Wikipedia:Don't jump the gun

What's your hurry?

Avoid jumping the gun when adding events to various lists and articles on Wikipedia. Often, the inclusion of events in lists and articles is premature given the information available from reliable sources. In such cases, it is best to wait for sources to explicitly proclaim an event as meeting the criteria for inclusion in the list or to be sufficiently related to a particular article. Even if it seems "obvious" that the event belongs somewhere, it constitutes original research to make any connections without support from reliable sources to verify the claim.

Be cautious of initial event narratives. Even the most reliable sources have track records of errors when it comes to breaking news (see WP:RSBREAKING). Within the initial hours of a major event, information changes rapidly and should not always be trusted. The details of any event will eventually become clear and there is no need to report breaking news as it happens. It is better to wait for details to be confirmed than to repeat speculation, unconfirmed reports, and rumors. It may look like a duck and sound like a duck, but let sources call it a duck before adding content about it to the mainspace.

Wikipedia, as a tertiary source, is always "behind the times". There is no deadline to complete an article. As an encyclopedia, we do not worry about up-to-the-minute late-breaking news (that is for WikiNews). Rather, we detail past events with the clarity of time based on reliable sources.