User:Rusalkii/AfC source guidance

I've listed some common Articles for Creation sourcing mistakes below. Please do not assume this page is exhaustive. Some sources not here might be problematic, and some patterns that are usually mistakes can be okay. Additionally, note that this is intended to describe sources that contribute to whether your draft will be accepted. If you need to use a source that doesn't meet these criteria to cite some uncontroversial fact, like a birthday or year of founding or the members of a band, that is usually fine.

As a general rule: reviewers will look for at least 2-3 high quality sources, which means reputable sources completely independent from the subject with at least a couple paragraphs of substantial coverage.

Not independent

Rule of thumb: does the author have any motivation to make the subject look good? If they were critical of the subject, would they be allowed to publish? (Or, less often: motivation to make the subject look bad/if they were positive about the subject?). Common non-independent sources used include:

By the subject: something from their website, an interview, a press release by the company, a newspaper article/blog post/social media post/book/blurb written by them
Newspaper article written as a wrapper for an interview (almost entirely the subject's words, no independent analysis)
A biographical blurb (almost always provided by the subject or employer)
By an employer of the subject or an employee of the company being written about
A university website/newspaper article about an alumni or professor
By a relative/spouse/close collaborator
By someone with a financial relationship with the subject: VC backers, record labels, business partners, parent organizations
By someone whose reputation is substantively entangled with the subject
Announcement of a program: festival lineups, concert announcements, academic conference listings
Paid puff pieces (reviewers can and will apply the duck rule even if there is no disclosure)
Government-controlled media, when writing about controversial subjects important to the government/content that might be related to national prestige

No substantial coverage

Rule of thumb: at minimum 2-3 paragraphs/15+ sentences primarily about the subject. No matter how good a source is, one sentence that mentions the subject once is not going to make it a high quality source about this subject.

Database/list entries: lists of competition scores, sports profiles with statistics, entry in Top 100 Widget Makers article
Being featured in credits or lists of contributors
Auto-generated articles: "celebrity profile" websites where each article has the exact same pattern, company profile on one of those aggregator sites
Routine coverage: some kinds of coverage are considered sufficiently "routine" that they don't contribute to notability. For example: if every single company merger gets a brief announcement in the trade press, every single candidate in local political races gets a article in the paper announcing that they are running and then the result of the race, etc.

Not reputable

Rule of thumb: Is there review of the content (editor, peer review, fact checkers, etc)? Is the source going against mainstream consensus on a subject (you can still use it, but it needs to be marked as an opinionated source)?

Parts of this criteria are inherently subjective, and sources that are reliable for one subject may not be reliable for another. If in doubt, try reading the guidelines at Wikipedia:Reliable sources, searching for your source at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard or Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, or asking a question at the noticeboard.

Tabloids
Vanity press/self-published
Predatory journals
Social media
Any user-generated sources: Goodreads, Discogs, WP:ancestry.com, WP:IMDb, reviews on any seller's website (e.g. Amazon)
- Wikipedia is a user-generated source. If you are citing Wikipedia, please either wikilink or cite the source that the page you are citing uses to support the relevant fact
Blogs (sometimes okay, if the author is an expert on the thing you're using the blog as a citation for, see WP:BLOG for details)
Small local papers (sometimes okay, but tend to have lower editorial standards)

Other common mistakes

Quantity is not quality: 50 low-quality sources do not add up to one good source with substantial coverage
Sometimes there will be several good sources, but all of them are by the same author/from the same publication. Generally speaking this only counts as one source for the purpose of determining whether there is coverage of the subject from several different angles - the goal is to make sure that there are a couple independent perspectives on the subject.
- Similarly, if identical or very similar content is published by multiple publications, this is all relevantly the same source
On Wikipedia, notability is a technical term that has very little to do with how famous/important/influential/deserving of an article the subject is. Appealing to the subject's impressive achievements, number of Google hits, number of Youtube subscribers, valuable contributions to society, the necessity of getting the word out about the subject etc etc doesn't influence whether there exist enough high quality sources to write a good article about the subject.