User:Johannes Maximilian/Johannes Maximilian's essay on Wikipedia's basic principles

I would like to give a basic overview of the fundamental principles of a Wikipedia article. There are multiple important, interconnected key things about Wikipedia articles:

Core thoughts

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, meaning that by principle it only includes articles on things, subjects or people that are believed to be included in the so-called established knowledge. Wikipedia cannot be used to establish something that is not yet known.
• Therefore, any Wikipedia article must have references to sources to "prove" that the subject described in the article is actually included in the set of established knowledge. The idea behind this is to create a re-narration of what the sources say. Unlike various other language versions of Wikipedia, English Wikipedia has (almost) no inherent notability. It must be demonstrated.
• References must be formatted in a way that it can easily be retrieved, just from merely looking at the footnote that the 4Ws, i.e., who, wrote what in which publication, and when the source was penned, are included. An article that includes only references failing the 4Ws is very likely not based on Wikipedia-compliant sources.
• Wikipedia articles must be based on sources that are secondary, intellectually independent, reliable with significant coverage of the subject. Sources obviously failing these criteria shall not be used in a Wikipedia article. By ensuring that all sources cited fulfill these criteria, notability as well as factual accuracy are ensured.
• A neutral point of view is established by citing sources covering all major points of view. These sources shall be all of more or less the same quality. Sources cannot be neutral, and it is the Wikipedia editor's job to ensure that all points of view are correctly attributed to the cited sources, using a fairly neutral language.

Thus, articles with…

• …poorly formatted references, not indicating any useable sources,
• …references to sources that shall not be used,
• …references to sources not indicating notability,
• …no or inadequate references,
• …or poor, non-neutral language

will likely get declined at AfC.

Where should you start?

Get the sources right. A Wikipedia article without good secondary sources supporting it will not work. Wikipedia has quite strict source requirements, as described above. Sources cannot be created, at least not directly; someone telling you otherwise is either a) not competent or b) acting in bad faith or c) both. Sources will be created organically.

Abandon the idea that sources must be neutral, verifiable, true or anything like that. Just forget that. (Verifiability means something else in a Wikipedia context.) Sources must be secondary, intellectually independent, reliable, and they must cover the subject in sufficient detail (WP:SIRS). If you go by that principle, you will automatically find the right sources. In case you cannot find any sources, they probably don't exist, and a Wikipedia article just cannot be created.

Good sources are, for instance, newspapers of record, peer-reviewed scientific articles, and peer-reviewed monographs. A book published by the Springer-Verlag is a reliable, secondary source. The only questions that remain are a) is the author intellectually independent of the subject and b) does the book cover the discussed subject in significant detail. On the other hand, an online source nobody has ever heard of is probably not reliable, and that article in the renowned newspaper is useless if it doesn't discuss the subject in significant detail.

How do you know whether the source you found provides significant coverage? You can, for instance, perform the WP:CTRL+F test.

Avoid original research or source synthesis

You should pretend that you know nothing about the subject. Anything you know that is not included in the sources shall not be included in a Wikipedia article. A biography of a living person, say, a university professor that is based on that professor's publications without citing sources discussing that professor's personal life, shall not include any information on that professor's personal life. If no sources discuss whether that professor has a spouse or children – that information must remain absent from the article.

On the other hand, two non-connected sources discussing two individually notable subjects shall not be intermeshed to create a new subject. See, if there was a war in Oneland, and another war in Twoland, then, no Wikipedia article shall exist on the wars in Numberland unless a source explicitly draws this particular conclusion. Something else applies to the combination of subjects and places. Busses in London, Trains in Poland, Ships in Athens – you get the thing. This principle shall not be used to create an arbitrary Wikipedia article. Wikipedia is not there to cover everything that is true. Thus,

Dont strive for truth

Wikipedia has never been and never will be 100 per cent factually accurate, true or anywhere near that. In fact, most of Wikipedia has never been fact-checked, and there is a good chance that most of Wikipedia has at least a couple mistakes. And why is that? Well, because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and I reckon something like collective ignorance exists. See, when you were a younger, someone probably told you that holding a seashell to your ear lets you hear the sound of the sea. And if you were smart, you knew that it was not the sea, but the sound of your blood running through your veins. Right? Yes? No? Well. Both are false. But the thing here is that this easy misconception has caused and will cause people to "fix" the fact that the seashell merely amplifies the background noise your brain has learnt to ignore. I know, a lengthy thought experiment, but what I want to say here is that instead of striving what you believe is true, you should always treat facts as opinions conveyed by sources. Whenever you can make the thought experiment that according to the source "Popular Ignorance", holding a seashell to the ear will let one hear the sound of the sea, you automatically convey a fact. It's just that instead of judging whether the source is right, the mere fact that the source makes a claim is conveyed.

Last loose thoughts

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Most things, subjects, or people are not notable for inclusion. This is especially true for business people; earnt money doesn't count towards notability.
• Sources cannot be created. If no sources exist – well – that's bad luck.
• Wikipedia, by principle, lags behind. Always. Sources must have been created prior to a Wikipedia article. Something that is brand-new and about to be released has quite a good chance to be not notable, due to a lack of sources.
• Interviews are virtually never intellectually independent and thus fail the criteria.
• Press releases, while factually accurate and reliable, are not intellectually independent and thus fail the criteria.
• Securing funds, financing or anything else related to the acquisition of capital is not significant coverage of the subject.
• Ensure that someone glimpsing at the footnotes immediately understands which sources are cited. Fix any citation errors. Ensure that you cite real people, and avoid "Staff", "Editorial Team", etc.
• Ignore what LLMs like ChatGPT tell you. They are programmed to please the user and give compelling answers, not factually accurate ones.
• Other language versions of Wikipedia may be based in one way or another on the principle of inherent notability. This principle, however, doesn't exist on English Wikipedia (for most subjects).
• Other Wikipedia articles may have been created or edited in ways that are not exactly in compliance with Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Don't compare your own article with other articles that have bad references, horrendously promotional tone or any other flaws just to make the argument that your article is not worse than an already existing bad article.