CTyankee1
Joined 15 March 2016
Latest comment: 4 years ago by Ian.thomson in topic A summary of some important site policies and guidelines
Welcome
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Welcome to Wikipedia: check out the Teahouse!
editHello! CTyankee1,
you are invited to the Teahouse, a forum on Wikipedia for new editors to ask questions about editing Wikipedia, and get support from peers and experienced editors. Please join us! Liz Read! Talk! 04:37, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
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A summary of some important site policies and guidelines
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.
- "Truth" is not the only criteria for inclusion, verifiability is also required.
- We do not publish original thought nor original research. We're not a blog, we're not here to promote any ideology.
- 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).
- Articles are to be written from a neutral point of view. Wikipedia is not concerned with facts or opinions, it just summarizes reliable sources. Real scholarship actually does not say what understanding of the world is "true," but only with what there is evidence for.
- Material must be proportionate to what is found in the source cited. If a source makes a small claim and presents two larger counter claims, the material it supports should present one claim and two counter claims instead of presenting the one claim as extremely large while excluding or downplaying the counter claims.
- We do not give equal validity to topics which reject and are rejected by mainstream academia. For example, our article on Earth does not pretend it is flat, hollow, and/or the center of the universe.