Wikipedia:Children's, adult new reader, and large-print sources questionable on reliability

Questionable sources are likely to be deleted because they're unlikely to be reliable. Children's sources, adult new reader sources, and abridged large-print media are questionable and need checking for reliability before being cited.

Children's books, adult new reader books, and large-print books are sometimes unreliable.

Problems

Some sources are not reliable and cannot support statements in Wikipedia. An editor wanting to add a statement to Wikipedia is required to be sure a reliable source can be found for it. Statements that are obviously true need sources even though it is not necessary to cite them unless challenged (this does not apply to quotations). All other statements and all quotations are likely to be challenged and need sources cited. All of these sources must be reliable.

Questionable types of sources lack the assurance of having been checked for accuracy and a reasonable degree of contextualization (providing enough context so that the main content can be correctly understood). Questionable sources are presumed unreliable, and are more likely to be deleted along with the statements they support, so an editor wanting to cite a questionable source must be more careful in checking that it is reliable. It may help to provide information on a source's reliability to reassure other Wikipedia readers, such as in a footnote or on the talk page.

Children's sources, adult new reader sources, and abridged large-print media are questionable. Children's and adult new reader sources tend to oversimplify their substantive content and abridged large-print media also may do so. Merely simplifying is not objectionable; we don't demand that a source be too complicated for most educated adults to understand. But an oversimplified source is more likely to be either wrong or so far from precision as to be useless for Wikipedia. For example, the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second; a source that rounds this number to 300,000 kilometers per second would be good enough (at least until a more precise source is found), but a source that only says that light is faster than a rabbit, even though that's true, is not good enough. And, if the source is simply wrong, that's obviously useless for Wikipedia.

Many nonfiction books for young readers are primarily intended to teach reading comprehension, phonics, or how to use text elements like infographics. The editorial process for these will primarily focus on things like reading level, Lexile measures, vocabulary lists, and the like; factual accuracy may be considered of secondary importance. The publication schedule of these books is also frequently tied to school districts' adoption deadlines -- for a new school year, a summer school program, etc. In practice, this means the editorial process is often rushed to make that deadline, in particularly the copy editing and fact-checking stage (which usually comes last in the process). Some of these books are reprints or repackaging of older publications; factual statements in these may be out of date and not updated.

Listed authors may not be real authors. That was found with some high school history textbooks a few decades ago. A textbook with three named authors, often including a prominent historian and a high school principal, frequently would actually have been authored not mainly by the named authors but by three other people with degrees but not in history and who had been directed by yet someone else in what to write.

Consultants are listed for some children's (and perhaps adult new reader) sources, but the role of the consultants is often not specified. Presumably, their being identified is to promote book sales. But what's important to reliability is what consultants did for a manuscript. If a consultant only gave general advice before the manuscript was written, the consultancy may be irrelevant to reliability for Wikipedia. On the other hand, if they proofread the manuscript for accuracy, that would be very relevant. But the sources often don't say what the consultants did.

Before publication, a publisher's capable editorial staff likely evaluated almost any source before audiences got it. But that does not mean that the evaluation was specifically for reliability as needed for Wikipedia. (Likewise, self-published books from vanity presses may have been reviewed by careful staffs, but those reviews would likely have been limited to issues of liability for the publishers, such as libel, and not reliability for Wikipedia.) An audience that is less demanding is usually not going to inspire publishers to be as expensively demanding as they would be for better sources that are published. Children, especially younger ones, adults who can hardly read and have to concentrate on process more than on substance, and people with few other choices in what to read tend to be less demanding for textual accuracy.

Exceptions exist. For example, books on relativity in physics for high school students may be questionable but the one written in the 1950s by Albert Einstein was reliable in its time because the author, as a leading scholar in the field, was qualified to ensure its accuracy. What Wikipedia's reliability guideline requires is that, when an editor wants to cite a source, the editor affirm the source's reliability, such as by affirming that the author was qualified to ensure the source's accuracy.

When both questionable and unquestionable sources are available

When both a children's, adult new reader, or abridged large-print source is available and an adult-level fluent-reader unabridged source is also available, which to use depends on these factors:

• If both questionably and unquestionably reliable sources are conveniently in front of you (as an editor), use the better sourcing by itself. Only use the lesser sourcing in the unusual case where it adds something and is not supernumerary.
• If you need to search for sourcing and could get either type, two choices apply:
  • To improve the quality of one Wikipedia article, consider shunning children's, adult new reader, and abridged large-print sources when adult-level fluent-reader unabridged sourcing can be used.
  • To expand Wikipedia's coverage across many articles, consider using any reliable sourcing and going forward to other articles with any other reliable sourcing (or sometimes the same sourcing used again), thus developing more content.

