Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 4/Factors of reliability

First of all, sources should be published. Published. If the source exists in a letter that you have in your hand, or in your drawer, but nobody else has access to -- that is not published. It is not a public source. You need to cite things that are, at least in principle, accessible to others. A source needs to have been published. You cannot cite information on Wikipedia to sources that only you have access to, or sources that you have secretly gained access to, even if they're belonging to someone else and you happen to see them, that's not good enough. The source needs to have been made public in some way. This is a crucial point.

Sources do not have to be in English. They do not have to be in English. This is a good moment to remind ourselves that the vast majority of the population of this planet does not speak English at all. Now, we are talking about English Wikipedia and English Wikipedia is written in English, and mostly cites English sources. So English sources are preferred on English Wikipedia, so that the average reader of English Wikipedia, who may not know any other language, could verify the information, but some facts aren't available in an English language source.

For example, if I'm writing an article about, say, a medieval Chinese philosopher, I might have to rely on some Chinese-language sources, which maybe I have access to. Maybe I can read Chinese, and I can cite those. Now, the fact that you or someone else who doesn't speak Chinese couldn't verify that this source actually says that in Chinese, is not a good enough reason to reject that source.

Because in principle, that could be a reliable source until proven otherwise. In principle, someone who does speak Chinese could go and verify and see that it does indeed say that. Now again, if you are trying to cover, say, Joe Biden, the President of the United States, and you insist on using Chinese sources for some reason, people might say, well, why don't you use English sources that everybody can understand? There's no particular reason to cover Biden with Chinese sources that are less accessible to most English language readers.

However, if in the article about Joe Biden you want to establish that, say, some influential Chinese commentator called Joe Biden, say, "aggressive" because of his decision to do something -- and that appeared only in Chinese, and wasn't reported in English-language press -- that might justify having a citation of a Chinese source.

Okay, so remember this principle. Don't let anyone tell you differently! There are some English Wikipedians who don't realize that this is the rule, but this is the rule. That's the policy. It is acceptable to cite sources in other languages. And relatedly, the sources don't have to be links. They don't have to be available online. Online sources are convenient! So if you can cite an online source, that's great because the reader will be able to click through and see the source.

But they don't have to be online. They don't have to be free. It's okay if you are citing a source like the Wall Street Journal, which isn't free, has a paywall -- You have to be a subscriber to access content on the Wall Street Journal -- but it is a perfectly legitimate source to cite, even though most of our readers will not have access to that article. "But didn't you say, Asaf, that the source should be public?" Yes, it should be public in the sense that it should be, in principle, reachable to people who aren't the person who wrote the article. And the contents of the Wall Street Journal are, in principle reachable. Whether you pay as a subscriber or you go to a library and browse their collection of the Wall Street Journal. But there are ways, even if they're inconvenient ways or expensive ways, there are ways to reach and verify whether or not the Wall Street Journal said something. So in that sense, it satisfies the first criterion here of needing to be public. Okay. So again if you have an online source, great! If you have a source that isn't online but is a reliable source, do not hesitate. You can cite it, according to the citation rules. If it's a book, you cite it like a book. If it's a newspaper article that's printed, you cite it like a newspaper article, etc..