Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions
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Daniel Case (talk | contribs) →See also: this is also interesting |
Jaredscribe (talk | contribs) →Primary sources should be used carefully: * '''An article about an ancient philosophy or religion''' Many contemporary scholars have written commentary, all referring to one or more primary texts. {{expand section}} See also: WP:RNPOV Tag: Reverted |
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* '''An article about an ancient philosophy or religion''' Many contemporary scholars have written commentary, all referring to one or more primary texts.
{{expand section}}
See also: [[WP:RNPOV]]
* '''An article about the conquest of the hypothetical country above:''' The proclamation itself is an acceptable primary source for a simple description of the proclamation, including its size, whether it was written in [[blackletter]] calligraphy, whether it is signed or has an [[official seal]], and what words, dates, or names were on it. Anyone should be able to look at an image of the proclamation and see that it was all written on one page, whether it used that style of calligraphy, and so forth. However, the proclamation's authenticity, meaning, relevance, importance, typicality, influences, and so forth should all be left to the book that analyzed it, not to Wikipedia's editors.
* '''An article about a novel:''' The novel itself is an acceptable primary source for information about the plot, the names of the characters, the number of chapters, or other contents in the book: Any educated person can read Jane Austen's ''Pride and Prejudice'' and discover that the main character's name is Elizabeth or that there are 61 chapters. It is not an acceptable source for claims about the book's style, themes, foreshadowing, symbolic meaning, values, importance, or other matters of critical analysis, interpretation, or evaluation: No one will find a direct statement of this material in the book.
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