Reliability
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This template was considered for deletion on 2010 April 29‎. The result of the discussion was "Keep".

How about a non tertiary source needed?

Because primary sources are often used when secondary would be required. Low-quality religious articles are often written trying to "prove" themselves by using the bible or the quran or whatever, which is not sufficient. If an article is to claim anything, there has to be an independent source outside that claims exactly that thing. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 12:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Stupid me! I misread! Of course, but then ((Verify credibility)) might be relevant(?). Maybe the name ((Template:Better source)) is not appropriate? ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 12:31, 8 December 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Resolved

As with other comparable inline maintenance templates the content of the |reason= parameter should be displayed when hovering the mouse over the tag. __meco (talk) 13:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Could this same change be made to ((Better source))? I've looked at its source code and compared it to others with this feature and realized that I don't know anywhere enough about this kind of template programming to make the change myself... (Also, for reasons unknown, Template talk:Better source redirects here...) — Cbbkr (talk) 19:42, 17 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As per this edit by User:Trappist the monk, the tooltip functionality has now been included. I have also added this feature to ((Better source)) with this edit. Marking as resolved. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cerabot just tagged one of my ((psc))s with a date, but the template doesn't mention anything about it. Should the date param be added to the doc? czar · · 01:34, 12 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

 Done Debresser (talk) 06:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Are there any plans to create a spinoff from this template with the highlighting function of ((Citation needed span))? It could be very useful to clearly mark the portions of a text that are from a primary source that need a non-primary source. --110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:24, 29 May 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Not that I know of. It would honestly be better to just integrate that functionality into this template. We need to quit forking them for span purposes; it just creates additional templates for no reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:52, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Even the example used in this template's documentation is wrong. The Ghostbusters website wouldn't be a primary source for the statement that most people believe in ghosts, it's just a source where we have reason to question its veracity due to a conflict of interest. An improper primary source would be linking to raw survey data that doesn't include the necessary statistical analysis to support the conclusion "most" to an appropriate level of statistical significance. Anomie⚔ 11:42, 12 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There are lots of kinds of primary sources.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:51, 25 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, there are. We even have a whole article about the concept. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the comment here, so why did you bother to point that out? Anomie⚔ 15:06, 28 June 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Because, obviously, there are many cases where use of particular kinds of primary sources in particular contexts are not appropriate on an encyclopedia, and we need a way to flag such inappropriate uses of them. Your complaint here (aside from being moot, since this already survived TfD) seems to be twofold:

1. I gather that you fear that Evil Bad People will abuse this template to flag every citation of all primary sources, even appropriate ones, as if they're policy violations that have to be replaced. But this isn't happening. Even if someone did start doing this, a WP:DE campaign of that sort would be detected and stopped pretty quickly. So, assume other editors actually have a clue, basically. We don't get rid of every template that could conceivably be abused by someone. Essentially, your requirement that "Primary" shouldn't be used as code for "I don't like this source" is already met.
2. You complain that the ghost example doesn't qualify, with an imaginary rationale about an imaginary quote. Don't over-analyze, just take the example at face value. It is a primary source for the assertion. It's a claim of fact being asserted by some party, without doing any WP:AIES of previous material that we can identify (if it had cited its own sources, that would make it a secondary source), much less subject to editorial control processes (above the writer) at a reputable publisher (which would make it a reliable secondary source we'd be likely to actually cite). It's not a WP:COI matter, because producers of a movie about fictional ghosts do not have fiduciary or other close ties to facts about whether ghosts are actually real. It is not actually a WP:INDY failure of any kind; it's a primary sourcing problem – a "WhereTF did this come from before this website said it?" question. But feel free to replace the example with something better if you think anyone is actually liable to be confused on this point. The example was meant to be amusing, not confusing (and originally came from the /doc of another template, anyway). It might be more effective to give a more realistic example.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:01, 3 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That sort of bad argument about "primary" sources is why I continue to maintain that almost all mention of primary sources in our policies and guidelines are bogus. I'm done here, I have better things to do than waste time going over and over it again. Anomie⚔ 19:57, 3 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey, the situation is better than it used to be. It's an ongoing battle, especially with some of our most experienced editors (because they "just know" what someone used to mean when that was said), but we have made some progress on that point.

As for the example, "it's complicated". If the website is merely another one of the many WP:LINKSINACHAIN, then it could still be primary (despite being second-hand). But I'd be happy to see good examples, if you think it would help. I've made a change that might be happier. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 10 October 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Am I the only one that thinks that "non-primary" is a bit long-winded? I can't seem to find anything in the edit history or talk history about this, and it might just be me being inexperienced and not knowing why, but I think this template would benefit from specifying we want a secondary source specifically, since that seems to be preferred. Weigurde (talk) 17:10, 28 February 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]