Wikipedia:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions
Content deleted Content added
Will Beback (talk | contribs) →Secondary sources for notability: rewrite to focus on the notability aspect. See talk |
WhatamIdoing (talk | contribs) Mostly undid revision 451080853 by Will Beback (talk) See talk: The actual, scholarly definition of primary source really does include old newspaper articles |
||
Line 99:
Just because topics are covered in primary sources does not mean that they are notable. Appearing in the phone book is not a sign of notability, for example. Secondary sources are needed to establish notability for the purposes of deciding which articles to keep. However topics that are only covered briefly or in poor quality secondary sources may not meet the [[WP:GNG|general notability guideline]].
One rough rule of thumb for identifying primary sources is this: if the source is noticeably closer to the event than you are, then it's a primary source. For example, if an event occurred on January 1, 1800, and a newspaper article appeared about it the next day, then Wikipedia (and all historians) considers the newspaper article a primary source.
However, Wikipedia fairly often writes about current events. As a result, an event may happen on Monday afternoon, may be written about in Tuesday morning's newspapers, and may be added to Wikipedia just minutes later. Many editors—especially those with no training in historiography—call these newspaper articles "secondary sources", by which they mean "please don't delete this article" sources.
Typically, very recent newspaper articles are mis-labeled as a "secondary source" during AFDs, by way of trying to finesse [[WP:GNG|the general notability guideline's]] requirement that secondary sources exist, when no true secondary sources actually exist. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find true secondary sources for [[WP:MILL|run-of-the-mill events]] and [[breaking news]]. Typically, editors are willing to overlook this error for recent events. However, once a couple of years have passed, if no true secondary sources can be found, the article is usually deleted.
| |||