Wikipedia’s content policies rest on three pillars that keep colliding in client conversations: verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view. All three depend on sources. Get the sources wrong and elegant prose will not save the page.
Secondary sources do the heavy lifting
Secondary sources analyse, summarise, or contextualise a topic. A newspaper profile, a scholarly overview, or a serious magazine feature usually sits in this category. Primary sources — filings, interviews, the subject’s own site — can support uncontroversial facts, but they rarely establish notability on their own.
A working hierarchy for most biographies and companies
- Usually strong: major newspapers, established magazines, academic journals, books from recognised publishers, serious trade press with editorial staff.
- Handle carefully: local outlets with uneven standards, industry blogs with light editing, interview pieces that mostly quote the subject.
- Usually weak for notability: press releases, wire reprints of releases, company blogs, sponsored “newsroom” features, most social media, crowdfunding pages, Wikipedia mirrors.
Independence is easy to misunderstand
A glowing article still fails the independence test if the subject paid for it, dictated it, or published it. Wikipedia’s pages on reliable sources and independent sources are worth reading in full before you build a citation list around marketing assets.
How we stress-test a source pile
For each candidate piece, ask: Who wrote it? Who edited it? Was the subject the focus? Does the outlet correct errors? Is there a financial relationship? If you cannot answer those questions, do not hang an article on that link.
Good research is slower than dumping every Google result into a draft. It is also the only way Wikipedia content writing stays stable after publication.
