thinks about these issues - the consensus has existed in the community for a long time, and is broad and deep. You are free to ignore us and to ignore the reasoning behind the consensus that we are explaining to you (and the reasoning makes a great deal of sense in the context of working in Wikipedia, which is not like other places) but you will find that your edits get consistently reverted. If you need to bang your head against the wall for a while, so be it. Jytdog (talk) 16:28, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

J.S., I fully agree with you that dogmatic application of simplistic rules is bad for Wikipedia. I believe that there are many sensible editors around. I know that we don't always get it right – especially not always on the first try (that's why we have talk pages), especially not when we're busy or distracted (we're all humans) – but I think that people are trying, as best as they can, to do what's best for the encyclopedia, even if that means not dogmatically following The Rules™. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

• "The best sources in basic science are peer reviewed research articles"? This is not true. Research articles are too focused. The best sources are broad-audience publications. For "basic science", these are popular publications. If the facts are disputed, it is not basic science. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 16:38, 12 April 2017 (UTC)
• The fact that JS oversees students who edit is a bad thing, with their approach to WP. See User:TüBioc. Jytdog (talk) 18:04, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Are ancient historians primary or secondary source?

I have been wondering whether ancient historians, like Thucydides or Plutarch could be considered as reliable secondary sources and hence rely on them to edit an article. As I understand, these are not self edited (but I am not really certain, we don't know how the publishing industry worked then!), they seem more or less independent (even though there was a little pro-Athenian bias of Thucydides) and these historians were not witnessing the events they describe at there work. But considering them as secondary sources, seems awkward. Secondary sources in history are usually books or scholarly journals, from the perspective of a later interpreter, especially by a later scholar. So, is there a formal WP policy or guidance relevant to this question? Τζερόνυμο (talk) 07:21, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Primary. And you cannot cite them directly, per WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. You are not holding in your hands an ancient manuscript of Caesars Commentarii de Bello Gallico or whatever, so you have to cite what you're actually reading, something like: Caesar, Julius; McDevitte, W. A.; Bohn, W. S., trans (1869). The Gallic Wars. New York: Harper. p. 9. ISBN 978-1604597622. Retrieved 8 January 2017. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Generally speaking any source older than about 100 years should be treated as primary, and for news sources, any source close to the date of what's being addressed by the journalist should be as well, since it's just reguritation of off-the-cuff reactions by talking heads, maybe with some journalistic investigation on the basis of too little data. The problem with sources is that they reflect the undersetanding of the time in which they were written. A 1920 scholarly analysis of the global impact of what we now call World War I (then, the Great War) is not a secondary source, because that analysis has been vastly superseded by better analyses and by actual changes in what the effects were, and by more significant later events like WWII and the Cold War. An analysis of events by someone writing in 32 BCE or 524 AD is utterly primary, because – on top of the too-close-to-the-events problem – virtually no one made any effort whatsoever to produce neutral analysis before the advent of modern scientific writing and proper journalism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  12:06, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Re: "A 1920 scholarly analysis of the global impact of what we now call World War I (then, the Great War) is not a secondary source" - I would disagree... it both a secondary source and a primary source (at the same time). It remains a secondary source for it's analysis (although it might not be a good - or "useful" secondary source, because it probably is outdated, and has likely been superseded by more modern sources)... but it is also a primary source for an analysis of what scholarship said about the war, back in 1920.

Regarding ancient sources... Yes, they are considered primary... and there are lots of caveats and restrictions that apply to primary sources. As for whether you can cite them... SMcC is correct that you can not cite them directly (unless you are holding the original in your hands)... but you can cite them indirectly (by citing a modern translation). Primary sources do have their place, and can be cited... but see our WP:PSTS policy on how we should use Primary sources. There are restrictions. Blueboar (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responds. Is it possible to change the wording of Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources, so to clarify it even better? We are having a dispute in Greek WP 1 and some fellow Wikipedians seem to be more literalists than contextualists. According to them, it is clear that Thukydides, Plutarch and so on, are secondary sources coz they were not witnesses etc. Their argumentation ends, as expected like that: "if you want ancient historians to be considered as a primary and not as a secondary source, go chance the guideline". So...how do we fix this? Τζερόνυμο (talk) 20:52, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Suggest you read our Primary source article ... it nicely explains the nuances of classifying sources. In the case of Plutarch and similar classical material, I will quote one important sentence from that article: "In some instances, the reason for identifying a text as the "primary source" may devolve from the fact that no copy of the original source material exists, or that it is the oldest extant source for the information cited." In other words... a source that may have originally been secondary (at the time it was written) can become a primary source, if the older sources it was based upon have disappeared. In that situation, even though the source may not have been an actual eye-witness account, it is as close to an eye-witness account as we can get today. Blueboar (talk) 22:07, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Whether we call them primary or secondary or whathaveyou, ancient historians cannot be considered reliable, unless filtered through a modern scholarly source. Here's a great writeup: Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(history). EEng 23:32, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

I tend to agree with EEng. Whether they "are" primary or secondary or even tertiary in any given system, you need to "use them" as if they are primary sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Biography of the Author

Eric Walberg has contributed to "the Palgrave encyclopedia of imperialism and anti-imperialism" where there's a short bio of him along with the bio of other contributors. Is that bio considered as a primary source? --Mhhossein ^talk 19:14, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Hello there...? --Mhhossein ^talk 12:36, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Almost always these are WP:SPS. EEng 14:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 11 December 2019

Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources → Wikipedia:Primary sources – shorten title Interstellarity (talk) 12:31, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:03, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

• @Interstellarity and Alex 21: queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
• Contesting the above. The latter does not redirect to the former, and should be discussed first. -- /Alex/₂₁ 13:54, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
• When I picked that title, WP:RS was at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources, so I made it parallel. As a separate point, I am concerned about usurping the shorter title, which is currently linked on about 1,750 pages and which points to the main policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I notice that Interstellarity applied the same treatment without any discussion to the pages previously known as Wikipedia:Identifying and using independent sources and Wikipedia:Identifying and using self-published works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 12 December 2019 (UTC)