Wikipedia:Verifiability: Difference between revisions

The burden of evidence lies with the editorseditor who haveadds madeor anrestores editmaterial. orAny wishmaterial anthat editis challenged or likely to remain.be Editorschallenged needs a reliable source, which should thereforebe [[Wikipedia:Citecited sources|providein references]]the article. If an article topic has no reputable, reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on that topicit.

Any edit lacking a source may be removed, but some editors may object if you remove material without giving peoplethem a chance to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, a good idea is toconsider movemoving it to the [[Help:Talk page|talk page]]. Alternatively, you may tag the sentence by adding the <nowiki>{{</nowiki>[[:Template:Fact|fact]]}} template, or tag the article by adding <nowiki>{{</nowiki>[[:Template:Not verified|not verified]]<nowiki>}} or {{</nowiki>[[:Template:Unsourced|unsourced]]<nowiki>}}</nowiki>. Also in that case it may be helpful for your co-editors to leave a clarifying note on the talk page, for instance indicating which sources you already checked. You can also make the unsourced sentences invisible in the article by adding <nowiki><!--</nowiki> before the section you want to comment out and <nowiki>--></nowiki> after it, until reliable sources have been provided. WhenLeave usinga thisnote "commentingon out"the techniquetalk itpage isor usuallyedit bestsummary toexplaining leavewhat ayou clarifyinghave notedone. on the talk page.<ref>See [[Help:Editing#Basic text formatting]]: "Invisible comments to editors only appear while editing the page. If you wish to make comments to the public, you should usually go on the talk page."</ref>

Be careful not to err too far on the side of not upsetting other editors by leaving unsourced information in articles for too long, or at all in the case of information about living people. Jimmy Wales has said of this: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons." <ref name="zero1">{{cite web|title="Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information"|publisher=WikiEN-l [[electronic mailing list]] archive|author=Jimmy Wales|date=2006-05-16|accessdate=2006-06-11|url=http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html}}</ref><ref name="zero2">{{cite web|title="Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information" (followup post clarifying intent)|publisher=WikiEN-l electronic mailing list archive|author=Jimmy Wales|date=2006-05-19|accessdate=2006-06-11|url=http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046725.html}}</ref>

BiographiesBiographical ofclaims about living people need special care because biographiesof containingthe unsourcedpossible materialeffect mightthey negativelycould affecthave on someone's life, and because they could have legal consequences. Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons immediately if it could be viewed as criticism,<ref name="zero1" /><ref name="zero2" /> and do not move it to the talk page. This also applies to materialuser aboutand livingtalk persons in other articlespages, as well as userto and talk pagesarticles. See [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons]] and [[Wikipedia:Libel]]. When removing information be careful to observe [[Wikipedia:Civility]].

Articles should rely on crediblereliable, [[Wikipedia:Independent sources|third-party published sources]] with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. For academic subjects, the sources should preferably be peer-reviewed. Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: outlandish claims require stronger sources.