Wikipedia:Evidence
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia requires evidence in many situations. The type and level of evidence required varies according to the situation. |
A work in process, see talk
Articles
[edit]Articles are our whole reason for being here!
Ideally, every fact and factoid in every article should be clearly associated with at least one reference to a reliable source that verifies it. Any statement that is not verifiable in this way can be removed without discussion, but it's polite and normally far more constructive to discuss it first.
The ideal outcome is not that you remove it, but that you or someone else find a reliable source and provide the reference. Perhaps we should also say, it would be far more efficient if everyone would cite their sources in the first place, but if you're reading this, obviously it didn't happen.
User conduct
[edit]Allegations of user misconduct must be raised first on the user's talk page, with a few exceptions for particularly serious situations (such as death threats).
In any case, you should provide evidence in the form of diffs to make the charge clear and the response and (if necessary) investigation as easy as possible. The investigators are volunteers like yourself, and unfortunately, often very busy.
The ideal outcome is that you and the other person both learn from the experience, and become friends as well as collaborators. And it happens a lot. Nearly (yes, nearly) all of us are here for the right reasons, and appreciate help in understanding (and sometimes challenging and improving) policies, procedures, etc., in order to best spend our finite and precious time improving Wikipedia.
Move discussions
[edit]See WP:RM.
Deletion discussions
[edit]See WP:AfD.