Widely-known vs. specialized facts

While children's, adult new reader, and abridged large-print sources may be reliable for widely-known facts even if not reliable for specialized knowledge, precisely because the widely-known facts are widely known, many sources support them. That fish swim in water, that Mozart was a musician, and that people fly into outer space can all be sourced to adult-level fluent-reader unabridged sourcing, such as almanacs, encyclopedias, newspapers, and magazines, not to mention leading-edge peer-reviewed scholarship.

Related problems

Most children's and adult new reader sources are tertiary and probably most abridged large-print sources are tertiary while Wikipedia prefers secondary sourcing. However, that is a separate issue and not an issue of reliability.

Encouraging everyone to become editors includes encouraging editors who are just old enough to begin editing (like schoolchildren), barely literate, or physically hindered in reading. That encouragement is part of recruiting many editors of many backgrounds and is vital to growing Wikipedia and to strengthening the breadth of its coverage. We can anticipate that Wikipedia will be a better encyclopedia as a result. Encouraging them as editors is easier if we encourage them to use the sources handy to them. A good example of that is the welcoming of children who want to edit on the subjects they probably like best and which they know better than the rest of us do. We can invite them to use the sources they have already learned to trust. Then, we can remedy source shortcomings by upgrading sources after the children have cited the sources they have handy. The source reliability guideline does not vary in its applicability according to who is editing Wikipedia. It does vary according to subject; for example, all else equal, a children's source may be acceptable for common rules in the game of checkers but not on off-label bovine neurological medication regimens.

Types of sources

Children's sources

Sources directed at children are created for audiences who are usually less demanding of intellectual quality or who usually have less means to validate it. People who create for children (authors, radio hosts, et al.) usually would know this. Possibly, creators for children even get much of their factual content from Wikipedia. Using these sources in Wikipedia will often lower the quality of Wikipedia articles and will result in indirectly citing Wikipedia in Wikipedia, which is against Wikipedia's policy for verifiability and the guideline against self-reference.

The younger the intended audience, the greater the risk of unreliability. However, even textbooks for high school students are often unreliable, including in science and history.

Subjects of little interest to adults but of great interest to children, such as children's games and hobbies, if adult-level sources are inadequate or nonexistent, are an exception for which children's sources may be relatively good. Even for those subjects, however, Wikipedia editors should be sure that a source did not get its information from Wikipedia. If the information is already in Wikipedia, even without a source, do not cite the children's source as a replacement or additional source. If the information is not in Wikipedia, citing the children's source may be acceptable. And even children's sources on children's subjects need to be reliable to be used in Wikipedia.

Check the reliability of any children's source, especially a source meant for the youngest audiences but even up through high school levels (some editors may urge checking even up through undergraduate college levels) and especially if the source is to be cited for content of interest primarily to older or adult readers of Wikipedia.

Adult new reader sources

Adult new readers are adults who are learning to read in their native language for the first time, or who are learning to read in a foreign language for the first time. Adult new readers generally struggle to understand what they are trying to read (much as children struggle), and therefore need sources that are easier to read. While adult new readers may find long and complex content easy to parse when spoken, they generally have a harder time understanding it in written form and need the written form to be simple until they get moderately good at reading. When a new reader is trying to commit the sounds of vowels to memory from the ink strokes on a page, a slowly repetitive process, it is less distracting and thus more helpful to keep the message of the page substantively simple. That is most easily done by simplifying the content in both substance and style. Sources for adult new readers are generally created with this as background. Accuracy will generally be lower, maybe too low.

Synonyms for adult new readers probably include new literates, beginner readers, emergent readers, English learners (and any analogues for other natural languages), English language learners (and any analogues for other natural languages), hi-lo readers (for high interest and low reading level), and reluctant readers. Related terms include adult literacy and English as a second language (ESL) (and any analogues for other natural languages).

Check the reliability of any adult new reader source.

Large-print sources

Visually-impaired readers often depend on sources that are typeset or rendered in a large font size (such books are commonly called large-print books). Because large-print unabridged non-electronic media are physically larger and sales quantities are usually smaller, it is generally more expensive to print, inventory, and distribute a given text in a large font than in a regular font size. Abridgement is normally not cost-free, as someone must do any abridging.

Check the reliability of any large-print source, especially if it is non-electronic, does not explicitly state that it is unabridged, and has a regular print counterpart from the same publisher and year.

