User:Anders Feder/Writing about primary material

Primary material is content originating from primary sources. Wikipedia's policy on original research requires that any primary material used in Wikipedia must be treated with care.

Neutral external perspective

Articles describing primary material, like all Wikipedia articles, should adhere to the neutral point of view as their primary frame of reference, and mainly be based on reliable secondary sources. The approach is to describe the subject matter from the neutral, external perspective in which the primary material is not assumed to be true—any disputable assertions, based on the primary material or otherwise, must always be supported by reliable secondary sources.

Exemplary aspects of neutral external perspective include:

• Carefully differentiating between the primary source itself and aspects of its production process and publication, such as the impact the source has had in the surrounding world
• Carefully differentiating between narrated time and chronology in the primary material on the one hand, and narrative time and actual chronology of events in the world external to the source on the other
• Describing of the primary material's characters, places, views, arguments, notions and devices as objects of the narrative of the material
• Appropriately attributing the primary material to its source where it is discussed
• Discussing the presentation of primary material; for literature, this may include writing style and literary technique; for film and TV sources, this may include cinematographical aspects
• Describing, on the basis of reliable secondary sources, the author's intention

Neutral external perspective is not an optional quality criterion, but a general, basic requirement for all articles.

The problem with in-source perspective

An in-source perspective describes the narrative of the primary source from the perspective of the source itself, treating the universe or view presented in the source as if it was accepted truth, and ignoring context of the surrounding world and sourced analysis. The threshold of what constitutes in-source writing is making any effort to re-create or uphold the narrative of the primary material by omitting contextual information from the surrounding world.

Many other websites, such as advocacy and fan websites, take this approach, but it should not be used for Wikipedia articles. An in-source perspective can be misleading and represent unverifiable original research in violation of Wikipedia's most foundational policies.

Features often seen in an inappropriate, in-source perspective include:

• Disregarding all or most aspects of the primary material as a creative endeavour due to a specific author with specific intentions
• A synopsis of primary material written as if it constituted a generally accepted view or account
• An article or section about a character as depicted in the primary material, written like a biography. For example, instead of writing: "Gandalf was a powerful wizard", write: "Gandalf is characterized, described, or cast by Tolkien as a powerful wizard".
• Descriptions of places as depicted in the primary material, written like a geographical account; the same principles apply as for characters of primary material. For example, instead of writing: "Trillian is Arthur Dent's girlfriend. She was taken away from Earth by Zaphod when he met her at a party. She meets Dent while travelling with Zaphod", write: "Trillian is a fictional character from Douglas Adams' radio, book and now film series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the first book, Trillian is introduced to the main character Arthur Dent on a spaceship. In her backstory, she was taken away from Earth when the space alien Zaphod Beeblebrox met her at a party."
• Attempts to reconcile contradictions or bridge gaps in the narrative, rather than simply reporting them as such
• Giving as much weight to minor or obscure parts of a source as to its major or most important parts
• Assigning the same significance to a less important source as to a more important source that the former source claims to be based on
• Making references which require knowledge of other parts of the source work to be understood
• Using infoboxes intended for real-world subjects as depicted in reliable secondary sources
• Referring to the events or dates which occur in the primary material, rather than the material itself. For example, instead of writing: "It is the year 34,500 AD, when the Trantorian Empire encompasses roughly half of the galaxy", write: "This story is set in the year 34,500 AD, when the Trantorian Empire encompasses roughly half of the galaxy", or similar.
• Ordering events by the chronology described in primary sources, rather than by the actual order they happened in. For example, although Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was the fourth film released in the franchise, the story is a prequel that represents the beginning of the Star Wars narrative. As such it should be ordered as the fourth work in the series, not the first. It is acceptable to describe the timeline given by the primary material as long as it is clear that it does not necessarily represent the actual timeline.

These restrictions should and do hold for serious satire such as Gulliver's Travels or Candide (and many works for the stage) where fictional elements are designed to camouflage the serious political or social criticism within the work. In such cases, it is legitimate to examine the fictional elements and the design of the storyline on the basis of reliable secondary sources in order to attempt to decipher the author's original intent. The same exemptions might apply to other special forms of literature where the fiction/non-fiction categorization is disputed, such as the possibly historical elements of religious scripture.

Primary and secondary material

Primary material

The term primary material describes material that originates from primary sources. Primary material may be used in Wikipedia under certain circumstances if used with care. Specifically, primary material "may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge." This includes, for instance, appropriately attributed verbatim quotations as well as relevant, genuine descriptions of what the source factually states.

