Wikipedia talk:Identifying and using primary sources: Difference between revisions
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I have just discovered an article on ancient history ([[Dacia]]) seriously (with a straight face, if articles had faces) citing ancient historical writings. Headdesk. It should be obvious that these are not citeable sources for Wikipedia (at least for everybody who has a clue about the methodology of historical research: ''any'' source older than about 1950 cannot be taken at face value, even if it was written by an academic historian), but obviously it is not. Perhaps this point merits an explicit mention somewhere. --[[User:Florian Blaschke|Florian Blaschke]] ([[User talk:Florian Blaschke|talk]]) 00:38, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
:Yes, it should. Ancient writings can be used as primary sources in limited ways, but we would never literally cite directly to them, but to a modern, translated edition with analysis, or better yet simply to a secondary source that analyzes it as a topic. It would be perfectly fine to cite a secondary source at analyzed the poems, for assertions a WP article makes about on the meaning of a passage in "[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]", while also using and properly referencing J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of the poem to provide illustrative quotations in the article, if we like his version better that some other translation. In neither case would we cite the ancient manuscript itself. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''' ☺]] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] ≽<sup>ʌ</sup>ⱷ҅<sub>ᴥ</sub>ⱷ<sup>ʌ</sup>≼ </span> 20:40, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
::Agreed. "Ancient" is perhaps too narrow, considering that, as the OP pointed out, most historical scholarship before the mid-20th century is seriously problematic, with respect to both factual accuracy and POV. I have seen an alarming number of articles on WP referenced entirely to 19th century sources, despite a wealth of recent scholarship from the past two decades. There is really no excuse, considering how drastically changed our views of many of these subjects are today. "Prefer recent sources unless the older source is still considered more authoritative/accurate by experts today" would be my take on it. In an ideal world, I'd also like to see a cleanup template for articles that rely too much on outdated scholarship. I want to see what others have to say on it first though. --[[User:Difference engine|<
== Use of primary peer reviewed sources from prominent minority views that seem to contradict secondary sources from majority view. ==
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