This page in a nutshell: Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. |
One of the problems that Wikipedia is most criticized for is that it is not always reliable. This is true, since anybody can change most articles and add anything they like. Sometimes bad changes stay in place for a long time. Wikipedia guidelines such as Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research and the additional restrictions for living people have been made to help prevent this.
These guidelines are there for two reasons:
However, many sources are not suitable for use in Wikipedia because they are not reliable.
This is a guideline about the types of sources which are reliable. Wikipedia articles should use reliable, third-party, published sources. (An article is a page in the main namespace. Most other pages, such as Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, do not need sources.) These sources can be in any language, not just English or Simple English.