Jump to content

User:Fuhghettaboutit/TWA/Teahouse

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The
Adventure

Truth and Wikipedia

[edit]

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) 18:42, Thursday, December 12, 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) 18:42, Thursday, December 12, 2024 (UTC)