Wikinews:Education/Citing sources
Citing your sources
Every fact on Wikinews needs a reference, and all unsubstantiated materials found in an article during the review process will either 1) be removed, or 2) result in the article being marked not ready for publication. So when you add information to an article, be sure to include your reference in the source section. References allow reviewers to verify your information. They also allow future readers to know where the facts in the article came from, which is very important because as time passes, sometimes the known facts change. One example that happened on Wikinews was the original sources for a plane crash said it the crash was because Thing A happened but an NTSB report years later said the cause was actually Thing B.
Adding an reference is easy:
- Locate
==Sources==which should have automatically appeared at the bottom of the page. - Locate
*{{source|url=|title=|author=|pub=|date=}}. This determines how your references will appear on the page. - Fill in the url, title, author, publisher and date. Use the Month Day, Year format for dates.
- If there is no incomplete template for you to fill in, click in the edit box where you want it to appear, then go to the bottom of the edit screen and click on
*{{source|url=|title=|author=|pub=|date=}}and a blank form for your reference will automatically appear.
All synthesis articles on English Wikinews require at least two sources that verify information in the first paragraph. If a reference is not being used in the article, it should be removed from the sources section.
As you do with other research projects, you will want to discuss with your students where to find an acceptable, trustworthy and authoritative news source.
