User talk:Danlikedat
Add topicLatest comment: 13 days ago by Danlikedat in topic Citations
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[edit]Hello, Danlikedat! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place 
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Happy editing! Peaceray (talk) 13:46, 21 July 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks @Peaceray for the resources and guides! Looking forward to an "adoption" and also contributing to Wikipedia. Danlikedat (talk) 14:12, 21 July 2026 (UTC)
Citations
[edit]@Gurkubondinn, I was reading your User:gurkubondinn/REFPRIMER essay, and saw that {{cite press release}} can be used as a citation. But based on my experience in PR, I wouldn't trust press release because they would typically contain speculative/forward looking statements, and promotional materials. But I have also come across press releases that contain earning calls and such that could be used to update company infoboxes and such, so I am sitting on the fence whether to use press releases for citations moving forwards. Would independent news reporting be more trustworthy on Wikipedia? What is the preferred citation here? Danlikedat (talk) 11:33, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
- Exactly, and that is completely correct. Press releases are WP:PRIMARY sources (like you correctly point out), and are not WP:INDEPENDENT of the subject. You can use them for WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:RSOPINION type of statements. So you can use a press release to source someone's (or something's) opinion or position on something, and you can use them to source factual statements (like number of employees or revenue figures). But a WP:SECONDARY source is almost always preferred.
- Learning how to source something properly and correctly is one of the most valuable (and important) aspects of contributing to the encyclopaedia. Some pages that you'll want to read (you don't have to read them all at once or in one go, but it's useful to know about them and what they say, so that you know where to look when you need to figure something out);
- WP:RS: what the English Wikipedia considers a reliable source.
- WP:RSP: the perennial list of sources documents what the enwiki community thinks of a lot of common sources. It's not a definitive list, many good sources are not listed, and many bad sources are not listed there either. Sometimes because it's just a given that a source is either reliable or useless, and sometimes just because it has never come up. As a rule of thumb, newspapers of record are always going to be reliable sources and looney websites like Infowars are never going to be considered reliable.
- WP:INDEPENDENT: sources should generally be independent of the subject (like with the press releases), and gives great examples of how to determine if a source is independent or not.
- WP:NOR: we don't do any original research on Wikipedia, we only document what WP:RELIABLE sources already have reported. We do WP:NOTLEAD, we follow.
- WP:PSTS: what is a WP:PRIMARY, WP:SECONDARY, or WP:TERTIARY source and why that matters.
- WP:BLP: how to write about living (and recently deceased) people
- WP:BLPRS: reliable sources when writing about people
- WP:MOS: the style guide of Wikipedia, that explains how to format things.
- MOS:DATE: how to write and format dates
- MOS:NUM: number formats
- WP:GEOLINK: linking to geographic places
- MOS:": which quotes (using " and ' characters)
- MOS:...: using ellipses when omitting parts of a quote
- MOS:GENDER: using gender neutral language
- MOS:GENDERID: reflect the person's preferred self-identification when writing about someone
- WP:RS: what the English Wikipedia considers a reliable source.
- There's of course a lot more, and I hope this isn't an overwhelming list as it is. There's higher level guides too that are less dense, you can check the list in § Helping others on my user page for instance. Hopefully this is at least somewhat helpful, and I hope I didn't get too carried away here. ‑‑gurkubondinn 12:06, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
- No, not at all. This is SUPER useful. Thanks, and I'll be sure to read them. Danlikedat (talk) 13:21, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
- For a (much) shorter answer to your (actual) question;
Would independent news reporting be more trustworthy on Wikipedia?
- Yes, that is correct. It is preferred to cite a WP:SECONDARY source, like a newspaper, that has reported on the company's press release. Because they have vetted in their editorial process, and then you are just documenting what a WP:RELIABLE source has already said about it. ‑‑gurkubondinn 12:07, 22 July 2026 (UTC)
- Got it. I'll prioritize citing independent news ahead of press releases, then. Danlikedat (talk) 13:22, 22 July 2026 (UTC)