Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
External links and references are two important elements of Wikipedia that newcomers sometimes find trouble with. This page is designed to cover only the technical aspects of linking and referencing; it is essential that editors also familiarize themselves with Wikipedia:External links, Wikipedia:Reliable sources and Wikipedia:Citing sources, as well as Wikipedia's various other policies ...
You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work; to remix – to adapt the work; Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
(There is a related set of templates for some free content resources that are not run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Rather than creating a sidebar link, they create text suitable for using as a bulleted entry in an "External links" section. A list of such templates can be found at Wikipedia:List of templates linking to other free content projects.)
A primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation or it may be a document created by such a person. A secondary source is one that gives information about a primary source. In a secondary source, the original information is selected, modified and arranged in a suitable format.
As a primary source, it is advised that editors avoid Change.org as a source for certain online petitions, especially if more reliable secondary sources are available. Due to concerns over petition canvassing, Change.org is on the Wikipedia spam blacklist, and links must be whitelisted before they can be used. 1 Check Your Fact
Although verification is obviously easier for web-based sources, print sources must be ultimately verifiable to anyone willing to chase down a book or article. This means that books, newspapers, magazine and journal articles must be defined as precisely as possible; see the format section below. Google Books links are often used for book sources.
Link rot is a major problem for the English Wikipedia, more so than for other websites, since most external links are used to reference sources. Some of the dead links are caused by content being moved around without proper redirection, while others require micropayments after a certain time period, and others simply vanish.
As an external link: Generally no. Regular websites are strongly preferred, but exceptions are made for official links when the subject of the article has no other Web presence. As a reliable source: * Sometimes. The official page of a subject may be used as a self-published, primary source, but only if it can be authenticated as belonging to ...