Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 4/Reliable source lists by topic

So, if we are writing in one of these areas where there are topic guidelines, great! We need to follow those guidelines. There are also reliable source lists by topic. If you click on this link you can see there's a lot of different source lists. So if you want to cover, say, professional wrestling, there is in fact a list of sources that people who are into professional wrestling have prepared for you. And they say, here's the source, here's information about it. Is it reliable? Is it reliable only for certain things? There's a whole table here. So again, if that's your field, we have you covered.

So some fields really have these topic lists and they're quite good, but other fields don't. So as I mentioned if I want to cover Nigerian hip hop and that doesn't have a reliable source list, that means that there are no clear-cut guidelines or consensus on what constitutes a reliable source for information about Nigerian hip hop.

And then it is up to you! You need to apply your best judgment about what is a reliable source. And some people may disagree with you, and you need to be ready, as I mentioned, to show up on the talk page. If someone says, "hey, why are you citing this?" Or "is this a reliable source?", you need to be able to say "yes! here's why I think it's a reliable source:", and to give your reasons. Or maybe you are convinced by the criticism and you say, "oh, you're right, that's not a reliable source! but I have another source, and this is a better source." You need to be ready to defend your choices of sourcing. And if you simply cannot find sourcing for what you want to say, you don't say it. You leave it out of Wikipedia.