User:Goodraise/Reviews as sources

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This page in a nutshell:

A review is always a reliable source for the opinion of its author.
Every reviewer's opinion should be given due weight, which may be no weight at all.
When using a review to assert a subject's notability, consider who wrote the review.

Reviews make up a significant part of the sources used by Wikipedia in particular in the area of popular culture. This essay deals with the relation of such and similar sources with core Wikipedia policies and guidelines. It also discusses how to select reviews for Wikipedia articles and how to use them.

Reviews in relation to core policies and guidelines

Reviews and reliability

All information in Wikipedia must be verifiable, meaning the reader should be able to check the information against reliable sources.

It is important to understand that sources are not simply divided into reliable and unreliable sources. A source may well be both, depending on what information is taken from it. A reviewer of a certain product, TV episode, film, or whatever, may not be an expert in the field, his or her writing may be full of factual errors, yet the review remains a reliable source for the opinion of its author. (See WP:SELFPUB.)

Reviews and due weight

Just about every review, ranging from the movie column in a well-known newspaper to an anonymous blog post, can be a reliable source when used correctly. However, this does not mean that all of these opinions should find their way into Wikipedia's articles. Only "all significant views" need to be covered. (See WP:DUE, which is part of Wikipedia's policy of writing from a neutral point of view.)

Reviews and notability

Within the Wikipedia community, the word notability has gained a special meaning. In addition to its dictionary meaning, it refers to the suitability of a topic to be covered in a stand-alone article. Oftentimes, the existence of certain sources is used to determine a subject's notability.

For instance, the general notability guideline states that "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article."

If this "significant coverge" is supposed to be made up of reviewer opinion, one has to consider that not only the depth of the coverage plays a role, but also the significance of the opinion.

Selecting reviews

Before adding a reviewer's opinion to an article, ask yourself why this individual's opinion is worth mentioning. When such an addition is challenged, you should be able to respond by giving a convincing rationale.

Bad arguments include:

The article needed more independent sources to save it from deletion.
The review's publishing newspaper/magazine/website is listed as a reliable source by some Wikiproject.

Good arguments include:

The reviewer is an expert in the field.
The review's publishing newspaper/magazine/website has a good reputation in the field.

Such claims need to be substantiated by verifiable evidence. In case of websites, "About" pages are usually a good place to start looking. However, evidence is rarely found that easily.

Using reviews in articles

Reviews are typically cited in "Reception" sections to support the opinions of their authors. Only in rare cases should they be used in other sections of articles, where they are all too often used to back claims of fact exceeding the source's reliability.

Ideally, the reader should understand, while reading the article, why the opinion of a particular reviewer is significant. In-text attribution, naming the author, wikilinking and explanations as to who the reviewer is, can help achieve that and avoid having to provide justification later.