Wikipedia:Potentially unreliable sources

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcut WP:PUS

Wikipedia's requirement for writing articles is "

All mainstream news media can make mistakes. Particularly with breaking news, corrections will need to be made and should be watched out for, and much tabloid journalism will be sensationalist and gossip-driven. Fact checking has reduced generally in the news media over recent years. For more on the trend of churnalism, see Flat Earth News, a book by Nick Davies. Specific examples to treat carefully include:

• State-associated or state-controlled news organisations, especially
  Sputnik News have also been described as propaganda outlets for the government. However, such sources may be reliable for determining the official positions of their sponsoring governments. Similarly, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
  and other US state media sources may also be unreliable as to facts, as they have been described as propaganda, but may be reliable regarding the official position of the United States.
• TMZ has received criticism for errors in breaking news and has a reputation for gossip, but it is increasingly seen as credible by other news agencies (1, 2, 3).
• The more extreme tabloids such as the National Enquirer should never be used, as most stories in them are intentional hoaxes.
• In general,
  Sunday Express
  should be treated with even greater caution.
• Forbes magazine, its website also contains articles by paid "contributors"—similar to a content farm (see below). However, in contrast to sites like Examiner.com, its authors are professionally vetted
  and, in most cases, may have credentials that allow the specific author to qualify under the self-published source criteria (established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications, but must never be used as third-party citations on statements relating to living persons).
• The articles on
  secondary sources
  .
• Never use
  Infowars
  without exception.
• the September 2018 RFC
  that deprecated its use as a reference for facts. May be useful for discussing opinions, but should never be used to support negative claims about people.

• Phys.org
• Eurekalert
• ScienceDaily

Stock chasing blogs

These are blogs that are opinion-driven and subject to all kinds of external interests and

• Seeking Alpha
• TheStreet.com
• The Motley Fool

Sites that may appear to be reliable sources for Wikipedia, but are not

• self-published, user-generated content that lacks editorial oversight. (see 1, 2, 3
  )
• Articlesnatch.com
• The Onion – In a few high-profile incidents, major news services have reported on content from this satirical news site, mistaking it for real news.
• The Daily Currant – Satirical news originating on this site mistakenly ended up on a few US news sites.
• The Lapine – a satirical news site in Canada
• Newslo.com and Politicalo.com – satirical articles based on actual events that provide a button readers can use to highlight the portions of an article that are real
• American College of Pediatricians – publishes from an unscientific viewpoint
• Other sites on the List of satirical news websites

Obituaries published by funeral homes are the same as an advertisement; the only difference from a commercial advertisement in a glossy magazine being that instead of a corporate sponsor, the ad is being published by the family or friends of the deceased. Examples:

• Thomas Funerals^[1]

Scholarly journals are normally reliable sources, but some journals have a reputation for bias or unreliability.

• Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
  (JPandS), publishes from an unscientific viewpoint
• Rivista di Biologia, edited by Giuseppe Sermonti, noted
  for publishing fringe theories
• Medical Hypotheses, non-peer reviewed and known for unscientific content
• Energy & Environment, edited by and published by climate change denialists
• Medical Veritas: The Journal of Medical Truth, published by Medical Veritas International Inc., listed by Quackwatch as a "questionable organization".
• Mankind Quarterly
• Society for Scientific Exploration, and its journal, the Journal for Scientific Exploration, which publishes almost exclusively on fringe topics, promoting pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
• Any publication with a
  Creation Research Society Quarterly, Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and Homeopathy
  .
• Be aware of
  predatory publishers, for example journals published by OMICS Publishing Group
  . These are very unlikely to be accepted as reliable sources.
• Be aware of journals which boast about their high impact factor, as they typically reach such status by screening submissions for novelty and other features which are also risk factors: at least in the hard sciences, the articles they publish were shown to struggle to reach average reliability.^[2]

Wikipedia should not cite itself, but

• Alphascript Publishing and the many other imprints of
  WP:ALPHASCRIPT, search for uses
  )
• Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases by
  Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Ghi#Icon Group International
  )
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Abc#Books, LLC
  )
• Multiple Indian books such as Encyclopaedia of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Freedom fighters of India, a series of "Faith & philosophy in..." books and some other books by Om Gupta published by ISHA books and Gyan publishing house. See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_37#ISHA_books_and_other_circular_references
  • Books published by Gyan Publishing / Isha Books are not
    WP:RS in general. Several of their books dating to a period before Wikipedia have also been plagiarized from other sources. See discussions at WP:RSN, WT:MIRROR, WT:IN
    etc.
• Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Def#Fililquarian Publishing
  )
• Cram101, aka CTI Reviews, Content Technologies Inc., Just The Facts 101, Textbook Key Facts search for uses
• Hephaestus Books, search for uses

You can use this note to let editors who added these sources know why they should not be used, and you can use Wikiblame to find when the source was first added.

Online mirrors

• New World Encyclopedia (search for uses) — an online encyclopedia that, in part, selects and rewrites certain Wikipedia articles through a focus on the values of the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon.^[3]
  It "aims to organize and present human knowledge in ways consistent with our natural purposes."
• enotes.com/topic, worldlingo.com, absoluteastronomy.com, spiritus-temporis.com, Conservapedia, revolvy.com,
• World Heritage Encyclopedia (worldheritage.org), also hosted on World eBook Library (www.ebooklibrary.org) and World Library (www.worldlibrary.org); search for uses.

• external link (search for uses
  ).
• BBC Music. The artist biographies are usually taken directly from Wikipedia, which is clearly indicated on the page.
• fantasticfiction.co.uk. Used on 1000s of articles about books, but it is a commercial site with no clear editorial oversight. See the Administrators' Noticeboard discussion.
• Answers.com
• Wisegeek.com. WP:RSN discussion has
  information loop
  .
• groups.google.com (and other Usenet portals). The quality of Usenet varies, with a large proportion of it being user generated content, with little editorial control (moderated groups being the exception). Usenet threads from such portals may also have been edited compared to original postings. Usenet postings from such portals should not be used for Wikipedia purposes without additional sourcing from reliable non-Usenet sources.

• iUniverse (search for uses)
• Lulu.com (search for uses)

A

It is a convention in scholarly works to add notes of "personal communication" or "pers. comm." with an individual or organisation who are considered knowledgeable on a topic, e.g. see Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. Chapter 13: Letters and Other Personal Communication. On Wikipedia this is considered to be

Search for uses here or here.

• Category:Wikipedia sources
• User:Zenwhat/Greylist
• Wikipedia:Fictitious references
• Wikipedia:Otto Middleton (or why newspapers are dubious sources)
• Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Flaws
• Wikipedia:Baby and Bathwater
• Wikipedia:CHURNALISM
• Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources
• Wikipedia:Deprecated sources
• user script
  designed to facilitate the detection of unreliable sources.