Help:How to mine a source: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:51, 12 July 2017

Revision as of 00:52, 12 July 2017

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* The work is outdated and does not reflect current expert consensus about the matter at hand. In such a case, the newer sourcing should be used. Include the contrary viewpoint, attributed to its author, only if it seems pertinent to continue including it (e.g. to highlight a controversy, or to cover changing views of the topic over time). A general rule of thumb in research is that very old sources, or sources close in time to an event (i.e. "old" after a few months have passed and more analysis has been done by other writers) should be treated as if they are primary sources like eye-witness accounts and opinion pieces.

* The work is a tertiary source, like a topical encyclopedia, [[coffee-table book]], or other conglomeration and summarization of material from numerous other sources. Such works are often not written by experts, contain material that is already obsolete by the time the work is published, gloss over important distinctions and limitations in previously published research conclusions, and may reflect a strong editorial bias. Tertiary sources are better than no sources, but they do not stand up to challenge from secondary ones.

* You are "[[WP:CHERRYPICKING|cherry-picking]]" citationsby only fromciting sources that agree with, (or onlyparts citingof the partssources) that agree with, the claim you want to include. This is a [[Academic dishonesty|fraudulent]] approach, a fallacious form of [[WP:NOR|original research]] in which the editor is deciding what is and isn't true and warping Wikipedia content and citations to fit this personal pre-conceived notion.

==Notes==