Exceptions

• Sources without regular-print counterparts. Large font sizes are not in themselves a problem for reliability. The problem is where large- and regular-print sources have different content but are not labeled for the difference, because that may lead to a Wikipedia article's being wrong or an editor being unable to verify a source.
• Electronic sources, including in e-readers and on the Internet. Enlarging the text requires no additional content file (e.g., the same e-book can be rendered in any available font size for the same cost) and probably requires almost no additional computational power. Therefore, the reliability of the electronic source in a regular font size applies to the same source in any other font size.
• Unabridged sources. Many sources will explicitly state that the text is the full text of the regular-font edition (see if, for example, the cover or the copyright page says so). If a source does not say so, assume it is abridged. Abridgement requires editing, which should have been sensitive to intellectual accuracy, but it's usually impossible to tell if that is the case without comparing the two editions word for word, in which case a Wikipedia editor can simply read and cite the regular-font edition anyway, regardless of what the large-print edition may contain. While single-page sources cost only a little more to print, stock, and distribute in two font sizes, they have the same editing problem as multi-page sources and a Wikipedia editor comparing a single-page source for sameness of content between large and regular-print editions can read and cite the regular-font edition anyway, and should.
  • Pictures and other nontextual content in large-print editions that have the full text of regular-print editions may be abridged without the edition saying so. Pictures may not be used in Wikipedia without permission (including fair use) or unless they're in the public domain, so their unavailability in a large-print edition is probably not critical, and the same may be true of any other nontext content in the source. (What constitutes nontext content is up to each publisher, source author, or source editor, but it might include tables and musical scores.) However, it is possible that quoting or paraphrasing even text by itself could amount to cherrypicking, so a regular-font edition may be preferred for completeness. That will have to be judged separately for each source.
  • Not all abridged works are encompassed as unreliable, regardless of font size. A collection of a politician's speeches in a regular font size may be complete or abridged. Two different abridgements of the same subject (such as of a historical person's important papers) may be quite reliable because the publishers' editing of both may have been of a sufficient level of quality, but abridgement only because of type size may have been done with less editorial skill, making reliability questionable. The problem with large-print, non-electronic media is that they are (in some cases) abridged without saying so, with the editions otherwise appearing to be nearly identical and perhaps published in the same year and by the same publisher, causing confusion. That is unlike when years, publishers, or named editors are different, because the latter is enough to allow verification of the intended edition.

Solutions

How to check reliability

Check the reliability of these sources just as you would check the reliability of any source you want to cite. Merely having pages and covers does not make a source reliable. But evidence of reliability may often be found in the source itself. For instance, the cover may tell you the author's qualifications. If not, checking may take more time. Investigation may require going outside of the source, such as by searching book reviews and authors' and publishers' websites.

Generally, if the author is qualified in the substantive field with the information you wish to add to Wikipedia, that may be sufficient. However, if an author's qualifications are unstated or if an author is qualified as a writer or in making children happy, that is usually not sufficient. For example, an author who is qualified as a writer may not be qualified to explain biology or astronomy, even though the author is very good at writing.

Within Wikipedia, some sources can be investigated or challenged at the reliable sources noticeboard, including investigating in its archives for past cases.

Citing

Large-print nonelectronic media, if possibly abridged and if cited at all, should be cited as large-print sourcing, because of the possibility of unrevealed abridgment making verification harder unless a verifier knows to seek the large-print edition. This is a hypothetical example: <ref>Smith, Chris, Floating the Titanic (Warsaw: North Press, large-print 1st edition 2011).</ref>

If content supported by a questionable source

Biographies of living persons

If a statement is contentious and is supported only by a citation of a questionably reliable source, reconsider the source and justify the source as not questionable, upgrade the source, or delete the statement. Be bold and fast.

Harmful content in any article

Process as above (as with a contentious statement in a biography of a living person).

All other articles

If any statement is supported by a citation of a questionably reliable source, you may resolve it yourself or invite other editors to resolve it. If you'll do the editing yourself, reconsider the source and justify the source as not questionable, upgrade the source, or delete the statement. If you don't do the editing yourself, you may tag the statement so that other editors will know to do something about it. Either the {{Better source}} template or the {{Verify credibility}} template can serve that purpose. The {{Better source}} template allows an editor to add a reason. Choose and format one of the templates and place it in the article's content right after the citation of the questionable source.

See also

Essays

• Cherrypicking – although using an unreliable source is not the cherrypicking that Wikipedia editors should not do, it risks cherrypicking by other people
• Baby and bathwater – using a source that has any reliability at all
• Minors and persons judged incompetent – writing about certain people
• Avoiding untrue text in articles – accuracy of content