Chapter 2. Documenting Your Sources
Back in high school English, you probably learned how to add footnotes and endnotes to essays and papers. If you didnât add information about your sources, your paper would get a very low grade.
Wikipediaâs equivalent of a failing grade is to have another editor reverse your edit, putting the article back to exactly as it was before you changed it. If you want to add new information to articles and have it stay there, you need to understand Wikipediaâs rules. This chapter explains those rules. If you follow them, youâll help ensure the accuracy and credibility of Wikipedia articles.
To add a source (what Wikipedia calls citing a source), you also need to learn some technical mattersâhow Wikipedia software handles external links, and how it creates footnotes. This chapter includes two tutorials that show you how to create links and footnotes that would make your English teacher proud.
Documentation Guidelines
Wikipedia is not the place to document the previously undocumented, to report new discoveries, to publish new theories, or to record personally observed events that may be considered newsworthy. Such content may well be true, but as far as Wikipediaâs policies are concerned, true isnât enough. Information must be verifiable, which means it must be backed by a published source outside Wikipedia. Simply put, Wikipedia must never be the first place that news appears. If a tree falls in a forest and itâs not reported elsewhere, then ...
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