Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:36, 19 February 2025

Latest revision as of 23:00, 22 August 2025

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==="Primary" does not mean "bad"===

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"Primary" is not, and should not be, a bit of jargon used by Wikipedians to mean "bad" or "unreliable" or "unusable". While some primaryPrimary sources arecan not fullybe independent, they can be authoritative, high-quality, accurate, fact-checked, expert-approved, subject to editorial control, and/or published by a reputable publisher.

Primary sources {{em|can}} be [[WP:Identifying reliable sources|reliable]], and they {{em|can}} be used. Sometimes, a primary source is even the best possible source, such as when you are supporting a direct [[WP:Manual of Style#Quotations|quotation]]. In such cases, the original document is the best source because the original document will be free of any errors or misquotations introduced by subsequent sources.

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==Are news-reporting media secondary or primary sources?==

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The term "news-reporting media" is used here in the sense of actual [[newspaper|newspapers]] and other media reporting news in a manner similar to newspapers.