Most sources used on Wikipedia—whether primary or secondary—depict a narrative of some kind, in the most general sense of that word. For instance, a news report may narrate how events unfolded during a particular natural disaster or in the passing of a particular piece of legislation. A politically partisan source may cast itself as a heroic figure in a narrative in which it supposedly fights some other political actor which it casts as a villain. Even the raw data output of a scientific instrument represents readings made after the instrument was set up in a particular way in some particular location at a particular time, i.e. as part of some chronology of events that must be narrated for any sense to be drawn from the data.

Narratives rendered in primary material should be treated with particular care because primary sources, by definition, do not benefit from the hindsight that secondary sources enjoy. For this reason, such narratives should almost never be taken at face value–the scenes they depict must not be assumed to be true just because a primary source containing them exists. Any narrative presented in articles on Wikipedia as accepted fact must be supported by reliable secondary sources.

Secondary material

The term secondary material describes material external to the primary source's narrative setting, and is usually taken from secondary sources about the primary source or the narrative contained in it, or from primary and secondary sources about the author and the circumstances of creation.

A rule of thumb is to use as much secondary material as necessary and useful to give the article a neutral external perspective. Another rule of thumb is that if the topic is significant, secondary material should be available and possibly already in the article.

Examples of useful material typically provided by secondary sources about the primary source, and of primary and secondary material regarding circumstances external to the work:

• the author or creator
• other key figures in the creation process, e.g. notable translators for novels or the cinematographer for films
• the publishing house or film or software company
• the structure of the work
• external factors that have influenced the work or fictional element
• foreign translations
• its popularity among the public
• its sales figures (for commercial offerings)
• its reception by critics or experts in its field
• critical analysis of the work, including discussion of themes, style, motifs and genre
• the influence of the work on later creators and their projects
• the impact of the work on society generally
• the legacy of the work

Even when describing primary material through secondary sources, it is important to determine and observe the limitations of the reliability of those sources. No source is completely reliable in all questions—context matters. For instance, a theological secondary source may be reliable in questions of religious doctrine, but unreliable in questions of historical fact and authenticity. A source that is not reliable in questions of historical accuracy must not be cited to imply that a given narrative—religious or otherwise—is historically accurate. If a historiographically unreliable source discusses a particular primary-source narrative as if it was authentic, sufficient measures must be taken to either render the discussion in the neutral external perspective, or not cover it at all.

Types of primary material

Reliable sources

Primary sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy are considerably better sources than any sources which do not have such a reputation. However, they should still only be used with some caution. For instance, in 2014 the gold standard of peer-reviewed journals in the field of physics, Physical Review Letters, published a paper by the BICEP2 collaboration about a scientific result which news media were quick to frame as possibly being one of the most important results of the century. Around a year later, another esteemed source on science, nature.com, reported that the result could now be considered to be "dead": another group of scientists had convincingly demonstrated that it was unreliable.

If using material from primary sources which otherwise meet the threshold of reliability, always keep in mind the possibility that it may be (or already have been) successfully challenged by reliable secondary sources published at some later point in time.

Fiction

Main page: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction

The concerns described on this page regarding primary material especially apply when writing about fictional subjects, because they are inherently not real. It is important to keep these articles verifiable and encyclopedic. If you add fictional information, clearly distinguish fact and fiction. As with any article, establish context so that a reader unfamiliar with the subject can get an idea about the article's meaning, and particularly of the primary material's status as fiction, without having to check several links.

Religious sources

Primary sources narrating within a particular religious tradition (including, but not limited to, religious scripture) often make reference to narrated events (such as the Biblical Flood) and characters (such as the Islamic angel Jibra'il) as if they were authentic, even when they are not considered to be so by modern reliable historiographic sources. As is always the case of disputed material, such primary material should not be presented in an in-source perspective: the narrative given in the primary source should not be presented in Wikipedia as if it is true. Anything stated in the article on Wikipedia as accepted fact must be supported by reliable secondary sources. Primary material should be presented in the neutral external perspective, and should generally only be included to the extent that it is covered in secondary reliable sources.

As explained above, even when describing religious material through secondary sources, it is very important to determine and observe the limitations of the reliability of those sources. A theological secondary source, for example, may be reliable in questions of religious doctrine, but unreliable in questions of historical fact and authenticity. Such a source must not be cited in a way that implies that a given narrative—religious or otherwise—is historically accurate.

See also

• Wikipedia:POV and OR from editors, sources, and fields
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction – the guideline of which the present page is a generalization