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Screenshot of Wiki-Watch rating of the article Reliability of Wikipedia rated as reliable source and additional orange WikiTrust marks for questionable edits. While experienced editors can view the article history and discussion page, for normal users it is not so easy to check whether information from Wikipedia is reliable.
An exception to this is when Wikipedia is being discussed in an article, which may cite an article, guideline, discussion, statistic or other content from Wikipedia or a sister project as a primary source to support a statement about Wikipedia (while avoiding undue emphasis on Wikipedia's role or views and inappropriate self-referencing).
Source reliability falls on a spectrum: No source is 'always reliable' or 'always unreliable' for everything. However, some sources provide stronger or weaker support for a given statement. Editors must use their judgment to draw the line between usable and inappropriate sources for each statement.
Wikipedia should not cite itself, but circular referencing and fact-laundering are possibilities if we are unaware that sources we use copy from Wikipedia. Lists are at Wikipedia:Republishers and WP:MIRRORS. Some examples that appear in Google Books and are frequently inadvertently used by editors are:
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 18 December 2024. Controversy surrounding the online encyclopedia Wikipedia This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Criticism of Wikipedia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ...
Wikipedia is not an unreliable source, since “what makes Wikipedia seem so dangerous to some teachers—its inherent malleability—is also what makes the site a dynamic and authentic demonstration of the research process itself.. .
The overly strict fair use policies and guidelines, i.e., Wikipedia:Non-free content, Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria and Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline, prohibit the exhibition of fair-use images on user pages, even if the user's intention is to list all the fair-use images they have uploaded to English Wikipedia.
Verifiability makes Wikipedia accurate and credible. Pages that lack credible sources tend to contain original research. The existence of nonverifiable pages encourages new Wikipedians to create the same (see Broken windows theory). It must be made clear that reliable sources are a requirement, not an option.