Wikipedia:Identifying and using tertiary sources: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:35, 8 February 2019

Revision as of 11:36, 12 July 2019

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{{Essay|interprets=[[WP:No original research]], and [[WP:Identifying reliable sources]]|cat=Wikipedia essays on reliable sources|shortcut=WP:TERTIARYUSE}}

{{nutshell|1=Analysis and evaluation require reliable secondary sources, and we cannot cite tertiary sources for them. Tertiary sources differ from secondary ones by not themselves providing significant analysis, commentary, or synthesis. However, some tertiary sources are secondary in some applications.}}

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{{shortcut||WP:DONTUSETERTIARY}}

'''Analysis and evaluation:''' A tertiary source cannot be used, as a matter of policy, as a source for "an analytic or evaluative claim". This is left deliberately broad, so it is not subject to [[Wikipedia:Gaming the system|technicality gaming]].

'''Controversial material:''' Any controversial, alleged fact is essentially unsourced if the only citation it has is to a tertiary source of questionable reliability (on the particular point or generally). As with secondary sources, this can happen for any number of reasons, including source obsolescence, lack of subject-matter expertise, conflict of interest, simple error, or presentation of a [[WP:FRINGE|fringe]] idea as comparable to the generally accepted view, among other problems that can arise with a particular source. A tertiary source that is a compendium of factoids by an author with no known expertise, and which indicates nothing about the sources of its own information, is not a reliable source. Anyone could compile a large book of alleged facts, anecdotes, and folklore about any given topic, and probably find a willing publisher, without any fact-checking ever taking place. Note however that not all facts about a controversial subject are themselves controversial; there is no principle that a reliable tertiary source good enough for one article is not good enough for another because of the topic's notoriety, the amount of emotion editors bring to editing it, or the frequency with which our article on it is vandalized.

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* [[Template:Tertiary source inline]] (used outside {{tag|ref}})

* [[Template:Tertiary source]] (used inside {{tag|ref}})

[[Category:Wikipedia essays about reliable sources]]