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This is an explanatory essay about the Wikipedia:Reliable sources guideline. This page provides additional information about concepts in the page(s) it supplements. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community .
The guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources gives general advice on what is and isn't a reliable source; this essay aims to analyse specific examples of sources that might initially appear to be reliable, yet may not be.
Research papers, particularly the one research paper students write in their eleventh grade, have always been an integral part of high school education [4].They stress the need to verify information and teach students how to evaluate sources critically, and as a result, teachers have developed various criteria to help students identify credible sources, an especially important skill in the ...
A known example is the Sacha Baron Cohen article, where false information added in Wikipedia was apparently used by two newspapers, leading to it being treated as reliable in Wikipedia. [ 124 ] [ better source needed ] This process of creating reliable sources for false facts has been termed "citogenesis" by xkcd webcomic artist Randall Munroe .
However, although Wikipedia articles are tertiary sources, Wikipedia employs no systematic mechanism for fact-checking or accuracy. Thus, Wikipedia articles (and Wikipedia mirrors) in themselves are not reliable sources for any purpose (except as sources on themselves per WP:SELFSOURCE). Primary sources are often difficult to use appropriately.
And while Wikipedia itself does not meet the definition of a "reliable source" for articles and there is not likely to be an "outside authority" regarding, e.g. AfDs on schools, there is no reason why Wikipedia cannot be a reliable source for itself in the Wikipedia namespace except that some editors might not care to take the time to do it ...
This page provides examples of what editors on Wikipedia have assessed to be a reliable source. The advice is not, and cannot be, comprehensive, and should be used primarily to inform discussion in an article talk page with respect to sources. Exceptions can naturally be made using common sense, in order to reach a collaborative conclusion ...
Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic writing or research. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from first-year students to distinguished professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything and as a quick "ready reference", to get a sense of a concept or idea.