[WikiEN-l] Original research

[slimvirgin at gmail.com]

On 3/26/06, Keith D. Tyler <keith at keithtyler.com> wrote:
> What happens if I use as a reference a website that has disappeared in
> the time since I added the information? It then becomes unverifiable.
> Presumably the info, like the website it was sourced from, must disappear?

Keith, for any source you use, you should leave a full citation in the
References section. See [[WP:CITE]]. That way, if your source is on
the Web and disappears, others may still be able to find it (if, say,
it was a published article that was posted online). However, if you're
using material that exists only on the Web, and the website disappears
completely, then you've lost your source, and the material in the
article goes back to being unsourced. For that reason, and also to do
with the likely quality of the source, I'd say it's best to avoid
relying on material that exists only on one or two websites.

Sarah