User:☼/TWA/Teahouse

The

Adventure

David notMD, a Teahouse host

Welcome to the Teahouse!
Your go-to place for friendly help with using and editing Wikipedia.

Question forumMeet your hostsArticles to improveBecome a host

New to Wikipedia? See our tutorial for new editors or introduction to contributing page.
Note: Newer questions appear at the bottom of the Teahouse. Completed questions are archived within 2–3 days.

To read the newest questions, skip to bottom
About the Teahouse

Truth and Wikipedia

Hi, I'm new here and trying to learn more about Wikipedia. I was wondering, how do you know that anything on Wikipedia is *true*?

--GalacticTrekker (talk) 23:07, Sunday, November 17, 2024 (UTC)

Hey GalacticTrekker, and welcome to Teahouse :-)

I'm so glad you asked that question. It's a deep and important one to ask. The simple answer to your question, is that we know that information on Wikipedia is "true" because the information is backed up by a reliable source! If NPOV is the foundation of Wikipedia, good published sources are the pillars.

We look for sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy... sources like books, newspaper articles, magazines, academic journals, and expert websites. These are typically much better than self-published books, blogs, self-made websites, and other personal writing or original research.

Even though Wikipedia is a volunteer-written project, put together by mostly non-experts, it's *still* based on high-quality sources.

This is part of our core policy called Verifiability. In practice, not every single sentence has a source, but the key is that it could be sourced. I'm so glad you asked! Feel free to come back any time for help. Cheers, --TheHelpFullWand (talk) 23:07, Sunday, November 17, 2024 (UTC)

Hey GalacticTrekker, and welcome to Teahouse :-)

I'm so glad you asked that question. It's a deep and important one to ask. The simple answer to your question, is that we know that information on Wikipedia is "true" because the information is backed up by a reliable source! If NPOV is the foundation of Wikipedia, good published sources are the pillars.

We look for sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy... sources like books, newspaper articles, magazines, academic journals, and expert websites. These are typically much better than self-published books, blogs, self-made websites, and other personal writing or original research.

Even though Wikipedia is a volunteer-written project, put together by mostly non-experts, it's *still* based on high-quality sources.

This is part of our core policy called Verifiability. In practice, not every single sentence has a source, but the key is that it could be sourced. I'm so glad you asked! Feel free to come back any time for help. Cheers, --TheHelpFullWand (talk) 23:07, Sunday, November 17, 2024 (UTC)