Doctor Michael Mississippi
Joined 28 May 2020
Latest comment: 4 years ago by Ian.thomson in topic A summary of some important site policies and guidelines you may find useful
Welcome!
editHi Doctor Michael Mississippi! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.
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Happy editing! Ian.thomson (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
A summary of some important site policies and guidelines you may find useful
edit- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. All we do here is cite, summarize, and paraphrase professionally-published mainstream academic or journalistic sources, without addition, nor commentary.
- Wikipedia is not a general discussion forum, additions to talk pages should be about improving the article within the guidelines, not voicing one's opinion on the subject matter.
- "Truth" is not the only criteria for inclusion, verifiability is also required.
- Always cite a source for any new information. When adding this information to articles, use <ref>reference tags like this</ref>, containing the name of the source, the author, page number, publisher or web address (if applicable).
- We do not publish original thought nor original research. We're not a blog, we're not here to promote any ideology. We cannot combine two sources to arrive at a statement not explicitly supported by either source.
- Primary sources are usually avoided to prevent original research. Secondary or tertiary sources are preferred for this reason as well.
- Reliable sources typically include: articles from mainstream magazines or newspapers (particularly scholarly journals), or books by recognized authors (basically, books by respected publishers). Online versions of these are usually accepted, provided they're held to the same standards. User generated sources (like Wikipedia) are to be avoided. Self-published sources should be avoided except for information by and about the subject that is not self-serving (for example, citing a company's website to establish something like year of establishment).
- User-generated sources (such as blogs, social media profiles, self-published books, or pay-to-print books) are generally not reliable sources. The only exception is when an already notable subject makes a claim about themselves that is not countered or doubted by independent sources.
- Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources.