User:Billscottbob/riskassessment/verifiability

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Introduction   Verifiability   Stability   Nature of Article Subject    

Verifiability is probably the most accurate way to assess the risk of an article. The following show indicators of verifiability.

Number of Sources

At the bottom of a good article, a section will be dedicated to citations titled "References" or "Notes". If this list is extensive, relative to the amount of information contained in the article, the article is generally reliable.

Examples

Some examples of good reference lists include Albet Einstein and Facebook.

Realiability of Sources

Especially if there are few sources, see above, it is a good idea to scan sources to see if they are reliable. Unreliable sources include blogs and personal websites. Reliable sources include online encyclopedias and text-based sources (not online).

Inline Citations

In order to verify specific facts and controversial statments, inline citations are used match sources in the reference list with facts in the article, as seen in Example 1 below.

On the other hand, inline text is also used to mark facts where verifiability is needed (Example 2) and where it is suspected that a statement is original research and is not verified by any source (Example 3). When you see these, it is a warning that the specific fact is unverifiable. On the other hand, it means that contributors of the article are keeping verifiability in mind.

Example

Example 1: This is a fact[1].

Example 2: This is an unverified fact that needs a citation[citation needed].

Example 3: This is original research.[original research?].

References

  1. ^ This citation verifies the fact in Example 1

Verifiability Tags

The most obvious sign of poor verifiability is when an article is tagged for various different verifiability issues.

Examples

The following are some verifiability tags used on articles. More can be found here.

{{unreferenced}}
links talk edit
This does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
{{refimprove}}
links talk edit
This needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
{{nofootnotes}}
links talk edit
This includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.